March 5, 2007

8:30 AM - 4:45 PM

Level: Intermediate

Business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing (DW) applications are playing an ever increasing and important role in driving and optimizing daily business operations. This trend is leading to major changes in both the functionality and the usability of BI-related technologies and products. Developing an operational BI strategy in this dynamic and constantly changing environment is not a simple task. This seminar shows how you can extend the traditional data warehousing and business intelligence environment with real-time data consolidation and federation, business process and performance management, business planning systems, and enterprise portal and collaboration capabilities. Also covered will be the steps to help you get started, things to watch out for, and other considerations for your implementation. The result is an operational BI environment that enables companies to build a smart and flexible business decision making environment for optimizing operational business processes.

Part 1: Why Operational BI?

• The need for faster business decisions
• Definition and characteristics of operational BI
• The role of business intelligence and data warehousing in operational decision making and action taking
• Extending the traditional BI/DW environment to support the agile business
• The Extended Corporate Information Factory (CIFe)
• Developing an operational BI strategy

Part 2: Building an Operational BI Environment

• A detailed look at operational BI
• Building an integrated operational BI environment
• The importance of a process centric approach to operational BI
• Using dashboards to manage operational business performance
• Integrating operational BI with business processes
• The role of workflow management
• Integrating operational BI with business user collaborative workspaces
• The important of standards and a services-oriented architecture
• Case studies

Part 3: Operational BI Techniques, Technologies and Products

• Finding the data: right-time data propagation, integration and federation
• The three E’s of Data Integration: EAI, EII and ETL
• The role of the operational data store - Operational BI and master data management
• Operational BI reporting, analysis and performance management
• Automating decisions, recommendations and actions
• Selecting the right tools and products

Part 4: Learning from Experience

• Getting started with operational BI
• Understanding your operational BI business needs
• Building the business case - Pitfalls to watch out for in integrating BI into operations
• Best practices for building the agile business
• The role of BI and DW competency centers - Data quality issues
• Metadata considerations
• Evolving to an operational BI environment
  

CLAUDIA IMHOFF, Ph.D.

A thought leader, visionary, and practitioner in the rapidly growing fields of business intelligence and customer focused-strategy – Claudia Imhoff, Ph.D., is a popular and dynamic speaker and internationally recognized expert on analytical CRM, business intelligence, and the infrastructure to support these initiatives – the Corporate Information Factory (CIF). Dr. Imhoff has co-authored five highly-regarded and popular books on these subjects and writes monthly columns and articles (totaling more than 100) for technical and business magazines. She has served on the Board of Advisors for DAMA International and was chosen by the DAMA organizations to receive the 1999 Individual Achievement Award. She is an advisor and a faculty member for The Data Warehousing Institute and serves as an advisor for several technology and commercial companies. Dr. Imhoff delivers keynote addresses at conferences sponsored by software companies and their user groups, The Data Warehousing Institute, The Economist, COMDEX, and many international organizations. She has appeared repeatedly on World Business Review, Microsoft’s Getting Results programs, and web casts sponsored by DM Review, Better Management, and several technology vendors. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Daniels School of Business at the University of Denver and is on several technology companies’ advisory councils.

Dr. Imhoff founded Intelligent Solutions, Inc. (www.IntelSols.com), a well respected Business Intelligence and CRM consulting and education firm in 1992. Her company has successfully implemented over 150 Corporate Information Factory architectures in all industry areas. Dr. Imhoff obtained her Doctorate degree from the University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge, her Master's degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder and her Bachelor's degree from Duke University, Durham, NC.

COLIN WHITE Colin White is the President of BI Research. He is well known for his in-depth knowledge of leading-edge business intelligence and business integration technologies, and how they can be used to build a smart and agile business.

With over 36 years of IT experience, he has consulted for dozens of companies throughout the world and is a frequent speaker at leading IT events. He is also conference chair for Shared Insight’s Portal, Collaboration, and Content conference. Colin has written numerous articles on business intelligence and enterprise business integration, and writes for the Business Intelligence Network, and leading IT journals. Prior to becoming an analyst and consultant, Colin worked for IBM for thirteen years and Amdahl for two years as a database specialist. Founded in 1985, BI Research is based in Ashland, Oregon.