I wrote the draft for this blog a while ago. All the press noise recently around the Informatica buying Syperian and IBM buying Initiate Systems made me revisit it.
Warning, this post may contain content that could be deemed as a rant.
At the beginning – a green field
Let’s set the scene, you are the CEO of a highly successful global enterprise, you are also a forward thinking CEO, and realise that data is a strategic asset to your organization. In that recognition you task your CIO with ensuring that data is cared for as she would care for any other asset in the business. You want your data to drive profit. (You may be forward thinking, but you have not yet realized that data is not purely the domain of the CIO, but you will begin to understand that over time)
The CIO realizes that she needs to bring in a specialist to initiate the creation of a data governance environment and everything that ‘goes along with that’
The CIO hires a Head of Information Management (HoIM)
Building the Business Case
The HoIM spends the next 3 months building up the business case for delivering a data governed enterprise. Unfortunately during this period he has become enchanted by all the goings on in the world of MDM / Data Quality / Information Management software. His technical ‘geekness’ has resulted in the business case been focused on the technical capabilities and all the bells and whistles that each software vendor can provide. He has focused on the features rather than the benefits.
Being totally oblivious to his ‘tunnel vision’ the HoIM travels to head office to present the business case to the board, chaired by you as the CEO.
The Presentation
Feeling quite confident the HoIM starts to present. And it goes something like this:
Slide 1 – Reasons behind the initiative
Slide 2 – Process to vendor selection
Slide 3 – Vendor capabilities
Slide 4 – Selected vendor’s technical match and superiority
Slide 5 – Plan for implementation
Slide 6 – ……
He doesn’t get further than slide 5, because you interrupt.
And you ask the question “You’ve detailed the features and functionality very well here, but I don’t care about MDM 2.0 or us having leading ‘integration engine’ capability. I don’t care if we can buy this all through one vendor, and to be honest I don’t believe in putting my eggs in one basket, if I did we would be an SAP house. What you have not done, and I can’t see it in the rest of the briefing pack, is tell me about the benefits.”
After a break for breath you continue “As the CEO I don’t give a damn about features, I have a problem, and that is that my data needs to be treated as a strategic asset, and I need to make money from that asset, I need to see a direct impact to my profit line. I have a problem and I need a solution!”
Conclusion
In the eyes of a CEO it doesn’t matter who owns who, or what bells and whistles come out of the box. As CEO you need a solution; you need to be provided with the capabilities that will drive the benefits you demand. Features are a necessity, but combining the right features, with the right people and the right processes is the solution. If you just buy on features alone you will fail, and in the future when you walk around your scarcely populated bottom floor you will be able to wipe the dust off those features that are sitting on the shelf, features that you never used.
Charles,
This is a great post. It should become mandatory reading for all data management professionals (MDM, Data Quality, Data Governance, etc.).
Data professional exist (our roles exist), solely to help the business. We, and I am a culprit, can often get sidetracked by features.
The harsh reality is that it not easy to clearly set out the benefits – but it must be done. Otherwise, we all risk the experience you describe so well above.
Ken
Ken,
Thanks for your comments and kind words.
I agree that it is hard to clearly set out the benefits. One of the challenges I always set my guys when they are presenting an initiative is to add ‘and this will …’ at the end of what they are describing. e.g. “We will provide a single view of our customer base, and this will drive focused customer retention programs, thus reducing customer churn”
Always state the business benefit.
Charles,
Great post. It is easy for technically-minded people to, as you say, become enchanted with the bells and whistles of a product. It becomes worse when the people who influence the purchase decision do so in order to bolster their CV with the latest technologies.
We do indeed need to remember the purpose of implementing technology, and in turn be able to demonstrate the benefit. We also need to know our audience when conducting a presentation.
Thanks for your comments Phil.
Gotta love the “I have my own agenda folk”. Keeping the focus on a solution that is fit for purpose is key to managing this.
Knowing your audience is a good point, there are times when features can become important, but once again they need to be relevant to what is required not what is desired.
PS: I edited your post as per your follow-up.
Good stuff, Charles.
As usual, I am the second Phil to chime in. Strength in numbers, baby.
I have seen both sides of this coin:
* the techies who sell the business without understanding their needs; and
* the LOBs who demand incompatible systems and crazy ETL tools to stitch them all together
There is a happy medium: a joint discussion among all participants to ensure that the technology (in this case, MDM) meets the business needs and is inherently sustainable.
Thanks for your comments Phil (at this rate I could automate that response:))
Always good to get a view from either side, and even better when it can come from the same guy!
Maybe we should market a ‘requirements gathering’ peace pipe …
Great post! As Ken and Phil W. pointed out, it is all to easy for us data professionals to be distracted by something new and shiny. Apple Keynotes are a great example of how to garner this type of attention from technophiles and geeks. But you have hit on a great point, the C level executives want their problem solved they don’t care about what gets us salivating over one vendor’s products.
More often the problem is a people and process issue that technology is helping facilitate the solution. If a data professional’s pitch to the C level executive focuses solely on the new shiny then they are likely missing out on 80% of the problem. It is the data professional’s responsibility to partner with and sometimes convince the C level executive around the idea of people and process in order to gain the momentum needed to enact change in the organization.
Lastly, I love the image for this post. Where did you find it, if I may ask.
Rob
Thanks Rob,
Some good points here, I realy like the idea of ‘partnering’ with the C level executive.
Re the graphic, I bought it from a site called fotolia.com, thought it was worth paying for
Charles,
Spot on! and fully agree with Rob’s comment. Technology is only one (possibly small) part of the overall data quality solution. You need to stop the sources of poor quality data (i.e. people and processes) before you get too involved in cleaning the data.
Julian
Here’s the story of:
“HoIM and the Data Dwarfs”
***
Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It’s off to work we go
We’ll mine the data asset the whole day through
Hi HoIM, Hi HoIM
How’s the business case go?
Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It’s back to work we go
We dig up data quality problems by the score
A thousand defects, sometimes more
But we don’t know what we dig them for
Hi HoIM, Hi HoIM
Thanks for the shiny new tools
The bells and whistles sure are cool
When all these powerful features peak
We’ll be happy little data mining geeks
Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It’s back to work we go
Heh, where’d the business case go?
HoIM? HoIM?
Oh, well – I guess we can forget about him
Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It’s home from work we go
***
The moral of the story is:
“Focusing on the technical features and ignoring the business benefits isn’t going to provide the solution that the enterprise needs.”
You know, as I typed HoIM, I thought “Jim is going to make something out of this” and guess what, he didn’t fail me
Thanks Jim, highlight of my week!
And to end it off with the perfect phrase “Focusing on the technical features and ignoring the business benefits isn’t going to provide the solution that the enterprise needs.” is just class.
Charles, Nice post! As so often in our world folks want to throw a technical tool at a problem when a good common sense approach will work. The old \people, process and technology = data governance\ makes sense to us in the data governance field but to sell a progam benefits work the best. Data governance will trim the bottom line and that is what most C-level folks care about.
Steve,
Thanks for your comments. Tying in with what Rob said, you need technology to provide the capability to solve a problem, but you need that common sense dimension that drives your decisions.
Thanks again
Charles
Now I am singing Jim’s Song…
Charles, another great post… reminding us that we are focused on solutions, not feature function mapping to technical issues.
I do not want to be that HoIM with the story’s feature function slide deck.
Now with MDM 2.0 or 3.0 or infinity… the changing dynamics of the business, our challenge is keeping up with them, with business value…
Thanks for your comments Garnie,
You got it, keeping up with the business with business value is far better than keeping up with the Jones’s.
PS: Don’t sing Jim’s song, it gets stuck in your head if you do!