Intelligent Insight on PerformancePoint : Business Scorecard Manager

What are you reading...

btamblyn — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:59:41 GMT

It's a question I get asked this time every year by family and friends looking to buy me book tokens for my impending birthday. So this weekend I get a phone-call from my mother in Australia and the topic of my birthday comes up.

Mum: So Ben - What are you reading at the moment?
Ben: Nothing in particular - at the moment I spend much of my free-time (which incidentally is not much) wilfing.
Mum: Does Ali (that's my wife) know you do this.

It was then that I had to spend some time explaining in depth what I was talking about, and that "wilfing" was an expression referring to browsing the internet with no real purpose (WILF = what was I looking for) rather than a euphemism for spending time alone, which was what my mother thought. I think you get my drift so I'll move on quickly.

What I am reading at the moment in fact is Nick Barclay's new book. Very kindly Nick arranged for his publisher to send me through a copy. A great resource for anyone designing dynamic and interactive scorecards using BSM 2005.

I'd encourage you to pick yourself up a copy from Amazon if you're working with BSM.

Thanks Nick!

Technorati Tags: PerformancePoint Server, Business Scorecard Manager 2005, Nick Barclay, Wilfing

De-constructing the "Angry Cinnamon"

btamblyn — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:43:00 GMT

So why the angry cinnamon - A good question: READ I have absolutely NO idea. A term used internally and although I don't know it's exact origin - I'm crediting Chuck Mitten who works in the Microsoft OBA Partner team in Boise.

So let's break this down.

BI has historically been a ‘read-only’ business. The IT department delivers a great, clean, trusted data layer. The users grab that data in rich tools like Excel and they develop insights. But what happens after that? Unless you translate your insights into a plan, and record that plan somewhere, we’ll never know if your insights, and your actions, made a real difference to the business.

So let’s say I am retail analyst and I'm doing some store analysis. I need to interact with and use complete data, sales and expenses which is delivered from the operational data store, I use corporate data, fully burdened by allocated costs, and I decide that we need to move two inside sales reps out to the sales floor.

In PerformancePoint, we record that decision. You’ve effectively changed your resource allocation. You are now accountable for that decision. Next month, or maybe next quarter, we can compare your forecast with the new resource allocation to actual data and we’ll all know if that was a good decision or not. And one of the great things about accountability is, the flip-side of that coin is auditability. In PerformancePoint, we know who saw what data, because we log that, who made what decision, because we made BI read-write and of course, we know the result.

The other nice feature of PerformancePoint Server is that because we’re at this higher level of the stack, we can give each user the right amount of data to make a decision; not too little AND more importantly not too much. Generally we use Excel. So, when the sales forecast is due, we send the sales rep a link to a spreadsheet. In fact, it’s a link to the PerformancePoint server. When the user hits that link, we generate a spreadsheet that has the right amount of data for that user, the correct, current data. They add their inputs to the forecast, submit it and we move it along to the next person in the business flow, usually the manager. The user never had to hunt for data, never saw too much data or the wrong data. We record what they did, when they did it. And the whole time, the user was just ‘using Excel’ something they already know how to do. This is good for users of course, but it’s good for IT departments too. Because, deep down, we’ve taken this formerly document oriented, hard to control, hard to manage process and made it a centrally managed, controlled, database process. But the users just keep using Excel…

OK, so when we talk about Microsoft business intelligence and performance management we look at it from three perspectives:

SQL Server as the technical BI platform
Office as the user platform and;
PerformancePoint as the business platform

And we use these platforms to help us answer the questions below:

Starting from the top right hand corner the first two are really about monitoring your business . The third is analysis, plain and simple. The last two are really about planning. And it’s a cycle. You see something happening, you delve into it and you make a plan to address it. Or you have a plan, you watch for actual results. If they are anomalous, you do some analysis. In Performance Management we support the whole Monitor, Analyze, Plan cycle. Today we have two products in the market at this tier of the stack. Business Scorecard Manager 2005 is our tool for monitoring your business. It, working with SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services, answers those first two questions; What happened? And what is happening? ProClarity 6.2 is a tool that adds value to Analysis Services and address the third question; Why?

In the summer of 2007 we’ll merge these two tools, actually the next versions of these tools with a new planning component to form PerformancePoint Server 2007. We’ve been working on the planning component for a while. It’s important because not only does it address the last two questions, but it also adds the corporate aspect of trusting your decisions, and the accountability.

By corporate, we mean two things. First, decisions should be made using data that reflects corporate reality. Going back to my sales analysis from earlier, using data at the store level might lead to one set of decisions. But when I factor in corporate effects, like regional and national costs, I might make a very different set of decisions. So PerformancePoint includes an engine that does consolidation, allocation and inter-company eliminations. The second part of this is making decisions in the context of the corporate process. So if I want to budget more advertising dollars in my region, that plan needs to be approved by my boss. Or my sales forecast has to go to my district manager before it gets locked down. PerformancePoint includes the functionality for implementing your company’s business process in the decision making flow.

Anyway, that’s the stack.

So when I begin to deconstruct the stack and look at partner services the opportunities are plentiful. What's really interesting is the services at the top of the stack in the Performance Management layer. For example services such as metrics development involve highly strategic engagements requiring close interaction at board level to ensure firstly that you're helping your customer to measure the right things and also help them to drive business alignment down and across the organisation. Gaining pervasive adoption therefore emphasise's the need to drive a structured business change programme. Because of the highly strategic nature of these activities - they represent a premium level service, and you're therefore able to charge accordingly. We can assist by reducing the cost of software acquisition and utilising existing technology assets.

If we look at the concept of business process consulting we can begin to draw some similar conclusions. Business methodologies such as balanced scorecarding, activity based costing and six sigma are extremely useful in providing a framework for Performance Management however in isolation they are just that - FRAMEWORKS. A methodology without a performance management process will undoubtedly end in failure. Equally a performance management process that needs to integrate disparate planning & budgeting, forecasting, and management reporting applications will ultimately lead to extra time and cost that needs to be absorbed by either the partner or passed on to the customer potentially putting the performance management programme and your services revenue at risk.

So that's it. As always I'm looking for feedback - so feel free to leave a comment at the end of this blog post and I'll be sure to respond.

Technorati Tags: PerformancePoint Server, Performance Management, ProClarity, Business Scorecard Manager, Partner, Microsoft, Business Intelligence

TechWeb Readers' Choice Awards: Microsoft is Best Performance Management Suite Vendor

btamblyn — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 02:35:01 GMT

This is a great start to the new year although I guess I'm a little surprised at this given the PerformancePoint beta was only released under CTP in December. MS BI have won the TechWeb Readers’ Choice Award for Best Customer Analytics, Best ETL Software and Best XML Database… and we haven’t even released PerformancePoint Server and we’re already voted Best Performance Management Suite! I'm also extremely proud of the fact that MS won the most awards of any software vendor (with serious investments in the areas where we aren’t award winners… yet!). I think this again testifies how serious we are about driving adoption of MS BI solutions and for those who still don't believe we have an enterprise ready platform for BI and CPM hopefully this provides further evidence of our capability.

For those of you who haven't yet signed up for the PerformancePoint Community Technology Preview I would encourage you to do so.

Technorati tags: PerformancePoint, Business Intelligence, TechWeb, Partner, SQL, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, Microsoft, PerformancePoint Server, Office 2007

Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference (May 9th - 11th 2007)

btamblyn — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 03:27:03 GMT

Here's some early information about Microsoft's BI conference planned for May 9th.

With the release of SQL Server 2005, Business Scorecard Manager 2005, the 2007 Office system, the ProClarity acquisition and the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, it is clear that Microsoft is investing deeply in business intelligence. Microsoft is poised to fundamentally transform the business intelligence (BI) industry by making it a ubiquitous technology. Now we will have a Microsoft Conference dedicated to BI to showcase our market-leading products and solutions, expertise and customer successes!

SAVE THE DATE for the first-ever Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference to be held May 9-11, 2007 in Seattle at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. This event will feature keynotes by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, and Jeff Raikes, President of the Microsoft Business Division. Additionally, technical and business-focused session tracks, chalk talks, Partner and Microsoft solution expo, hands-on labs, and numerous highlighted customer success stories are sure to make this event a HUGE success!

The conference is designed to educate customers and you, our valued partners, on nearly every aspect of Microsoft’s BI offering. We are expecting to host between 1,500 and 2,000 IT Professionals, business decision makers, existing customers and partners from the world at the event.

We know that you probably have a lot more questions so we have provided some additional information below to answer a few of your questions:

1. How can I get involved?

We are already seeing an overwhelming amount of interest from the partner community to participate in the conference. The primary way that you can get involved is to Sign up as a Conference Sponsor. We will offer various levels of sponsorship and exhibit opportunities. Certain sponsorship packages will include the opportunity for partner presentations in a partner breakout track. More details will be available in January when the sponsorship packages become available. In the meantime, please visit the Microsoft Partner Pavilion & Expos site for more information about the conference. In addition, if you are interested in receiving exhibiting and sponsorship information when it becomes available, please send an email to pavilion@microsoft.com with ‘Microsoft BI Conference 2007’ in the subject line and you will be added to the list.

2. How do I invite our top customers to the event?

We are expecting the event to sell out due to the enthusiasm that we are already seeing from customers and the fact that the event is limited to 1500 attendees. Please encourage your co-workers and customers to sign up as soon as the worldwide registration site goes live in mid- to late February. We will be sure to notify you when registration goes live. Early bird pricing will be available through March 15, 2007, so by registering early you and your customers will have a guaranteed seat at the best price!

3. How do I nominate my customer to present and/or possibly present on stage with Steve Ballmer?

There are three key ways to get your customers involved in the conference. First, it is our goal to have two of our top BI customers on stage with Steve Ballmer during his keynote address on Friday, May 11^th.

Second, we are dedicating an entire track to customer presentations! You will have the opportunity to introduce or co-present with your customer provided the session is success/case study focused. More information about the nomination process will be available when the Conference website goes live in early January.

And finally, we will be presenting the first-ever Microsoft BI customer awards at the conference. More information about the awards will be available on the event website when it goes live. In the meantime, if you have customer suggestions or questions specifically relating to getting your customers involved in the conference, please contact Jason Blumberg.

The criteria that will help determine which customers are selected are:

- The customer can speak to the real-world benefits of using Microsoft BI

- Size and scale of deployment (# of users, # of sites/locations, different user types , etc.)

- Using multiple products within the Microsoft BI product family

- Brand-name customer

- Competitive replacements or head-to-head competitive wins are also desirable

4. What are the expected attendee fees for the Conference?

Attendee fees will be $895 during the early bird registration period, which will run from February until March 15, 2007. Prices go up to $1095 after midnight on March 15^th, so encourage your customers to register early! A limited number of attendee and booth staff passes will be included with the various sponsorship packages, so these fees would only apply to non-sponsoring partners or attendees above and beyond the number allocated for the sponsorship level.

5. Do you have any other details about registration?

We expect the conference marketing website to go live in late December or early January and the worldwide registration section of the site to go live in mid- to late February. Expect to hear more as the event site goes live and as registration nears!

We hope that you are as excited as we are to showcase Microsoft’s BI solutions at the first annual Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference in May! Be sure to lock these dates (May 9-11, 2007) on your calendar now.

Technorati tags: business Intelligence, Business Scorecard Manager, ProClarity, Partner, SharePoint Server 2007, SQL, OBA, Office 2007, PerformancePoint

Best Practices: Building vertical KPI's

btamblyn — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 01:55:00 GMT

I was speaking with a colleague of mine Jeremy Neal. Jeremy has come over to Microsoft as part of the ProClarity acquisition and works as an OBA Solution Sales Professional (SSP). A couple of weeks back at the monthly ProClarity UK Seminar we got talking about how we can effectively provide partners with information based on building specific vertical KPI templates and accelerators.

So if you're a partner here's the definitive guide. As we quickly integrate ProClarity into the Microsoft business I'm sure these will be made available via MSDN subscription but at the moment they're easily accessible directly from the ProClarity website. There are two great resources available free to partners.

ProClarity Analytics Server (PAS) KPI Designer

PAS comes with a library of KPI templates that represents the collective experience of ProClarity, our partners and customers. Almost 80% of the KPI's most organisations need can be deployed directly from these templates or through minor modifications. There are more than 50 templates available and they take full advantage of SQL 2005 functionality that introduces Goal, Status and Trend information extending the value of each KPI metric (in fact the Goal, Status and Trend approach is available to customers still using SQL 2000). Once defined the KPI's can be published to PAS for broad deployment and consistent interpretation. The underlying MDX can also be cut and pasted into the cube.

ProClarity Application Accelerator Kits

ProClarity has an active online community. The community comprises three areas: Central / Analyst / Best Practice. The latter two are available to customers for an annual subscription. Partners have free access.

The Analyst and Best Practice community subscriptions include access to ProClarity Application Accelerator Kits. These are examples of ProClarity applications from specific vertical markets – e.g. Retail, Healthcare.

Partners can sign up to the ProClarity Partner Program free of charge (£400 for Resellers). This provides the software and all levels of community subscription free of charge. I'd also encourage you to attend ProClarity's next UK seminar in Chertsey on December 13th. I attended the last session run by Jeremy and Andrew Sadler which was outstanding - a great opportunity for customers and partners alike to understand the ongoing Microsoft strategy around ProClarity Dashboard and Analytics.

Technorati tags: PerformancePoint, ProClarity, Business Intelligence, KPI's, SQL, OBA, Performance Management

Business Scorecard Manager 2005 - SP1

btamblyn — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:18:00 GMT

Good News for anyone working with BSM and thanks to Patrick Husting for the heads-up on this.

As we get closer to releasing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
(MOSS) 2007, the field has asked the Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) 2005 team if Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be a supported
platform for BSM 2005. "The answer is YES!"

The BSM 2005 team will provide a BSM 2005 Service Pack 1 release
approximately ten weeks after MOSS 2007 is publicly available.
The Service Pack will include a roll-up of released Quick Fix Engineering
(QFE) updates and a number of fixes that are specific to MOSS 2007
integration. To acquire BSM 2005 Service Pack 1 customers will require a
BSM 2005 license.

It is not necessary for current BSM 2005 customers running on Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server 2003 to apply Service Pack 1. Service Pack 1 is
required only when customer deploy BSM 2005 on MOSS 2007. It will be
released through the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).

Technorati tags: PerformancePoint, Business Intelligence, Business Scorecard Manager, MOSS, Office 2007, MSDN, SharePoint Server 2007

Missing in Action

btamblyn — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:16:00 GMT

I've been out of the office for almost a month now but certainly been busy with fatherhood I have a beautiful baby daughter and last week we released to manufacturing (RTM) both Windows Vista and the Microsoft Office System 2007.

I've been running around the country presenting to partners as part of the Microsoft Business EVOLUTION roadshow. These sessions are designed to showcase the new wave of technology coming down the line around Exchange, Vista and Office - affectionately known internally as EVO. Week beginning the 4th of December I'll be jumping into a bus with Steve Clayton at the wheel and the rest of the guys in Microsoft's Technology Adoption Group (TAG) touring the UK starting in Bristol and ending on Friday in Edinburgh. If anyone's been to a Microsoft presentation before you'll be pretty familiar with PowerPoint. For these sessions we've ditched it and I for one am pretty happy about that. The new products are best showed off with fantastic demos. We're not going to simply run through the features of the new products – you can find that on the new Partner EVO Microsite. Instead, we're going to be telling partners a story where the benefits of Exchange, Vista and Office are woven into real business scenarios.

Here's a list of the tour dates:

December 4th - Bristol Imax

December 5th - Odeon Covent Garden

December 6th - Odeon Birmingham

December 7th - Odeon Manchester

December 8th - Odeon Edinburgh

If you're around on these dates come and seek me out.

So what's this got to do with PerformancePoint? Well in truth not much although anyone who's seen some of the changes we've made to Excel 2007, Excel Services and MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) in particular will see that improving business intelligence now sits at the core of the Microsoft desktop strategy.

Technorati tags: Business Evolution, PerformancePoint, Office 2007, Vista, Microsoft, Partner, Excel, Business Intelligence, SharePoint Server 2007

Dashboard Ubiquity

btamblyn — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:57:00 GMT

The following article on “Dashboard Ubiquity” was published last week by TDWI. The article references a whitepaper written by Wayne Eckerson called “Dashboards and Scorecards“. Wayne is a highly respected industry analyst and this is a fantastic piece of research and emphasises the convergence between the disciplines of BI and CPM. I've attached a link to the whitepaper and would encourage you to read this. I particularly like the distinction he makes between dashboarding and scorecarding. The two terms are often used interchangeably which frustrates the hell out of me. The whitepaper also proves we're on the right track. We have a compelling story to tell around BSM and ProClarity - and here's a link to a great Webcast around identifying usage scenarios for scorecarding, dashboarding and portals.