Avoid 5 Common Risks Implementing Oracle Business Intelligence Applications - and Get Results

1. Avoid 5 Common Risks Implementing Oracle Business Intelligence Applications - and Get Results February, 2011 Sameer Agrawal Consulting Director – Business Intelligence A Jade Global White Paper

2. Avoid 5 Common Risks Implementing Oracle Business Intelligence Applications - and Get Results Contents 2. Executive Summary 2. Introduction to OBI Applications 3. Implementation Approach 3. Not Realizing the Full Potential of OBI Apps 4. Project Resources 4. Change Management and Training 5. Post Production Support 5. Conclusion 7. Author Biography COLLABORATE 11 Copyright ©2011 by Sameer Agrawal Page 1

3. Executive Summary Businesses are fully aware that business intelligence (BI) is no longer a luxury item but a critical requirement to optimize corporate profits and performance. implement Oracle Business Intelligence Applications stages of their OBI Apps implementations maximum return on investment, delivering business value and driving user adoption. This attempts to cover tried and tested strate greatest risk to an organization when implementing OBI greatest risk to an organization when implementing OBI Apps. Businesses are fully aware that business intelligence (BI) is no longer a luxury item but a critical Businesses are fully aware that business intelligence (BI) is no longer a luxury item but a critical requirement to optimize corporate profits and performance. As organizations are planning to implement Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (OBI Apps) and others are in various stages of their OBI Apps implementations, most seek advice on the best approach to achieve the maximum return on investment, delivering business value and driving user adoption. This cover tried and tested strategies on how to manage five critical areas that present the organizations are planning to and others are in various , most seek advice on the best approach to achieve the maximum return on investment, delivering business value and driving user adoption. This paper areas that present the Introduction to OBI Applications Introduction to OBI Applications OBI Apps are complete, prebuilt BI solutions that provide timely, fact activities across the entire organization. They gather relevant data and aggregate it into the most activities across the entire organization. They gather relevant data and aggregate it into the most activities across the entire organization. They gather relevant data and aggregate it into the most OBI Apps are complete, prebuilt BI solutions that provide timely, fact-based insight into based insight into appropriate metrics and formats for the business user. Because data is pulled from multiple siloed views are eliminated and cross analysis becomes possible. Everyone executives to front-line employees and in-context insight that is personalized, relevant, and actionable. appropriate metrics and formats for the business ta is pulled from multiple systems, siloed views are eliminated and cross-functional analysis becomes possible. Everyone—from line employees—gets complete context insight that is personalized, relevant, OBI Apps deliver this extensive business content through dashboards, metrics, alerts, guided analytics, and reports. The user’s role and function determine exactly what content is appropriate and should be delivered. By delivering relevant, role to the right business users, you can increase user adoption and ensure that the data is used to enhance business performance. eliver this extensive business content through dashboards, metrics, alerts, guided analytics, and reports. The user’s role and function determine exactly what content is appropriate and should be delivered. By delivering relevant, role-based content you can increase user adoption and ensure that the data is used to enhance Figure 1. The main components of OBI Apps Figure 1. The main components of OBI Apps OBI Apps not only cuts down implementation times from months or years to weeks or months, it allows a very tight integration with your existing ERP and CRM systems delivering a consistent view of your enterprise information. implementation times from months allows a very tight integration with The value of OBI Apps compared to traditional, in-house BI solutions is clear: quicker time to deploy, less overall cost, an enterprise view of data, role-based The value of OBI Apps compared solutions is clear: quicker time to Figure 2. Using OBI Apps significantly reduces the amount of time needed to complete each of the four steps in building and deploying a BI solution. to complete each of the four steps in building and deploying a BI solution. . Using OBI Apps significantly reduces the amount of time needed based COLLABORATE 11 Copyright ©2011 b Copyright ©2011 by Sameer Agrawal Page 2

4. views for all employees, closed-loop processing and built-in best practices. Implementation Approach Customers need to decide on what implementation approach is suitable for their organization and BI requirements. One has to choose between the Big Bang approach vs. a more Phased approach. Traditionally, BI projects have been known to add value only when they are phased out. The important thing to note is to deliver quick wins so that users stay interested and tuned. In case of OBI Apps, you may want to start out with the more robust modules like Financials and Procurement. The other choice customers need to make is the Out of the Box (OOTB) vs. customized/ extended deployment. From what we have seen, OOTB serves as a great foundation for extending your BI footprint. The business community gets an opportunity to see the basic capabilities of the application and it helps them craft the requirements for the next phase of the project. Depending on the modules deployed, there may be some standard reports that can be used but most organizations end up creating their own reports and dashboards. A new implementation with many customizations can get prolonged and costly. Also, any extensions that you plan should conform to the Oracle guidelines for supportability and future upgrades. Many customers already have robust data warehouses that have been built over a period of many years and have all the business rules required. If this data warehouse is scalable and it meets most of your reporting requirements, you may just want to deploy the OBIEE reporting layer instead of deploying OBI Apps. It will be very costly to replicate a custom home grown DW into OBI Apps and probably not give you the benefits immediately. OBI Apps implementations are much easier to manage if you already have a stable transaction system (Oracle EBS, CRM or other supported source system). You again two options: 1)Implement OBI Apps and Transaction systems together as part of one big project 2)Have a lag between your OBI Apps and Transaction system implementation In option one you’ll realize the benefits of your investment much more quickly, but it’s riskier as typically there are last minute design changes on the upstream transaction systems that need to be incorporated in the downstream OBI Apps design. In option two, you minimize the risks mentioned in option one, but you delay the realization of the benefits of an integrated BI environment. As a customer, one wants to get the best of both worlds: realize the benefits of their investment quickly while mitigating risks. The bottom line is to understand the benefits and risks associated with each approach and manage appropriately. Not Realizing the Full Potential of OBI Apps Organizational readiness for OBI Apps can impact your overall implementation. If the users come from an operational mindset and have been mostly using Excel and flat files, the adoption to OBI Apps can be challenging. One thing that you want to avoid at all costs is to use OBI Apps as a data extract tool. COLLABORATE 11 Copyright ©2011 by Sameer Agrawal Page 3

5. There is also an issue with the way IT operates in a Customer’s organization. Larger organizations typically have decentralized IT (and even shadow IT) organizations. Traditionally the enterprise BI organization has to play by stricter governance, security and release process rules while the decentralized teams have more flexibility. So if you represent the enterprise IT team and are competing with a decentralized organization, you may have a disadvantage which can only be neutralized by strong executive sponsorship and support. If you already have a robust functioning data warehouse, you need to definitely ask yourself: What additional value would OBI Apps provide to our organization? It may still be necessary to implement OBI Apps to set the foundation for a long term BI strategy, but then you need to approach the value proposition differently. ProjectResources There is a good reason why there is the word “Business” in BI. One obviously needs a regular set of skilled resources including subject matter experts, business analysts, database administrators, Informatica and OBIEE Developers, etc. But there is an additional set of folks who make a huge difference in any OBI Apps project. These are the pilot or business super users. These are the early adopters and the champions for your newly deployed application and will guide you throughout the project lifecycle. Since OBI Apps is tightly integrated with Oracle Applications like EBS and CRM, you definitely need access to people who can influence the transaction teams or the business process owners to quickly handle requests coming from the BI team. Last but not the least; you also need resources that have a good understanding of the whole BI footprint from the source transaction system to the target OBI Apps warehouse. Many projects face challenges due to the fact that there is no one to bridge the knowledge gap between what the Business Analysts know about your source systems and the Informatica Developers on the OBI Apps side. As you might have seen from your experience, most Informatica developers have little or no knowledge of your source transaction systems. Although the individual technologies which comprise OBI Apps have been out there for some time now, the packaged combination (OBI Apps) is not too old. Once you identify a good set of resources to manage your environment, keep them around. Change Management and Training A very strong executive buy-in is critical for the success of an OBI Apps project. They ensure continued business participation and other remove other bottlenecks that hinder the progress of the project. OBIA also requires a change in mindset: it strives to provide Information/ Intelligence on demand vs. the traditional way of you calling folks for data/ report needs. Business users should be prepared for this change in report delivery strategy. During the development phase of the project, organize report design workshops in a working development/ quality assurance environment. This is a novel concept as compared to doing report mockups on white boards and documents. It helps the super users to understand how the COLLABORATE 11 Copyright ©2011 by Sameer Agrawal Page 4

6. OBIEE front-end behaves and how the data can be optimally arranged to get the maximum value. It also shows them the flexibility of the OBIEE report development tool. One thing to note is that OBI Apps does not offer real time data out of the box. Users need to understand the frequency of loads and the data is good as of what date/time. Equally important is building trust in the BI application. Users will typically ask: How do I know if the summary amounts add up? Are my dollars in synch with the source system? Be ready with these answers and build some mechanism to periodically check for data consistency. The report output can still be exported to excel but you can definitely avoid a lot of manual steps by using OBIA. Training of business community plays an important role in the success if your project. If one of the project objectives is to provide executive dashboards, do plan one on one sessions with them after getting these dashboards validated by folks from their staff. You may want to have their staff members present in that dedicated session to help ensure their support as well. A super user led “Train-the-Trainer” approach is best. Pick at least a couple of folks (this way you have a backup) recommended by the sponsors, business leaders who have credibility in the organization and train them first. The idea is to make these super users self sufficient in creating their own reports and ultimately meet the needs of the whole department/business function. Hands-on workshops can be particularly effective towards self reliance Initially, it can be challenging for users to understand how the data is transformed during the ETL process. Even the terminology in the subject areas can be new. The key is to make the users understand the process, have mappings of old vs. the new terminology (if you chose to rename business terms) and make them comfortable. Today, technology offers a lot of choice in creating training materials. You can create user guide documents, videos, record webcasts, etc. You can even have separate sections by business functions and post them on an intranet site. One to two page Cheat sheets are always a big hit with the business community. Post Production Support This is a very critical area for driving the success of a project. Many BI (especially OBI Apps implementations) projects fail because of poor user adoption which can be attributed to lack of post production support, turnaround time for enhancements/ bugs or lack of engagement with the business. A responsive support staff can make a huge difference. Even just listening to the user complaints helps, but an engagement model with effective two way communication is really required. It is critical to stay engaged with the business community and pay particular attention to user adoption. From a technical standpoint, you may want to monitor query performance as data volume grows. As users utilize the system, there will be performance issues, enhancement requests and bugs discovered. This is very typical for any BI project. You’ll need to work with the business to prioritize the issues, commit to resolve them, and then deliver on your commitments. Continue with the training workshops as you add more users. Conclusion COLLABORATE 11 Copyright ©2011 by Sameer Agrawal Page 5

7. Today’s organizations collect and store a lot of business data. However, this data is valuable only if it helps improve the quality of your organization’s decisions. OBI Apps allow access to data from multiple sources across your organization; present data via intuitive, understandable dashboards, reports, and alerts; and Deliver an enterprise view of organizational performance. The key is to be aware of the critical risk areas covered earlier when implementing OBI Apps and have a plan that suits your organization needs. In summary, the first OBI Apps implementation is the start of a journey, not your final destination. COLLABORATE 11 Copyright ©2011 by Sameer Agrawal Page 6

8. Author Biography Sameer Agrawal is a Consulting Director at Jade Global. He has over 15 years of IT and business experience in the Business Intelligence and Operational Reporting space. His areas of expertise include business engagement, end-to-end project planning and delivery, post go-live support/training and business adoption. Prior to joining Jade Global, Sameer has worked for companies like Sun Microsystems, Wind River Systems and Oracle Corporation. Sameer has an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Roorkee (India) and an MBA from Haas School of Business, Berkeley. Sameer can be reached at sameer.agrawal@jadeglobal.com Jade Global, Inc. Worldwide Headquarters 1731 Technology Drive Suite 350 San Jose, CA 95110 www.jadeglobal.com Northeast 1900 West Park Drive Suite# 280 Westborough, MA 01581 Pune, India E-Space IT Park, A-3, 2nd Floor 102 D/E, Wadgaon Sheri Pune-Nagar Road, Pune 411-014, India New Delhi, India JMD Regent Square M.G. Road, Level 6 Gurgaon, Haryana 122002, India Worldwide Inquires +1-408-899-7200 pr@jadeglobal.com Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchant ability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. COLLABORATE 11 Copyright ©2011 by Sameer Agrawal Page 7