By Boris Evelson

There’s a lot of hype out there by many vendors who claim that they have tools and technologies to enable BI end user self service. Do they? When you analyze whether your BI vendor can support end user self service, consider the following types of “self service” and related BI tool requirements:

#1. Self service for average, casual users.

• What do these users need to do?
  • Run and lightly customize canned reports and dashboards
  • Run ad hoc queries
  • Add calculated measures
  • Collaborate
  • Fulfill their BI requirements with little or no training (typically one needs search-like, not point-and-click UI for this)
• What capabilities do they need for this?
  • Report and dashboard templates
  • Customizable prompts, sorts, filters, and ranks
  • Report, query, dashboard building wizards
  • Portal
  • Semantic layer (not all BI vendor have a rich semantic layer)
  • Prompting for columns (not all BI vendors let you do that)
  • Drill anywhere  (only BI vendors with ROLAP and multisourcing / data federation provide this capability)

#2. Self service for advanced, power users

• What do these users need to do?
  • Perform what-if scenarios (this often requires write back, which very few BI vendors allow)
  • Add metrics, measures, and hierarchies not supported by the underlying data model (typically one needs some kind of in-memory analytics capability for this)
  • Explore based on new (not previously defined) entity relationships (typically one needs some kind of in-memory analytics capability for this)
  • Not knowing exactly what one is looking for (typically one needs search-like UI for this)

For many of my clients, 2009 was a difficult year as they struggled in response to the sudden and dramatic downturn in the economy. Although many CRM technology projects were deferred or cancelled last year, I see this trend being strongly reversed in 2010. Every day I get calls from companies large small who tell me that they now releasing funds to invest in improving their customer-facing business processes neglected during the past 18 months. 

The underlying trends driving the need for effective and efficient customer management processes have not disappeared. In fact, the need for companies to effectively engage with their customers has never been more important. Locking in customer loyalty through deeper engagement and differentiated experiences will continue as critical priorities, but navigating the complex CRM solution vendor landscape and organizing projects for success will continue to be challenging. In 2010, you must focus on choosing the best opportunities for quick wins carefully, spend wisely on the right CRM solutions, and manage project risk. Take advantage of Forrester data, methods, and tools to capitalize on the improving economic climate to drive top-line growth.

I have designed this webinar offer you a roadmap to the specific Forrester data, techniques, and tools that you can immediately put to use to implement our six-step methodology for CRM success.

1. Understand the customer of the future

2. Define the right CRM strategy and priorities

3. Build a rock-solid business case

4. Risk-proof your project

5. Resolve customer data management dilemmas

6. Negotiate the right software pricing and licensing agreements

Here is the link to the registration page. You do not have to be a Forrester client to join in.

registration link

Recently, I’ve been getting more inquiries around risk based testing.   In addition to agile test methods and test estimation, test teams turning their eyes to risk based testing is just another positive step in integrating quality through out the SDLC.  Yes, I still see QA engineers as having to put their evangelist hats on to educate their developer brothers and sisters that quality is more than just testing (don’t get me wrong, consistent unit and integration testing is a beautiful thing), however, any time that business and technology partners can think about impact and dependencies in their approach to a solid, workable application elevates quality to the next level. 

Keep asking those questions about risk based testing – and make sure that you’re covering all of the angles.  Make sure that you’re covering:

Next week, I will present first results of Forrester’s 2009 global banking platform deals survey. A total of 17 banking platform vendors submitted their 2009 deals for evaluation. One year ago, the same set of deals would have represented at least 19 vendors: In the 2009 survey, FIS’s deals include those of acquired US-based Metavante, and Temenos’ deals include those of acquired French Viveo. These theoretically 19 participating vendors submitted a total of 1,068 banking platform deals to evaluate, a steep increase compared with the about 870 submitted deals for 2008.

We had to classify a large share of these 1,068 banking platform deals as extended business or even as a simple renewed license — if the vendors did not already submitted them with the according tag. Forrester’s “rules of the game” did not allow us to recognize further deals, for example, because a non-financial-services firm signed a deal. Overall, Forrester counted 269 of the submitted deals as 2009 new named customers, compared with 290 for 2008. In the past, Forrester sorted the vendors into four buckets: Global Power Sellers, Global Challengers, Pursuers, and Base Players. The Pursuers and in particular the Global Challengers saw only minor changes in the previous years. 2009 has shaken this stable structure, and we will see many vendors in groups they haven’t been in before.