The Line of Sight Between Data, Safety and Performance

Line of sight
Line of sight

The safety of an organisation’s people is always of paramount importance. A number of industries place people in environments that carry risk in their everyday jobs. But the importance of data in the drive towards enhanced safety is often overlooked and many professionals can struggle understanding the relationship between data, safety and business performance. It might be difficult to get real engagement from all stakeholders, without a clear line of sight describing the relationship between data, data-driven safety planning and, therefore, data-driven performance enhancement. (more…)

Does your data give you a Bloomer or sliced granary loaf?

bread-2

I guess it depends on what you want; both would be acceptable as a piece of bread. However, the occasion and its intended use will be the likely leading deciding factors. For example, a roll may be more appropriate for a dinner party, a bloomer with a bowl of soup, a sliced loaf for a sandwich, etc. Unless you specify ‘what’ you require from your delivery or your shopper then they may bring to you the wrong kind, and spoil the occasion or the experience you were hoping for. The same is true for data…. (more…)

Can you do effective Business Analysis without Data Analysis?

Image result for business data analysisA colleague and I attended a well respected Business Analysis conference this week. One of things that we both noticed was that, whilst there was much talk of lean/agile approaches and customer engagement, there was precious little talk about data analysis. With the rare exception of a ‘green field’ situation, all technology developments will need to consider legacy data. So, can you do effective Business Analysis without Data Analysis?

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New IT System, Same Old Data Problems. Part 3 – Avoiding surprises and minimising risk

surpriseIn the previous parts of this blog we considered how data quality can impact the success of software implementation projects. In Part 1 we discussed how expectations of benefits that a new system may deliver may be tarnished by existing data quality. In Part 2 we  looked at the challenges that data migration activities present to projects. In this final part of this series of posts, we will consider how to ensure that current data quality does not create ‘surprises’ for a software upgrade project and how to minimise the risks that data presents. (more…)

New IT System, Same Old Data Problems. Part 2 – A pig with lipstick on is still a pig

lipstick pigIn Part 1 of this series of posts, we discussed how your existing business data could limit the benefits of a new information system and said there is likely to be work to do to mitigate those risks. No matter what system you buy (unless it is a ‘straight’ system upgrade), there will be data migration (DM) activity needed in order to populate the new system with your data in order for it to function and, therefore, realise its potential benefits. However, data migration projects are both high cost and high risk – figures vary, but suggest around 40% of data migration projects fail (A 2011 study by Bloor Research put the failure rate for data migration projects at 38%) and separate studies show that data migration costs can be 20-50% of the project budget. Therefore, data migration should be recognised as a high cost, high risk part of any project. (more…)

The permanence of data

Have you ever thought about the permanence of data? Is data a permanent or a temporary thing?

In some ways, data is a very transient thing – the conversation that prompted this post was with a colleague who was concerned that the layout and content of the organisation’s web site was not as ‘pixel perfect’ as they would like. Whilst this was undoubtedly true, the fact that the site was supported by a Content Management System (CMS) means that changes can be easily and quickly accomplished. Unlike a print run of 10,000 leaflets (or similar) where you want to make sure that everything is perfect before going to print, or else you have to scrap lots of incorrect literature, a web site can be quickly and easily updated with, usually, few people aware of the change.

Similarly, the constant rate of change of web sites means that it is sometimes difficult to go back to review old items from a corporate web site or to review a former brand and web identity for a company, however, the Wayback Machine allows a limited capability to go back in time to how a web site used to look. For example, take a look at the Microsoft Home Page from 1999 to see how much sparser web sites used to be. (more…)