UM-St. LouisBusiness Intelligence

March 16, 2011

Hello, and now a disclaimer…

These are my opinions, etc.

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Some (pertinent) background

• Director of Sales & Marketing Applications @ Nestle Purina PetCare• Responsible/accountable for $100M impact to sales in 2011 through the

usage of point of sale information• Departments include:

• Technical (very large data warehousing)• Technical/Business (front-end development)• Business (analysis and strategies)• Architecture• Testing

• UM-St. Louis 1988 BSBA in MIS, Quantitative Mgt. Science• ACNielsen Technical Board• Nestle internal consultant, data warehousing, POS direction

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Nestle Purina PetCare, Nestle

• Roughly $8.5 billion in 2010 US Sales• Approximately 8% of Nestle sales, 10% of Nestle profit (EBITA(R))• Ralston Purina purchased by Nestle in 2001

• Nestle moved significant portions of their business to St. Louis• Friskies and Mighty Dog moved from Los Angeles• Product-based company, our product innovation fuels our growth• Information is increasing in worth as a competitive resource• …and…we can bring our pets to work!

• Nestle is the LARGEST consumer packaged goods company in the world• 22nd largest company in the world (includes everything: oil, banks, auto)• $100B sales in 2010• Approx 250,000 employees

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RECOGNITIONS

RECOGNITIONS

A few thoughts, and then technical stuff– Understand that IT is business

– 80% is very often good enough for business decisions– BI is not a black and white world, mostly shades of grey

– Take big ideas forward

– Don’t negotiate up front

– Great attributes for you to have if you pursue a role in the BI world– Curiosity– Empathy – to see things from other perspectives– Courage – to change direction, to ask for what you really want– Communication (verbal, written, take acting classes)

Other Degrees, pursuits, hobbies that could significantly help you in a decision support career:– Economics, Marketing, Statistics, Quant Mgt Science, Supply Chain, International Business

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Business Intelligence

• General Ledger and back office applications were traditional focus for IT, but this didn’t really offer a competitive advantage for the investment

• Movement towards commodity software (e.g., Oracle Financials, SAP) shifted focus to other applications

• 90’s, 2000’s – many companies began data warehousing efforts• Consolidation was a goal• Benefit was often ill-defined past financial reporting

• Technologies• Move from COBOL to ETL tools, NPP is 100% Informatica• Evolution of multi-dimensional tools

• Essbase, Microsoft Analytical Services, Oracle, Cognos, SAP• Microsoft Pivot Tables helps users bridge the intellectual divide

• Data warehousing appliances, NCR’s Teradata…and MS SQL Server

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BI Subject Areas

• Architecture• Traditional focus was for system design• Systems were designed well, but didn’t tend to work very well together• Integrated data, via data warehouses, helped to highlight the need for

integrated BI systems/applications• Architecture is an effort to design integrated, planned, reasonably

efficient (build and support) systems and applications• Think across systems in a horizontal manner, rather than vertical• Most difficult thing to teach/mentor/coach• I’ve met very few people in 14 years of data warehousing who are truly

data warehouse architects• Without a proper focus on architecture, support costs can take an

increasing portion of the budget, so less development will be done

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Reporting and Apps

• Multi-dimensional DB’s began to take care of some ad-hoc reporting needs• MicroStrategy, Cognos, BusinessObjects, SAP BW, Crystal Reports, MS

Access Reports, Actuate, many others fragmented the report tool market• Cognos purchased by IBM• Essbase purchased by Oracle• HyperRoll purchased by Oracle• Business Objects purchased by SAP

• BIG companies are consolidating report tools with application suites, may soon be a case of “use all of our tools, or all of theirs”

• Microsoft is consolidating products to make a standalone technical, rather than business, solution• This should allow more flexibility for application development

• Still making custom applications in addition to reports and dashboards

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Why I stay in BI

• Hadn’t really thought of it until Vicki pointed it out to me that most of my career was in BI

• I’ve changed careers and areas of interest, all while staying in BI• Very creative portion of IT and general business• Can leverage IT background for huge bottom-line benefit• Very competitive with other HUGE companies

• Remains a cloak-and-dagger area of business

Things I’m interested in right now– Columnar databases– Microsoft BI (with or without SQL Server underneath)– Promotional Optimization– Cultural Change in a Large Organization

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