Business Intelligence

Technology and Career Options

Paul BoalMercy Health

March 23, 2011

Opening Questions

What kinds of jobs does someone do in the area of business intelligence?

What does someone working in business intelligence do?

What are common tools used in business intelligence?

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What do you do in Business Intelligence?

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What do you do in Business Intelligence?

Data Governance Data Architecture, Analysis, and Design Database Management Data Security Data Quality Master Data Management Data Warehousing Reporting Metadata Management

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Data analyst

Business analyst

Data modeler

Data architect

Report writer

BI developer

ETL developer

What do you do in Business Intelligence?

Interview users Understand business problems Model databases Analyze data Integrate data Write reports Build dashboards Share insights Make the organization smarter…

Solve

Business

Problems

The (sometimes) thankless part…

Data management isn’t important…

First priority is delivering services/products…

Reporting is easy…

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Mercy Data Warehousing / Mercy Insight

Here’s how easy it is…

COMMON CHALLENGES

Getting access to source data Working with application teams Data quality and data stewardship Master data management User Expectations

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Challenge: Getting Access to Data

Vendor Contract Obstacles Flexibility of vendor to allow access / support Cost of building extracts

Technical Obstacles Legacy systems, programming/system skills

Knowledge Gaps Knowledge of source system data

Cultural Obstacles Application team controls access too tightly Development teams are timid about database

access

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Challenge: Application Teams

Development Style You tell me exactly what you want and I'll build it. Give me the business logic and I'll build it.

Analytical Hubris This is the way it works; come to find out the data doesn't match. I assumed that you wanted it like that other extract.

Fear of a down-stream dependency

e.g. Kronos PR530 The PICA code

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Challenge: Data Quality & Master Data Management

Not analyzing or profiling data contents Using terms rather than ideas Building in rules that are too strict Missing formal data governance policies Lack of clear data stewardship Data seen only as operational

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http://ocdqblog.com

Challenge: User Expectations

Sometimes, users expect computers to be able to solve problems for them;

Sometimes, users don't want the system to do anything for them.

Rationalize data integration / data warehousing 80% gathering information together 20% analyzing and decision making

Web 2.0 versus Enterprise Applications Enterprise solutions versus departmental control System Performance

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Challenges in Getting Value from Data

Data Usage Survey 195 data users across Mercy (of 380 surveyed)

analysts, informaticists, statisticians, report writers Top Challenges

Finding the data they need Performance of the systems they use to access data Integrity of the data they have access to Integrating data from multiple sources

Target 80% using data and %20 getting data1

Current Efficiency Gap

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STAYING FIT

Organizations / Conferences TDWI B-Eye-Network TDAN Analysts: Gartner, Forrester

Blogs I'll email you my Google Reader list: paul.boal@gmail.com

Twitter BI Twitter List

Open Source and Developer Tools Talend, Pentaho, Jaspersoft, BIRT, Infobright Oracle, Teradata, IBM

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Demonstrations

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Business Objects Universe

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Business Objects WebI

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Dashboard Example

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Tools / Resources

Open Source BI Pentaho – reporting, analytics, integration, dashboards, mining Talend – integration, data quality, master data Jaspersoft – reporting, analytics, integration, dashboards Actuate BIRT – reporting

Open Source Stats/Mining R – statistics Weka – machine learning

Databases MySQL, Oracle, Teradata, SQL Server, Infobright Teradata University Network

Internships

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