I’m often
surprised at how traditional demos are organized – they seem to focus on the
least important items for the target audience.
Contemplate the following scenario:
You are
presenting a demonstration of your fabulous business intelligence tool to a
mixed audience that includes:
- Executives
- Middle Managers
- Business Analysts/Staffers
- “Super-User”/”Power-User” Business Analysts
- IT
Traditional BI
demos often start with a blank screen and show how to build a wonderfully rich
dashboard or visualization, followed by building another again from scratch, followed
by drilling down, slicing, dicing and generally messing around with the visualization
and the underlying data – but without much purpose towards solving any business
problems.
Who does
this appeal to? Likely only the
Super-Users/Power-Users, who are interested in seeing how easy or hard it is to
build visualizations1.
Meanwhile…
- The Executives are thinking, “This is going nowhere; I’ve got
another meeting I need to attend – I’m outta here…!”
- The Middle Managers are thinking, “This is going nowhere;
furthermore it looks like this is a very complicated tool that only an expert
could use – we’ll only need a few seats at maximum if we license this stuff…”
- The Business Analysts/Staffers are thinking, “Oh my God, this
looks waaay too complicated for me to use…”
- And IT is thinking, “How much bandwidth is this going to consume
on our network – it looks like a real hog with all that data moving around…”
The
result? Fail.
The impact? More demos, extended sales cycles, smaller
initial licenses, increased difficulty in achieving “Expansion” after an
initial “Landing”; general whining, moaning, and gnashing of teeth.
Use Modes
Contemplate
the following use modes:
1. Set-up Mode –
stuff you do once
2. Daily Use Mode –
stuff you do often (daily, for example)
Now
contemplate the following for a typical dashboard or visualization:
- How often does
one set up a dashboard or visualization?
Once, typically.
- How often does
one consume the information in a
dashboard or visualization? It might be
daily, weekly, monthly, etc. – many times a year, in any case.
Traditional
demos tend to spend an enormous amount of time showing Set-up Mode – and
surprisingly little time showing Daily Use Mode. When we contemplate each of our audience job
titles again, with respect to their modes of use, we’ll see that these
traditional demos are generally waaaay out of alignment with their audiences’
interests:
- Executives: Are always in Daily Use Mode – never in
Set-up Mode
- Middle Managers: Are nearly always in Daily Use Mode – rarely
in Set-up Mode
- Business Analysts/Staffers:
Are largely in Daily Use Mode – and only occasionally in Set-up Mode
- Super-User/Power-User Business Analysts: Live mostly in Set-up Mode
- IT: Are still wondering
about bandwidth issues (pre-Set-up Mode)
If the
decision-makers are Executives or Middle-Managers, you can see why the end
result of these demos are “fails”.
Alignment
So, if we
want to be in good alignment with these folks, here’s a recommended strategy
for this demo:
- Executives: Start with the
Executives, show a few terrific visualizations/dashboards, explaining what
business problems they help address – Daily-Use Mode. Summarize.
- Middle Managers: Next in
line, again show a few relevant visualizations, again explaining the business
problems they help solve – and a bit
about how to drill-down to find more detail.
Summarize.
- Business Analysts/Staffers:
Next up, show how they can answer the questions coming from their
managers – specifically how to drill-down to find root-causes, anomalies,
specific patterns and relationships, etc. – use the fewest number of steps to address each scenario. Ask
if they are interested in seeing how to modify
an existing visualization. Summarize.
- Super-User/Power-User Business Analysts: Now it is their turn, start with a completed
visualization, then show how to modify it; then
show how to build it from scratch.
Summarize.
- IT: Address any unanswered
questions on implementation, access rights, single-sign-on and, of course,
bandwidth. Summarize.
A Subtlety…
There’s
another, more subtle mode to consider, as well:
Collaboration Mode.
It is comparatively
rare that people work alone, in a vacuum.
A Middle Manager might want a new visualization to track a particular
process and its KPI’s – but she isn’t likely to create it herself. She’ll contact a Power-User and ask him to generate
the visualization – which she’ll likely need to have edited and tuned before
she puts it into day-to-day use.
The old way
of doing this was a slow, serial approach.
The Middle Manager described what she wanted and the Power-User went
away and built something; they then came together a few days later to discuss. After some questions and comments back and
forth, the Power-User went back to his cube to make some changes (sometimes
major changes) and ran version 2.0 by the Manager – and this process was repeated
as necessary until done.
Now, both
parties can come together (either face-to-face or over the web, using tools like
WebEx and GoToMeeting). The Manager
describes what she needs; the Power-User then shows a few completed example visualizations and describes what is possible –
he may show how a few changes can be made – to give the Manager a vision of
what her visualization might look like.
[Note: the astute will realize
that this is, in effect, a Vision Generation demo…]
They then
work together to create the
visualization desired. You might expect portions
of the conversation to sound like:
MM: “OK, can I get a view of the U.S. and map the
sales data to each state?”
PU: “Sure, let me drag that out… Do you want the data as numbers or in mini-charts
for each state?”
MM: “Wow, show me a few mini-charts – and could
you have the total revenue as a single bigger number for each state as well?”
PM: “Yes – here, I just added it. Now, what level of detail would you like for
the sales figures and pipelines for each state and region – we can place
another graphic on your dashboard and break that information out separately…”
MM: “Cool – can you show me an example?”
Collaboration
Mode is a wonderful thing – it is the confluence of Daily-Use and Set-up Modes.
A Further Subtlety…
Most
managers today operate in two (additional) modes:
1. Things are going just fine…
2. There’s a problem or anomaly I need to address.
These modes
map to Standard Reports vs. Alerts and Exceptions.
A Standard
Report is something that generally is received on a regular basis and is used to
track progress. A simple example is a
weekly forecast – e.g., delivered automatically each Monday to the VP of sales
and the Regional Sales Managers – so that they can assess their progress towards
achieving their quotas.
These reports
are rapidly consumed and reviewed – and if everything looks fine they are filed
or deleted. If there is a problem – “looks
like forecast revenues for the Southeast are way below expectations…” – then additional
(and often separate) action may be taken.
“Let’s look at the detail for the Southeast deals this quarter and the
current pipeline – what are the bigger deals and which ones are at risk?”
Most
managers implicitly assign higher value to Alerts and Exceptions – this is
where they need to step in and take action.
Standard Reports are good; reports and vehicles that show Alerts and Exceptions
are better!
But Wait There’s More…
Most demos remain
entirely within the vendor’s software.
This is simply not real-life –
nearly no-one spends their day working our software (unless your software is Outlook
or Google Mail…).
The sad
truth is that most users do not live
in our software, in spite of our fervent desires. Where do they spend their time? That’s right,
1. In their email tool and
2. In a browser.
So, with
that in mind, why not map Daily-use Mode to the tools people are most likely using?
Contemplate showing
Daily Use Mode by starting in email and showing an unopened message –
you double-click on that message to open it, showing a link to the desired
weekly report. Clicking the link, the
report opens in a browser window… Daily
Use Mode for a Standard Report.
Similarly,
start in your email tool and again show an unopened message – double-clicking
shows an alert, “Pipeline Exception – Low Lead Generation for Southeast” –
clicking on the link brings up a Pipeline Detail View visualization in a
browser window… Daily Use Mode for an
Alert/Exception!
Ahhhh – Alignment
Aligning the
likely mode of use with the corresponding job title yields surprisingly compelling
and successful demos. It’s not rocket
science; it’s just common sense!
1 If these folks are the decision-makers, then you are OK for an initial, small implementation… On the other hand, if they are not the decision-makers, then the trouble has just begun!
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