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User Adoption

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 5): If I Give Them Ad Hoc Access to Data, They’ll Keep Asking For More

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Back in March I posted “Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work In Some Organizations“. In that post, I listed some of the major concerns that I hear from potential clients when the subject of ad hoc reporting is broached. We’ve already addressed “Our people aren’t smart enough to create their own reports”, “We [...]

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 4): I Pay People in IT to Create Reports

Thursday, July 15, 2010

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One of the other reasons I hear is that managers don’t want to train end-users to create reports, since they have folks in IT that already tasked with that. Some report authoring will always need to be handled by IT, due to it’s complexity, lack of data availability, etc… But I argue that the lion’s share of the development can be handled within each department instead, freeing IT developers to take on other projects critical to the organization.

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 3): I don’t want people poking around in data they shouldn’t have access to

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

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Data security is typically a really a big deal for organizations, and it SHOULD be. Thankfully, SAP BusinessObjects offers a number of ways to provide security around functionality, content and data. With some careful planning and a well-designed SAP BusinessObjects implementation, you can rest assured knowing that users will have access to only the information that they are supposed to see.

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 2): We Need to Massage the Data First

Thursday, April 8, 2010

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Back in March I posted “Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work In Some Organizations”. In that post, I listed some of the major concerns that I hear from potential clients when the subject of ad hoc reporting is broached. As promised, I will be addressing each of those concerns and showing how they can be overcome. We’ve already addressed “Our people aren’t smart enough to create their own reports.” Now let’s turn our attention to data, and look at “We need to massage the data first.”

Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 1): Our People Aren’t Smart Enough

Monday, April 5, 2010

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Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 1): Our People Aren’t Smart Enough

I recently posted an article titled “Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work In Some Organizations”. In that article, I listed some of the major concerns that I hear from potential clients when the subject of ad hoc reporting is broached. As promised, I will be addressing each of those concerns and showing how they can be overcome. Today, we begin with the first one: “Our people aren’t smart enough to create their own reports”

It’s Time to Burn the Ships

Monday, March 22, 2010

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When we implement a new business intelligence solution for a client, there is always that period where people try to “return to the ship”. For a time, most things will be easier to do the old way until that learning curve is crested and it’s tempting to retreat to comfort when difficulties arise. To avoid turning around and abandoning your goals, you must make going forward more compelling then going back.

How to Alienate 12% of your Audience Without Even Trying

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

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How to Alienate 12% of your Audience Without Even Trying

I’m color-blind. I can see colors, just not the same way the majority of you do. I didn’t write this post to complain about my color-blindness. Rather, now that dashboards and data visualization continue to become more wide-spread, we’ve got a few issues to talk about.

Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work in Some Organizations

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work in Some Organizations

Over the past ten years, I’ve been a part of literally hundreds of SAP BusinessObjects client demos. I’m always struck, however, when we reach the ad hoc portion of the demo and begin talking about WebIntelligence. While the end-users in the room get excited about having the ability to create their own reports and analysis without waiting on the IT department, we usually get a lot of push-back from the managers and executives in the room.