The Hindu Business Line : Success factors — more to do with people than technology

Two primary factors for the success of data warehouse are a strong partnership between the business and systems communities, and ensuring that the project is driven by true business requirements, says Laura L. Reeves in A Manager's Guide to Data Warehousing (www.wileyindia.com). These two major success factors have more to do with people than technology, she adds.

Partnerships between the business stakeholders and the technology units often start out strong in the beginning, the author finds. “There is joint participation in developing a project's scope and objectives. A business sponsor may be designated and may help launch the project.”

But, importantly, when the project is under way, the business community should not sit back and wait for the next briefing from IT, cautions Reeves. “Now is the time to dig in and help the project move forward. This includes gathering true business requirements and assisting with understanding the data and helping to make decisions along the way.”

Her simple counsel is that staying involved in a project on a daily or weekly basis ensures a good understanding of what is happening on a project. “A strong partnership that includes a lot of mutual involvement also builds ownership of the data warehouse across the business group.”

True business requirements, which constitute the second success factor, are not a list of data elements, data sources, or even reports, Reeves notes.

“These requirements must be more fundamental to the business itself. For example, the need to better measure marketing campaign performance, understand and better manage loss ratios, and understand and track student performance are all business reasons that explain the need for gathering data and generating a report, in contrast to a demand to ‘give me the numbers.'”

In a section about communication, the author invites you to take a look at any project plan, and see how many tasks are focused on communication — that is, people — compared with technical tasks. While technical tasks are indeed important, specific actions to ensure meaningful communication are critical to the project's success, she emphasises.

Successful communication, as Reeves explains, is not simply conducting project status meetings and sending out project status reports.

“Those are indeed important communication vehicles, but the intended audience for those is the project team and project management personnel. Regular communication provides the best vehicle for questions and concerns to be raised and then addressed. This helps expectations to be managed.”

Also, check if the communication among the team members is open. Which means the teams are encouraged to share both good news and bad news, the author elaborates. For, openly admitting that a problem exists provides the opportunity for others in the organisation to help provide solutions, she reasons.

Imperative study.

Your inbox is not your to-do list

If technology is the hare, then employees are the tortoise, reads one of the rules in 10 Clowns Don't Make a Circus, by Steven Schragis and Rick Frishman (www.vivagroupindia.com). “Regardless of any new technology that you might be considering, keep in mind that the most important part of a successful business is a persuaded and prepared employee,” the authors add. They, therefore, call for ‘a little sensitivity and hand-holding' to make the transition easier and more effective.

“It's not just a question of learning which buttons to push — it's being aware of which ‘people buttons' not to push. Because we are all creatures of habit, there will always be resistance to new technologies, procedures, and processes — and even some fear and resentment.”

One simple piece of advice on minimising the fear factor is that you can break up training into more digestible chunks, rather than plod through the typical and daunting marathon workshops. Allow for practice, follow-up sessions, and individual instruction when needed, the authors urge. “Accept the fact that there's a learning curve between being introduced to a new technology and becoming completely proficient… Don't be in a hurry to get a new system up and running ASAP.”

Another ‘rule' in the book says, ‘Don't become a slave to your e-mail.' That is, don't let your inbox run your day. “As tempting as it may be to obsessively check your e-mail, your cyberspace inbox is not your to-do list,” the authors instruct.

“From a time-management and productivity perspective, you're better off setting aside a block of time for e-mail — then give yourself long uninterrupted stretches to get regular work done.” A ready takeaway in this regard is to respond immediately to an e-mail if it is going to take less than two minutes. Know your technology, urges ‘Rule 72.' You don't need to adopt every new business gadget that comes down the pike, but you should be aware of them, clarify the authors. “Knowledge is power — and knowledge of what's new and could potentially improve your company's productivity and efficiency can be powerfully profitable… There's a window of opportunity between the early adopters of a new technology and when the rest of the world jumps on the bandwagon – and that window could give you significant boost over your competition.”

The ‘action plan' for this is to stay in touch with what's ahead of the curve by asking tech-savvy friends, reading business news, and scouting the exhibit booths at trade shows.

The goal, as Schragis and Frishman observe, is not to become the tech support guy or official office geek, but simply to become a more well-informed consumer — if and when you do decide to obtain the new device.

Fun read.

‘Barcode' for business reporting

The movement towards XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) as a standard global framework to support effective production, consumption, and exchange of financial and business information is gaining acceptance throughout the world, says the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in XBRL – A primer (www.icai.org).

XBRL, for starters, is “an electronic language, a royalty-free open specification developed by XBRL International Inc. (www.xbrl.org), a not-for-profit consortium of 500 leading companies and agencies from around the world.”

It is one of a family of XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) which is becoming a standard means of communicating information between businesses and on the Internet, informs the site.

ICAI likens XBRL to barcode, for business reporting. “Instead of treating financial information as a block of text, which is the case in a standard Internet page or a printed document, XBRL provides and identifying code or ‘tag' for each individual item of data.”

Right material for learners.

dmurali@thehindu.co.in

Tailpiece

“To reduce costs and increase productivity, we tweaked the electronics in the coffee-vending machine to let less sugar flow…”

“Uh…”

“Even as we made the PCs run faster!