The two previous articles of this series explored how to prepare for the future by prioritizing and streamlining our work. This article looks at what it takes to get there in terms of goals, skills and people. At this stage we should already have a very good idea about
- What information the organization needs
- Who needs to see what information
- How to prioritize information deliverables
- How often we need to update information
The third step to a successful BI future requires that we
- Set Goals
- Find out what skills we need
- Determine who needs to do what
Of course we also need a budget and organizational support, but for today, we will focus just on Goals, Skills and People.
Setting Appropriate Goals
Much of the discussion around goal setting deals with managing and motivating people to strive for a common goal. It includes such well known concepts as
Peter Drucker’s MBO (“Management by Objectives”) or
SWOT Analysis based on the work by Albert Humphrey or
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey or
BHAG (“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”) by James Collins and Jerry Porras.
For our purposes today let us focus on the acronym S.M.A.R.T. It’s easy to remember and useful for developing the kinds of delivery goals that a BI Manager needs to set and implement. Depending on the author, the letters S.M.A.R.T. stand for slightly different words. One such set of words is:
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Achievable
R: Relevant
T: Time bound.
A very nice one page summary about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals can be found here.
A hypothetical goal could be: “In six months we will need to deliver sales goals and compensation measures for 50 sales reps, 5 managers and a VP of Sales.” Let’s see how S.M.A.R.T. it is:
Specific: deliver sales goals and compensation measures for 50 reps, 5 managers and a VP of Sales
Measurable: at the end we either can deliver something or we cannot
Achievable: we know that sales goals and compensation measures are required – failing to develop them simply is not an option. We also know that achieving goals usually depends on finding the right balance between cost, quality and time. Finding that balance is the key to making this goal achievable.
Relevant: a company does not survive long without sales goals and compensation measures
Time Bound: in six months
It appears that we really do have a S.M.A.R.T. goal on our hands.
Identifying the Right Skills
Today’s business analysis software makes it much easier to perform data analysis and performance tracking without requiring programming skills. But software alone does not provide everything we need. Appropriate data has to be collected, processed and made available in a timely manner. To stick with our hypothetical example of providing sales goals, here is an example list of several skills we will need:
- Understanding of the market place and business goals
- Knowledge about what types of data are needed
- Knowledge about how the data is collected and processed
- Understanding the shortcomings of the data and how to address them
- Ability to make the necessary data available and accessible
- Ability to distribute information in appropriate formats
- Analytical skills to develop meaningful measures, metrics and conclusions
In our hypothetical example we may already have someone on our team who knows all the necessary data sources. Maybe this person already knows which information from hospitals, doctor offices, contracting and claims systems, SFA systems and a myriad of other sources has to be combined to develop meaningful goals. Maybe this person already knows how to develop compensation formulas that appropriately reflect business goals using data that is actually available. Maybe this person also has the skills to process and analyze data and to make it available to everyone who needs it.
In reality it is much more likely that a team of internal and external resources needs to work together to provide the necessary information and insights.
Finding the Right People
The actual list of skills depends on the individual situation, of course. Sometimes it is useful to develop and maintain the necessary skill sets within an organization, at other times it makes sense to hire specialists. Budgets, time requirements, available skill sets and long term vision for the organization will help determine the appropriate mix of in-house talent and external resources.
As a whole, the team not only needs technical skills (as outlined above), but also management and communication skills. To effectively work together, team members need to
- Be able to identify critical issues and communicate them appropriately
- Understand each other’s requirements
- Know their respective roles in the project
- Possess project and time management skills
- Possess people and team building skills
Ideally, our team combines representation from the business side as well as the information side. For example, developing sales goals requires
- input from all levels of the sales organization
- input from product management and other strategic stake holders
- input from HR and other relevant support functions
- buy-in from upper management
- the ability of the information team (BI, IT, vendors, etc.) to deliver
- appropriate, accurate and timely data
- systems to make data available
- analysis and actionable insights
Managing Growth: Reprise
We began this series of blog posts with the question of how to manage BI growth. We started with ways to prioritize deliverables, continued with ways to streamline what the BI team needs to deliver and ended with an exploration of the skills and people necessary to deliver what is needed (the article you are reading now).
Managing BI growth requires constant attention since this process never really ends. For each deliverable we are asked to provide, it is therefore necessary to develop criteria that allow us to determine when it needs to either stop or evolve. We need to balance available head count and the need for professional development and advancement of individual team members with the information delivery needs of the organization. We need to keep track of technical developments and the services provided by various data vendors.
As BI managers we periodically need to step away from the daily fires in order to plan ahead. The steps outlined in this series provide a starting point for doing so.