I just finished reading a great post by Hannah Smalltree at searchbusinessanalytics.com called Mobile Business Intelligence – Will it take off (for real, this time)? Again, a good read, but it highlights many of the issues that still cripple mobile BI (for now). Even the success story she highlights is riddled with flaws which have to be overcome before Mobile BI can really hit the mainstream.
Here are a few examples:
Why do BI vendors keep assuming that software needs to be installed on the device? Somehow most companies in the industry have ignored how powerful the browsers are on these new devices, and I’m not just talking about the iPhone. Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone, Android, Palm, etc. all have really powerful browsers that can accomplish nearly everything that an app can without putting software on the device (and this gets even better with HTML 5 on the horizon). Do we have to remind software companies how hard it is (for the vendor and the customer) to create a new version of your app for every device that gets released? There are hundreds. It is impossible, frankly. Oh, and if you solve for the phone’s browser you also get the desktop solution for free (and new devices like the iPad). Some might say security is an issue, but it isn’t and here’s why.
Why does everyone assume there needs to be a big project to accomplish all of this? I expect it is because most of these vendors make the majority of their money on services (the custom project that was referenced was $30,000, which was quite small but still involved low-value services work which was unnecessary). This is unfortunate because when done right from the beginning, most key metrics can be viewed, in context and from all of the right angles, in just a few key screens (which should be generated by default), especially when those KPIs are operational in nature. Key “views” always include:
What is the state of myx (business, factory, profit, product, supply chain, etc.) at a glance? (in our case, a % rollup view of all KPIs in a group)
What is the current value of a key individual metric? (found on almost every screen)
How does it compare with its expected value (thresholds, limits, etc)? (trend, KPI map, bar chart)
What does this value look like compared to other similar KPIs? (scorecard)
What led up to this point? (the history, trend) This leads you to… (trend)
Are things likely to get better or worse given the trend? (trend)
Am I alerted when something is particularly bad or good? (monitoring, alerts via email, SMS; see an example on the right)
Optional: Who is responsible for this KPI and who do I alert? (alerts)
Mobile BI should focus on operations data, not future planning data. Traditional BI (OLAP cubes, data mining, hard-core analytics) often looks at planning data and also focuses on huge problems that need deep analysis (e.g. how many people might buy an iPad if we build it). This is hardly the right application for the mobile platform. Think about what people care about on their phones, regardless of what is possible: email, Twitter, getting directions, text messaging, sports scores, breaking news – all of these are operational, or “here and now” metrics. If you are going to analyze hundreds of variables around future planning scenarios, you are going to want to be in front of a big monitor with plenty of time and a pile of empty Mountain Dew cans – this does not make an ideal fit for the mobile scenario.
Mobile BI need not be rocket science. Most vendors we run into think mobile BI applications need to be wildly customizable. We respectfully disagree. My second bullet above highlights this. Transpara’s Visual KPI application has been running with customers’ data in industries as diverse as utilities and power generation, oil and gas refining, data centers and biotech and we talk with those customers all the time. The funny thing is, we almost never get comments like “if only I could make a new screen that had x in it” which for a long time even worried us. Are they even using it, we thought? Turns out they were, and the screens we created showed them all of the key metrics in the right way. Now, this doesn’t mean we don’t have a significant list of improvements to make (we do) but it does highlight how straightforward mobile BI software must be in order to deliver value.
Mobile BI software is not just a front-end client to traditional BI. Again, read bullet 3 above about operational data. Traditional BI is a great source of data for a mobile business intelligence solution, but they are most often not a 1:1 match and certainly not exclusive to each other. The ideal mobile solution often includes marrying multiple data sources to create that real-time solution. For example, get some thresholds or limits from deep analysis in your data warehouse but combine that with some real-time data from a streaming database, historian, or even a traditional database that is refreshed faster for a true “here and now” mobile application. With the right solution, this will be easier than you think.
I could go on for weeks on this topic, but customers await. If you have comments we would love to hear them, especially if you disagree. Oh, and you can read a potentially more intriguing operational intelligence case study here (See the intro section on Mohawk Paper and Information Everywhere on a Blackberry on page 3 – I will write up more about this one in another post soon). Thanks as always for reading.
Essroc Now Provides Anytime, Anywhere Access to Process, Production, Maintenance and Compliance Information
Transpara Corporation, a leading provider of operational intelligence software, today announced that Essroc, a leading North American manufacturer of cement and chemical admixtures, has deployed Visual KPI to monitor manufacturing performance across all eight North American plants. With Visual KPI, Essroc supervisors, managers and executives can easily access real-time plant-level data – including process, production, maintenance and compliance information – directly from their iPhones and other mobile devices.
Essroc selected Visual KPI because it was easy to manage, cost-effective, and simple to use yet very powerful. “With Visual KPI, real-time information about our plants is only one touch away on the iPhone,” said François Léonard, Manager, Automation & Control, Essroc. “Visual KPI is flexible and simple, enabling us to implement dashboard changes and modifications in a matter of a few minutes. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Visual KPI has to offer. It has huge potential to help us improve operational efficiency at our plants.”
Visual KPI’s lightweight analytics aggregate operational data from existing IT systems, including the OSIsoft PI System data historian and Essroc’s Lab Management System (LMS.) As a mobile front-end data visualization solution for the PI System, Visual KPI enables 24/7 troubleshooting, triggering an alert and notifying the right person when a critical condition develops that requires immediate attention.
Visual KPI offers a snapshot of manufacturing performance, including bearing temperatures, equipment failure and overall production levels of the company. Additionally, the software delivers mobile key performance indicators (KPIs) and scorecards for users to track the status of the company’s eight PI servers.
“During the economic downturn, manufacturers remain under increasing pressure to deliver sustained profits,” said Michael Saucier, CEO of Transpara. “With the added challenge of a graying workforce and decreasing numbers of subject matter experts, companies have limited access to contextual information to help mitigate problems. Transpara continues to see more traction in the manufacturing industry as customers look to Visual KPI to give data meaning and focus on the most important metrics that drive business results.”
The only solution custom-built for delivering data to users on any mobile device or PC without any additional programming, Visual KPI gives customers instant access to their most important KPIs, scorecards and trends. By helping users throughout the organization to monitor their processes and asset base, Visual KPI improves performance, reduces operating costs and lowers business risk.
About Essroc Essroc is a leading North American cement producer with over 6.5 million metric tons of annual capacity. The company operates production facilities strategically located throughout the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. They are linked through an integrated supply network connecting all Essroc plants, terminals and markets. Essroc, headquartered in Nazareth, Penn., is a member of Italcementi Group, the fifth largest cement manufacturer in the world. Based in Bergamo, Italy, Italcementi employs 22,000 in 22 countries and had consolidated sales of 5 billion euro (about $7 billion) in 2009.
About Transpara Corporation Transpara delivers Visual KPI, mobile dashboard software that provides thousands of users in the process and utility industries with role-based, actionable KPIs, trends and alerts on any web browser. Visual KPI presents operating information from multiple data sources in context and in real-time, enabling timely, informed decision making from any location. By helping customers to monitor their asset base, Visual KPI improves performance, reduces operating costs and lowers business risk. Visit www.transpara.com for more information.
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Transpara is a registered trademark of Transpara Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Today’s post should be a quick one, but something we wanted to highlight. Here’s the story:
Transpara has a great real-time engine that took years for really smart people to build and get right. We also have a very “effective” client that does some amazing things, and we are also quite proud of it (and we think our users would agree, given their customer feedback so far). That said, small screens of data are often hard to make sexy, while still being very usable. That is one of our latest challenges, and we stumbled upon something really cool we thought was worth sharing: design contests.
I read about these in a book on inbound marketing and hit a few sites. Most notable were www.99designs.com and www.crowdspring.com. Both are great concepts, and now that they have some serious scale they are incredibly useful. Beyond just a cool concept, we have a current need to think about UI improvements on the client so we ran a contest on 99Designs and had some fun with it.
For a few hundred bucks, we got 10 or so designers to compete on the look and feel of our mobile software for business intelligence / operational intelligence. Once we pick a winner (we haven’t yet) we get the design and the copyright. Good for us, but also good for the winner. Some other great things about doing this:
Diverse entries from people with different design backgrounds
Entries from all over the world (we had at least 3 countries represented in ours – most designers profile did list their location)
You provide immediate feedback on things you like and don’t, then designers can resubmit and others can improve their designs as you go along
It’s like eBay for designs. Slow at the start, and then it picked up and most of the designs were submitted on the last day. We received 16 entries in a week-long contest
That’s it for now. Just wanted to share the fun we had and get your thoughts on the results.
Managing Automation – March 30, 2010 Analytical applications provide the means to keep tabs on plant performance and tie that data back to business objectives. In some instances, manufacturers need to view performance on a mobile device.
Mohawk launched the Information Everywhere initiative to bring information from across the enterprise to users via web pages, on mobile devices and within applications. Mohawk implemented Visual KPI to turn data from operations, financial and infrastructure sources into meaningful information for improved decision making from any location. More…
Wireless workers are already roaming around process plants worldwide. Might your facility be next? On a Sunday afternoon at home with a single click of a Blackberry, a Mohawk engineer can tell that the paper machine is up, running at a particular speed and consuming so much energy. More…
We are keeping things random here on the Blog (by design) but we knew at some point this would become a great place to answer some oft-asked questions from our users and even people seeing Visual KPI for the first time.
Today we’ll start off with an easy one: “What do we mean when we mention the Security Inheritance Model?”
In simple terms, it means that Visual KPI conforms to our customers’ security model and/or requirement without any work on their (or our) part. It just “inherits” the requirements from the host environment at the customer site.
Simple, right? Yes, but we know you want details.
The design team at Transpara make all kinds of design choices when building and updating the product. Some are feature-oriented, some are focused on usability, and some are there specifically to make the lives of your IT staff easier! OK, in the interest of full disclosure everything we do to make things easier also makes things easier on us (easier to deploy, easier to maintain and support, etc.). Add this all up and you will see why security inheritance benefits everyone involved.
Here are some basic facts about almost every customer environment:
They each have their own security requirements
None of them look the same, and some of them are incredibly sophisticated (even crazy at times)
They, and only they, really understand who should have access to what applications or data
This information is usually kept in a directory and most often it is Active Directory
Here’s your worst-case scenario: Often, enterprise-class software applications require you to create and maintain a dedicated “user database” of the people who will have access to the software and which features they are allowed to use. Let’s say you have a CRM system from Vendor A. It needs a list of users and their access rights so the CRM system knows which users can access which pages and functions in the system. Next, you buy an HR system from Vendor B and again you have to create and manage the list of users and their associated permissions for the HR system. This pattern gets old and fails to scale very quickly.
Now that we know the facts along with what we don’t want to do, Security Inheritance becomes a system that is quite easy to describe.
Visual KPI is an enterprise-class software application and of course needs to know who in your organization is allowed to create, modify, delete and view the various KPIs, scorecards and trends (among other things). This is critical, because so is the data we deliver.
By designing Visual KPI as a web server-based application, and specifically using Internet Information Server (IIS) as the platform, we get to leverage the existing authentication and rights-assignment subsystem within the platform, including the directory and all related security policies.
Want the tech-heavy version of #2, here you go (consider yourself warned): Visual KPI is an in-memory IIS application whose component parts all run as part of a virtual directory structure in IIS. One of the many benefits of IIS is that each virtual directory has a set of “permissions” which govern who which users may see or execute functions contained and managed by the virtual directory. Since each of our feature sets (website, Excel Editor, interfaces) have unique virtual directories we have complete flexibility and access to the power of Active Directory as our NATIVE user authentication and rights assignment engine!
Summary: No one gets access to our system until the customer’s existing environment says its ok.
Because of this design, Visual KPI requires NO additional user database and NO additional rights assignment functionality beyond that which is built into the Windows Server operating system. Our users already have a well-defined collection of Active Directory Users & Groups, and we simply “assign” one or more of each to the virtual directories which govern each of our components. It is an elegant and IT-friendly way to leverage all the work a company has put into defining their AD Forest and reduces the added complexity of locking down visibility and editing to near zero.
We are extremely proud of this architecture and our users have benefitted from it since the day Visual KPI 1.0 shipped in 2006. If you want to speak to one of them, just let us know.
Michael Gartenberg was right! Context is almost ALL that matters since data without context is irrelevant noise.
Imagine a person running down the street screaming “8! 8! 8!” without the context of “number of Olympic Gold Medals.” We probably could not understand the significance of this outburst and that it relates to Michael Phelp’s accomplishment from the 2008 games. It could just as easily refer to someone’s winning lotto number or Chinese good luck. Context is what adds dimension and meaning to raw data. In software, usability and adoption rate of new features is largely governed by the quality of the context given to users—see graphic (courtesy of Kathy Sierra).
Let’s take decision-support software as an illustrative example. There are two users of this software—the person configuring the dashboards and metrics (the ADMIN) and the person using these dashboards to make operating decisions about the equipment or plant (the CONSUMER).
The time between newbie and expert at software configuration for the ADMIN is determined by the continuity of context. Leading a person from “clueless” to “competent” to “wizard” is always about exposing and teaching incremental features and capabilities without increasing the user’s frustration level every step along the way. People’s passion for new capabilities is inversely proportional to how pissed off they are with the implementation details.
Similarly, the CONSUMER of the software is driven by a similar curve. If the ADMIN configuring the software has done a good job, then the CONSUMER of this software will be incrementally exposed to layers of nuance in the data, which helps him or her make decisions faster and with more confidence. Boyd’s OODA loops are the way in which all decision-support software should be judged. The users “Observes the data, Orient themselves with context, Decide what to do, and then Act to bring about the necessary change to the environment.
Until the advent of smartphones with broadband internet access, it was absurd to think of OODA loops and context delivery for anyone but desktop software consumers. Windows Mobile, the iPhone, Google’s Android and Palm’s new Pre all make it possible to create a desktop-like decision-making environment on a mobile device. A decision-makers location has been rendered irrelevant, as the complete context for any decision is now available wherever they are, making today’s agile workforce capable of market and demand-driven responses only available in the dreams of our forefathers.
Delivering the contextual information users need, when they need it, is what’s critical — not any particular application or service.
Context contradicts conventional wisdom. For one thing, feeds and speeds are no longer the defining metrics for value. The fastest and most powerful laptop won’t do much for a user on the road if it weighs 10 pounds and gets barely an hour of battery life — or can’t open in a coach seat on a plane. By contrast, the ability to check email, browse the web or listen to music doesn’t matter if your phone won’t make a call when you need it to. Smart vendors will learn technology applied to context for users is what matters — especially since I think there’s an upper limit on the number of devices most people will carry with them at any given time. As I’ve said in the past, for most of us that’s two, with a maximum of three. The jury is out on whether the iPad could change that.
It’s time to be liberated and connected. The dream is real — now it’s time to see more devices execute and deliver the vision. Onward and upward (in context, of course)!
All Levels of Management Rely on Visual KPI to Monitor and Manage Key Performance Metrics from Mobile Devices
Transpara Corporation, a leading provider of operational intelligence software, today announced that Constellation Energy, a Fortune 500 energy company headquartered in Baltimore, Md., has deployed Visual KPI in their central Performance Management and Diagnostics center. All levels of management use the Visual KPI data visualization solution to monitor and manage key performance metrics – such as operations, predictive maintenance engineering, vibration analysis, emissions tracking and daily reports – from their PDAs and Smartphones.
Visual KPI’s lightweight analytics aggregate operations data from Constellation’s existing IT systems – including the OSIsoft PI System data historian and SmartSignal – and deliver actionable information in the form of rich scorecards and trends directly to users’ mobile devices. A decision support tool employed by more than 100 users on a daily basis, Visual KPI extends the value of Constellation’s existing investments for improved operations and business performance.
“The most critical business activities in the utilities industry, like decreasing environmental emissions or reducing outages, depend on having immediate access to pertinent operations data,” said Steve Noel, director of IT, Constellation Energy. “By allowing us to repurpose existing data across the entire organization, Visual KPI has become a valuable business analytics tool that’s an extension of the control room. When members of the executive staff check Visual KPI before doing anything else in the morning, you know it’s a must-have tool!”
Constellation Energy uses Visual KPI for a variety of operational performance management functions, including:
Remote tracking of generation totals, generation units running and status, as well as real-time energy pricing data.
Predictive maintenance engineering, including performance monitoring and vibration monitoring – predictive maintenance technicians, performance engineers and vibration specialists rely on Visual KPI’s easy access to real-time data and alerts for monitoring and diagnostics.
“Manage by Exception” for controllable losses (e.g. steam pressure and temperature), ensuring all stakeholders are engaged and can easily access alerts and drill-down information.
Remote monitoring of emissions tracking and vibration analysis, enabling subject matter experts to identify early warnings before problems become critical, thereby increasing plant availability.
Remote PI Server health monitoring, issue diagnosis, database back-up aging and tracking via PDAs.
SmartSignal Watchlist alerts on Blackberries and Mobile Windows, which improve users’ ability to catch equipment-related issues and allow stakeholders to remain in the loop without adding burden to the Performance Management and Diagnostics staff.
“A cornerstone of daily operational performance strategy, Visual KPI turns the massive amounts of operations, financial and infrastructure data generated from disparate sources into meaningful information,” said Michael Saucier, CEO of Transpara. “Easy to configure, deploy and use on any Smart Phone or PDA, Visual KPI continues to help utilities like Constellation to avoid hundreds of critical situations, save significantly more money than their total solution cost, and derive even more value from their existing technology investments.”
The only solution custom-built for delivering data to users on any mobile device or PC without any additional programming, Visual KPI gives customers instant access to their most important KPIs, scorecards and trends. By helping users throughout the organization to monitor their processes and asset base, Visual KPI improves performance, reduces operating costs and lowers business risk.
About Constellation Energy Constellation Energy Corporation (www.constellation.com), a Fortune 200 company headquartered in Baltimore, is the largest private-sector power producer in the world and the nation’s largest producer of clean and reliable energy. With 55 gigawatts of capacity from nuclear, natural gas, oil, geothermal, hydro, wind and solar facilities, its fleet has the generating capacity to power the equivalent of 27 million homes, providing about 10% of the nation’s clean energy and delivering the around-the-clock reliability needed to power America’s growing economy. Constellation is also the largest nuclear energy company in the U.S. and a leading competitive retail supplier, serving approximately 2.5 million customer accounts nationwide, including 80% of the Fortune 100.
About Transpara Corporation Transpara delivers Visual KPI, on-demand dashboard software that provides customers in the process and utility industries with role-based, actionable KPIs on any web browser. Visual KPI presents operating information from multiple data sources to users in context and on-demand, enabling timely, informed decision making from any location. By helping users throughout the organization to monitor their asset base, Visual KPI improves performance, reduces operating costs and lowers business risk. Visit www.transpara.com for more information.
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Transpara is a registered trademark of Transpara Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
He has been called the “Leonardo da Vinci of data” by the New York Times. This was evident at the San Francisco Westin in mid-December as close to 1500 devoted followers paid almost 400 bucks each to hear Edward Tufte talk about visualizing complex data. Given what we do at Transpara, there was no way we would miss it.
Tufte’s thesis is “do whatever it takes to explain something.” By this he means use a diversity of display methods, a diversity of data, remove “chart junk” and replace it with evidence. Key themes:
De-emphasize (or better yet, eliminate) the process of looking at data
Allow the viewer to see as much as possible all at once
Don’t adorn the data, let the data speak for itself (see example below)
All three of these may sound contrary to your average PowerPoint skills curriculum, but there is a reason Tufte has this following.
Mr. Tufte thinks there is no relationship between the amount of detail and the ease of understanding. The optic nerve processes the equivalent of 20 megapixels per second, so there is no doubt our physiology supports high-bandwidth displays. “Information Overload” is always bad design, not too much data. Tufte shared a good design for showing 400,000 pieces of data on a single 11×17 piece of paper without being overwhelming and still allowing for an immediate grasp of meaning (hint: he used “sparklines” to condense the space required to show huge data sets, just like we do in Visual KPI).
Tufte goes on to use the Sports Page in a newspaper as a great example of data density and information layout and compares this to PowerPoint charts and graphs. There is an average of only 12 data elements in a typical PowerPoint table, but an average of 150-200 data elements in a sports score table. “Did we suddenly get stupid just because we arrived at work?” has asked us. He suggested that we relegate PowerPoint to being the “operating system for the overhead projector.”
Information wants to be free of the shackles of over-designed user interfaces, 3-D charts, perspective views, all of this “non-data” simply gets in the way of communication for the purpose of understanding. Data should always be arranged to support reasoning about the information.
The Dangers of Glitziness and Other Visualization Faux Pas
My personal highlight was his page-by-page review of our mobile scorecard application. While much of Visual KPI is already organized in the spirit of Tufte, his personal review and critique of the Visual KPI design has meaningful implications for us going forward. I won’t share the details here but expect a few incremental improvements to further embrace the parsimony and simplicity of Edward Tufte. But I digress…
For us, or anyone who cares about visualizing data, scorecards, KPIs, dashboards, or just good design, the lesson is that you must understand the differences between Tufte’s view of data and the sometimes overly popularized view of simplicity for simplicity’s sake or you are missing more than half of the story (and Tufte would also disapprove of doing that).
His books are amazing (and beautiful, right down to his choice of paper) and there is much to learn about him on the interwebs.
Here are a few examples:
Mobile BI should focus on operations data, not future planning data. Traditional BI (OLAP cubes, data mining, hard-core analytics) often looks at planning data and also focuses on huge problems that need deep analysis (e.g. how many people might buy an iPad if we build it). This is hardly the right application for the mobile platform. Think about what people care about on their phones, regardless of what is possible: email, Twitter, getting directions, text messaging, sports scores, breaking news – all of these are operational, or “here and now” metrics. If you are going to analyze hundreds of variables around future planning scenarios, you are going to want to be in front of a big monitor with plenty of time and a pile of empty Mountain Dew cans – this does not make an ideal fit for the mobile scenario.
Mobile BI should focus on operations data, not future planning data. Traditional BI (OLAP cubes, data mining, hard-core analytics) often looks at planning data and also focuses on huge problems that need deep analysis (e.g. how many people might buy an iPad if we build it). This is hardly the right application for the mobile platform. Think about what people care about on their phones, regardless of what is possible: email, 
Context is what adds dimension and meaning to raw data. In software, usability and adoption rate of new features is largely governed by the quality of the context given to users—see graphic (courtesy of 
