17. Enterprise Information Management [2]
IS 202 - 24 October 2006
Bob Glushko
Plan for IO & IR Lecture #17
- Data management
- Semantic Integration
- Using integrated data to provide "business intelligence"
- Information supply chains
The Data that Enterprises Manage
- In addition to the "end-to-end" processes of authoring, management, and delivery for content many enterprises have end-to-end data processes
- Some of these data processes are separable from the content processes and others are intertwined (especially in e-commerce processes)
- These internal processes also extend to other enterprises, but we'll mostly focus on the internal ones
Enterprise Data Management Goals
- Consolidation and preparation of data from one or more sources for the purposes of analysis or presentation.
- Create a unified view of the {customer, supply chain, etc}
- Get end-to-end visibility of business processes
- Take different perspectives (from high level aggregation to resolving individual data anomalies or inconsistency)
- Run the business more efficiently, make better decisions by combining and analyzing data from multiple sources
Enterprise (and Inter-enterprise) Data Management Challenges
- Business processes can span multiple departments, business applications, or even multiple firms
- Internal to a firm, these "silos" or "stovepipes" may have been created over time and not have been designed to share information with each other
- Each of these systems has a specific purpose and a data model customized for that purpose - so these models may be incomplete or incompatible with respect to each other
- And obviously, there is no reason to expect that the models used by different firms would be interoperable or even compatible
Semantic Integration
- Different systems may use different formats for nominally the same data items (Nov 14, 2002, 11/14/2002 and 11-14-02; 14/11/02 in Europe)
- Furthermore, there may be significant semantic differences between data items with the same name
- Information can't be reliably exchanged between systems to integrate business processes or support decision making unless semantics are unambiguous
- Semantic integration is the process by which this common semantic "data model" or "object model" is created
- What's the most powerful semantic integration processor?
An Enterprise Information Integration Scenario
- An existing customer calls a service representation to increase an order
- The service representative must:
- locate information about the customer
- locate the existing order
- determine if the order can be changed or whether a new order must be created
- determine whether to accept the order based on the customer's payment history and credit
- What information sources or applications must the service rep consult? How can it be done?
Swivel-Chair Integration
- The need to consult multiple unintegrated applications to locate information to complete a business process
- Recent study by Corizon:
- 66% of call center agents use three applications or more to serve customers on a typical call
- 27% use five or more
- 71% claim time is wasted on or after a call because of switching between different applications
- 53% admit that errors creep in when entering data into multiple systems
Enterprise Portal Applications
- Portal applications replace the different interfaces to multiple systems with a single, user-friendly screen that accesses only the parts of a back-end system that the employee needs
- Purpose is to create a unified experience with a "single sign-on"
- You can think of this trying to recreate something like Yahoo for the enterprise (Intranet)
- Nearly every major software vendor has created an enterprise portal solution that is an attempt to
"up-sell" from the application server platform
Enterprise Information Integration
- Integration "by eye" is inadequate in situations with high transaction rates or complex data, and it is necessary for the applications to share data without human intervention
- This requires true semantic unification of the underlying logic and content models, which may or may not be presented to the user as a single "composite application"
- Making different applications share information has long been a substantial portion of the IT activities in many companies
- Integration approaches are often labeled as A2A, EAI, B2B -- but these are broad labels and integration techniques are more varied than a small set of categories implies
- One alternative "solution" to this integration problem is to replace the separate applications with a single enterprise-wide application that contains all the functionality needed by the company
MRP – Materials Requirements (or Resource) Planning
- MRP was the big business buzzword in the 1980s
- MRP systems plan production, procurement, and distribution for an enterprise
- For each of the products a company manufactures there is a "recipe" or "parts list" or "bill of materials" that lists the parts or components that go into it (and how many of each).
- "Shopping lists" for each production cycle then sent to suppliers
ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning
- ERP was the big business buzzword in the early 1990s
- ERP is a natural evolution of MRP that connects it to other key functions of an enterprise – it is the information "backbone" or "nervous system" of a big firm
- ERP interconnects internal systems for manufacturing control, production planning, inventory, and procurement (scope of MRP) with accounting, finance, and personnel
- ERP systems provide step-by-step guidance for the processes that aren't automated
- ERP can enable substantial efficiencies and collaboration because each function can more readily see how it affects and is affected by the other
Benefits of ERP
- The end-to-end integration of ERP ties purchasing decisions to the organization(s) that makes them and imposes financial controls on all the processes
- ERP eliminates waste in the production and distribution of goods and reduces excess and obsolete inventories
- ERP can be used as a working model or simulation of the firm
Implementing ERP
- But implementing ERP is hard and many ERP implementations fail (completely or partly)
- Some implementation difficulty is architectural – ERP software evolved in the 1980s from single programs running on mainframes to distributed client-server architectures, but the various modules remained very tightly coupled to the core system
- But most difficulty is intrinsic to the problems ERP tries to solve – automating and enforcing the business rules of an enterprise by integrating a company's legacy computing and computer-controlled operations
- This usually involves changing business processes and information models ... which effects how people do their jobs ... and they resist
Business Intelligence
- ERP and other enterprise systems contain the very granular and "live" operational data of the enterprise
- ERP systems generate historical reports that are useful for long-term decision making, but don't enable ad hoc analysis of operations needed to make tactical decisions
- So you need another set of your enterprise data organized in a data model optimized for asking questions rather than running your business
Generic Enterprise Information Integration Architecture (Gantz, 2004)
Data Warehouses
- A data warehouse is a "subject-oriented, integrated, time-varying, non-volatile collection of data used in organizational decision making"
- Data warehouses extract data from ERP systems and other related business software applications into a separate repository
- It is common practice to "stage" data prior to merging it into a data warehouse with an "Extract, Transform, and Load" (ETL) application
- Since the information won't change, denormalization to improve query performance is a common ETL process
- The data model for the warehouse, designed to enable efficient ad hoc data analysis and reporting, is sometimes called a "hypercube"
- A common term for the analysis done in a warehouse is online analytical processing or OLAP
The Virtual Warehouse
- A virtual warehouse is created "on demand" by centralizing and normalizing metadata about the data sources rather than the data itself.
- The data is left in its original location and extracted only when needed, which makes more "real time" analysis and "business intelligence"
Bad UI for Business Intelligence
Driving Your Business
- The best data warehouse design and the most clever OLAP won't help the business if the analysis can't be understood by the decision makers
- "Dashboards" combine information integration with information visualization to enhance the usability of business intelligence
- A dashboard provides hierarchical views appropriate to different management levels and the means to "drill down" to find details
- See idashboards.com or demo.visualmining.com
Dashboard UI for Business Intelligence
Some Summary Thoughts About Knowledge/Content/Data Management
- Information technologies can solve many of the problems of knowledge, content and data management but can also cause them
- Information technology has radically transformed the nature of business so that every enterprise of significant size, regardless of industry, must these challenges as a critical activity
- Enterprise concerns are driven by internal goals like efficiency and core competency and also shaped by external factors like competition and compliance requirements
- These concerns are moving up the company hierarchy; many firms have CIOs and increasing numbers have CPOs and CKOs.
What is a Supply Chain?
- A supply chain is the network of facilities and distribution capabilities an enterprise uses to:
- "Source" (or "procure") raw materials (chemicals, ores, grains, ...) or components
- Transform the materials or assemble the components into products
- Deliver the products to customers (indirectly through distributors or stores or directly to the purchaser)
- A supply chain usually reflects long-term, point-to-point, and tightly coupled relationships
centered around a dominant enterprise
- THE GOAL: Get the right stuff in the right amount at the right time in the right place
Supply Chain - Physical Model
Supply Chain - Conceptual Model
The Merchant of Venice
- In Venice, young Bassanio want to borrow 3,000 ducats from his merchant friend Antonio so that he properly court Portia, a wealthy heiress. But Antonio says:
- Until Antonio's ships return, he doesn't know if he is rich or poor. And when two of them are wrecked at sea, he gets into trouble with Shylock, the lender...
The Information Supply Chain [1]
- The flow of materials and goods in a supply chain is accompanied by information about it
- Breaking that constraint to enable information movement independently of the goods enabled the rise of the industrial corporation
- New technologies let information about goods move much faster than the goods themselves
- These new technologies also enable intangible goods and services that are information-based and that can be delivered worldwide almost instantaneously
- Information also flows in the opposite direction from the customer, retailers, and distributors back into the supply chain – this is sometimes called the demand chain
The Information Supply Chain [2]
- Information about the supply chain is taking on independent value
- Information about where products are, who uses them, and when and how they are used can be worth more than the products themselves
- Slogan: Replace inventory with information
Designing an Information Supply Chain
- What information is exchanged?
- Which entities in the supply chain are able to exchange information?
- What is the frequency of this information exchange?
Opportunities for Information Supply Chains
- Information supply chains can be created in any industry
- How can technology be used to speed information flows within an enterprise and between the enterprise and its suppliers and customers?
- Profound shift underway from forecast to demand driven business models
New Business Architectures
- Lower transaction costs make it cheaper to work with new business partners on shorter term, more ad hoc
relationships
- Downes calls this the shift "from vertical to virtual" integration
- New possibilities for disintermediation and reintermediation are created as value chains get more decomposable and granular
- Disintermediation -- cut out the middleman
- {re} Intermediation -- introduce new middleman
- "Service oriented architecture" conceives of "what a business does" in more granular terms so that the right set of business services can be assembled as needed to carry out a business model
- These business services can be a mix of core, internal ones that a business does itself and outsourced ones provided by other businesses
Readings for IO & IR Lecture #18
- "User Interface Design Patterns: Strengths, Challenges and
Future of Design Patterns" Mano Marks and Kelly Snow (ui-designpatterns.org)
- Designing Interfaces. Jennifer Tidwell.
- "Chapter 2, Organizing the Content: Information Architecture
and Application Structure. "
- "Chapter 4, Organizing the Page: Layout of
Page Elements"
- "Globalization, Localization, Internationalization and
Translation"
