Business Intelligence Unleashed on the iPad
Try it for free on your iPad at: demo.performancecanvas.com/m
A Radical Excel Idea
by Charlie Kyd
When I introduced Excel dashboards in 2005, they were a radical New Idea. Google had nothing about them and book publishers weren’t interested.
But today, Google returned 737,000 results for “Excel dashboards”.
So now it’s time for…
My Second Radical New Idea
This idea is more radical than Excel dashboards. But it will be more important over the long run. Here’s why…
Managers can’t be successful if they look only at the data from within their four walls. They’ve got to look outside those walls to monitor data that can reveal developing problems, opportunities, and intelligence.
Said another way, managers can’t drive in traffic while looking only at the dashboard of their car; they’ve got to look out the window once in a while.
The web offers a massive — and free — source for this data. You now can write Excel worksheet formulas that return just about any HTML data directly to your spreadsheet. For example:
- Inflation Tracking. Inflation is on its way. It might not strike some companies for several years, but some already face it.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers 40 million data series, which include cost indexes about everything from gasoline prices to the cost of hamburger to the cost of shipping containers. Their data lets you track nation-wide costs in the key items your company buys.
These trends provide an early warning every manager needs for budgeting and managing costs. And your spreadsheet formulas can report those trends easily.
(If you don’t work in the US, you can get a good idea of the trends in your country by applying your currency exchange rate to many of them.) - Financial Benchmarking. When I worked as a small-company CFO, I never could find a good set of ratios to compare my own ratios to. I could have bought ratios for my industry from Dunn & Bradstreet, but I didn’t trust the numbers, for several excellent reasons.
Today, however, it’s easy for Excel to link to 50 quarters of online financial data for just about any public companies we want. This lets us define our own “industry” of specific companies for benchmarking purposes. - Hunting Where the Ducks Are. They say we should go hunting where the ducks are. But how do we learn their location?
If you’re in retail or construction, you’re probably interested in local economies. Data from the Federal Reserve Board of St. Louis shows that at least 50 of the 3000 counties in the US are booming right now. (One of them has an unemployment rate of just 0.9% this month.)
Each month, your Excel formulas can report updated economic trends for those 3000 counties by returning the data directly from the Web.
I’ve only begun to touch the surface. Tuesday morning, an Excel user asked how to return prices and descriptions from many pages of a competitor’s online catalog. In the afternoon, a planner explained how he uses external data to forecast sales. And Monday, I created a video about tracking foreign exchange rates in Excel.
Every day brings a new way to use this radical new idea.
__________________________________________
To view some of Charlie’s video presentations on this subject go here: http://www.exceluser.com/catalog2/addins/kydweb-sa.htm
Predictive Analytics
A group, 11 Ants, has created this short course to help you understand predictive analytics. Go here for the course: Predictive Analytics for Everyone Course
4 Tricks for More Efficient Phone Calls
by Laura Vanderkam
I love talking to people on the phone. Actually getting folks on the phone, however, is an entirely different matter.
As a journalist, I need to schedule a lot of phone calls with sources for my articles. Even a simple 800 word story can require 5 phone interviews, which can require 10-plus emails to coordinate, and roughly 2 schedule changes from people who had stuff come up. And so I am constantly looking for ways to make the process more efficient. I’ve come up with a few techniques over the years:
1. Protect your most productive time for focused work. I know I write best from about 8-10:30 in the morning. So I rarely suggest or choose those times for phone calls unless that’s all the other person can do. I prefer to write until I run out of steam, then use a phone interview as a nice change of pace.
2. Don’t schedule long calls. Just because your calendar comes in 30- and 60-minute blocks doesn’t mean your phone calls need to. I usually ask for 15 or 20 minutes. That’s much more manageable in a schedule than an hour. The shorter length imposes discipline. I have to think through what I mean to ask and say. Also, if I ask for 20 minutes and I have everything I need after 10, I feel like I can politely get off the phone. On the other hand, since I know most people’s time is blocked out in 30-minute increments, if we have to go longer than 20 minutes, it’s usually not a big deal.
3. Suggest limited time windows. Rather than asking for 20 minutes sometime in the next 2 weeks — thinking I’m being accommodating — I ask for 20 minutes either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning (after 10:30!). Leaving too large a window is overwhelming. Scheduling phone calls too far ahead of time also increases the chance that one party will have something come up. Shorter time frames make phone calls happen.
4. Aim to be the one dialing. That is, if you’re a punctual person. Waiting from 1:00 to 1:06 for your phone to ring is just dead time. Yes, you can find stuff to fill it (see 22 Things To Do During That Boring Conference Call) but better to be the one keeping track of numbers and time and hence minimizing those delays.
Bayesian Statistics Thinking in Business Management
by Forrest Breyfogle
Bayes’ theorem was named after Thomas Bayes who addresses the essential task of how we should modify our beliefs in the light of additional information. Should old assumptions be held too long after they have become weak, or should they be abandoned early at the first appearance of doubt?
Bayesian reasoning provides thinking that brings our views into alignment with reality; hence, it can be an important methodology for scientists and others who want to have an internal syncing with the universe. For those who are not thinking as a Bayesian, perhaps they should.
Bayes’ theorem depends upon a turnabout; when someone wants to assess the strength of a hypothesis, given the evidence, one needs also to assess the strength of the evidence, given the hypothesis. When uncertainty exists, Bayesian thinking involves three questions:
-
• How confident are we that my initial belief is true?
• Given the assumption that my original belief is true, how confident are we that the new evidence is accurate?
• And whether or not my original belief is true, how confident are we that the new evidence is accurate?
In Bayesian statistics, one starts with a provisional hypothesis, which is assign an initial probability or prior. After potential relevant evidence is collected, the Bayes’ theorem is used to recalculate the hypothesis probability in light of the new evidence. The revised probability is called the posterior.
Bayes’ theorem is technically stated as: the posterior probability of a hypothesis is equal to the product of the prior probability of the hypothesis and the conditional probability of the evidence given the hypothesis, divided by the probability of the new evidence. Let’s now consider how Bayesian thinking is applicable in business measurements; i.e., without the mathematics of Bayesian statistics.
When an organization uses red-yellow-green goal-based stop-light scorecards or Acceptable Quality Level (AQL), it is not considering prior information in its decision-making process. It often is basing its actions only on what happened during a most recent point in time. This form of thinking does not use historical data to guide the decision-making process.
Dashboard Alert Boxes and Icons
posted by: Dashboard Spy
Here’s a sweet find for you enterprise dashboard designers out there. You know how you are always on the look out for cool graphics for your business intelligence interfaces and enterprise dashboards? Well, get ready to do some downloading because I’ve found a nice free set of icons and graphics that you’ll want to incorporate into your business dashboards.
To pickup those icons go to the link below:
Relative Success, Absolute Failure
by Bob Emiliani
Like me, I am sure you have heard or experienced examples of organizations claiming success with Lean management. However, if get into the details, you find out what is really going on, and it goes something like this: Continuous improvement becomes bureaucratized and people play games to give the appearance of success. While there are many improvements, they are usually isolated from one another and flow is never achieved. And, senior management is clueless about or indifferent to the “Respect for People” principle.
Such organizations have accomplished nothing special. They have done what legions of others have done before them: Fake Lean. In relative terms, Lean has been a big success, and that is what outsiders typically see. But when viewed in absolute terms, we see that their efforts have largely failed. And we know why; management did not lead, and people fear Lean. Here are ten comments from people whose organizations are highly regarded by knowledgeable outside observers for their Lean success (edited for clarity and brevity; italics added):
1) “When we have a kaizen, we don’t focus on the activity, but rather the outcome. The improvements being made are outcome oriented because everyone is focused on reaching the goals of the organization. We do kaizen is to improve the metrics. After a kaizen, managers never fully allow the changes made to take effect.”
2) “In our firm, kaizen is an event. We have remote islands of improvement. The company tends to promote itself, not the customer and thinks kaizens should be results oriented, not process oriented. The same is true of quality. There is a tendency for profit first, not quality first. Our balanced scorecards tend to be balanced towards profits, not the customer. There is also a tendency to replace suppliers rather than do kaizens to help them improve things. Where there are large issues there is a tendency to seek home runs rather than incremental improvement.”
3) “My company largely ignores the respect for people principle. There are strained relations between employees and managers. There is a mentality where managers always win and employees lose. Managers feel that employees are there to serve them. Strategy deployment is driven by the top with no involvement from lower levels. It’s all about the metrics. This atmosphere causes people to live down to expectations. Managers do not have confidence in employees. One of the greatest areas of disrespect is towards suppliers. They are asked to do great things, yet we cannot do these things ourselves. They insist on top performance when the things they designed are very difficult to produce. These behaviors create confusion, strife, defensiveness, and poor communication, making relationships ineffective. There is a lack of mutual respect.”
4) “My senior managers have little comprehension of what kaizen is and how to apply it. Their knowledge is mostly theoretical and most have never actually been involved in kaizen. Kazien is conducted much like a focused improvement group which are assembled only when an issue arises. Kaizen is reactionary to address known problems, not used to prevent problems. It appears that managers have picked what they deem to be the most important aspects of Lean and forgotten the rest of the system.”
5) “The respect for people principle is not understood at my company. The greatest failure of the principle comes in the form of layoffs and outsourcing. Once a kaizened process achieves a certain level of quality and reliability, it becomes a candidate for outsourcing. The fact that management does not have respect for people severely stifles the continuous improvement processes. CI is seen as a major negative force at work. I don’t believe that upper level management is fully committed to it and/or they don’t really understand it.”
6) “Kaizen events happen sporadically to address larger areas of concern. They are not used as part of a continuous improvement process. We were forced to participate in X number of kaizens to obtain certifications. They only use the tools selectively. The politics at work are a strong force. One thing is for sure, they don’t really buy into the whole Lean philosophy, only the parts they want to.”
7) “Most of the decision-making is centered on quarterly financial results which by its nature will undercut any momentum towards behaviors that promote trustworthy relationships between managers and employees. Lean tools/processes have been force-fit into the traditional management framework. It is more of a burden than a new way of managing to free-up employee creativity.”
8) “It is the understanding of senior management that kaizen is to be delegated down to their subordinates. This is quite obvious because I have been involved in many kaizens and never have I witnessed a senior manager become involved.”
9) “Where I work, respect for people is an afterthought at best. Management often looks at workers like numbers. If they could find a way to completely outsource the work, they would.”
10) “I never hear about them [top managers] doing anything to improve their processes. I guess when you get to the top you don’t have to work as hard to try and improve because you already reached the ceiling.”
Repeat: These organizations are highly regarded by knowledgeable outside observers for their Lean success.
This is what success typically looks like in relative terms - particularly in organizations that are strongly controlled by finance. The colorful charts that track continuous improvement, cost savings, and levels of Lean achievement in these organizations prove success and give the appearance to outsiders of dedicated and skilled work. Yet holding these organizations up as examples of success teaches that it is acceptable for senior managers to misunderstand Lean and practice it the wrong way.
This comment exemplifies incorrect understanding and practice of Lean management: “My company has a database for all of the projects, and it actually lets you declare how many jobs could be eliminated.” Managers who inadvertently or purposefully ignore the “Respect for People” principle are saying to employees: “We don’t actually want you to think, try new things, or experiment. We really don’t care about teamwork, we don’t care about flow, and we certainly don’t care about you.”
I do not see dedicated and skilled work here. What I see is casual and sloppy work, leading to absolute failure. Senior managers have made numerous beginners errors that immediately resulted in the creation of Fake Lean. Worse yet, they never even try to correct their beginner’s errors. That is severely at odds with most executives’ ego and desire for world-class performance. Errors left uncorrected doom one mediocrity. That is what happens when you think you are done learning.
To be educated means to be well-read. Then comes daily practice, to learn.
Can you build an Xcelsius dashboard on your iPad?
This quick demo shows the wiring up of an interactive Business Objects Xcelsius dashboard on an Apple iPad. It’s really just a demo - For anyone not versed in remote screen technology, the way this works is that Xcelsius is running on a Windows machinewhich is also running a server - TightVNC The VNC client app on the iPad (called Screens) talks to the VNC server and between the two of them they pass information back and forth to make it appear as though the Windows app (Xcelsius) is running on the iPad. The full info is here: http://www.antivia.com/blog/?p=548
Enhancing Business Productivity Through Employee Incentives
Business owners spend a good deal of their time trying to figure out how to deal with low productivity within their company, especially during tough economic times. They rely on several different factors to work in their favor. The first is their reliance on their employees to do a good job and keep the customers coming back. The second is their reliance on the customers to keep coming back. The third is their reliance on the economy being stable enough for people to need their products or services.
Like dominos, these three factors affect each other completely. When employees are unsatisfied with their job, they will not work up to their full potential. They might be spending their time thinking about how to get another job. The smart businessperson will analyze the level of their employee satisfaction to see if improvement can be made. Generally, employees will do a better job and be more motivated if they are given the benefit of the doubt, treated with respect and given the incentive to do their job to the best of their ability. To motivate employees to do their best, they should be motivated through incentives and rewards. When employees feel valued and appreciated, they do their best to keep their employers pleased with their work. They will work harder, knowing that they have raises, promotions, days off and other perks, in their future because of it.
Employee satisfaction affects the productivity rate completely. Employees should be kept aware of their progress. If they are doing an excellent job and show themselves worthy of the incentives they were offered, they need to know it. Just as employees who are shown the door because of a poor work ethic and low productivity, employees who do their best, get the job done and work harder than ever should be appreciated and given positive attention.
It is a good idea for the business executives to take notice of their employees, get to know them and what it would take to make them work at their maximum level. Since every person on the planet is different, with different needs and desires, focusing on individual incentives requires doing a little background research into the employee himself or herself. One employee may be delighted by a day off to spend with their family, while an employee with no family might rather enjoy a free lunch or dinner. Most employees enjoy monetary incentives but in difficult economic times, it might not be possible. This is when focused incentives should be put into place to make specific employees do the best job they can do.
