Tuesday, September 22, 2009

September Update

Greetings everyone! It’s fall in the Northern Hemisphere and we’re back hard at work at Dresner Advisory Services!

Compared to Q2 and Q3 things have picked up rather nicely and enterprises seem to be investing again. Although I only have anecdotal evidence that this is the case, other colleagues have confirmed that an improvement in economic conditions seems to be unfolding. In addition, recently the OECD announced that “forecasts show a third-quarter return to expansion of economic output, as measured by gross domestic product, in the United States and the 16-country euro zone”. This has also been echoed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who said today that the U.S. economy appeared to be “picking up steam”. Of course, as we progress through Q4, it should become readily apparent whether things are truly improving. However, I’m feeling more optimistic than I have since 2007.

Speaking of Q4, there are some exciting developments that I want to share with you.

The New Book:

As most of you already know, my second book, Profiles in Performance – Business Intelligence Journeys and the Roadmap for Change will be released next month by John Wiley & Sons. The process has gone quite smoothly and it’s actually arriving a month earlier than originally planned and can be ordered online from John Wiley & Sons, Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

As you may recall, the book focuses upon what I call “performance-directed culture”, a prerequisite for any successful BI or EPM program. The timing is ideal as organizations begin to plan for 2010 and develop new strategies to help leverage the next era of growth. In the process of writing the book, I developed a new maturity model, called the Performance Culture Maturity Model TM. This model (which is patent pending), and associated methods, will help organizations assess their current readiness for BI or EPM and identify steps that can be taken to better ensure success.

One of the findings from my upcoming book is that many organizations remain "departmentally optimized", without much cooperation or collaboration between functions. In fact, oftentimes a spirit of internal competition exists with departments blaming each other for the enterprise's failure to perform. How you would rank your organization? Feel free to drop me a line and let me know.

And, I am currently in discussions with several organizations to “certify” them to deliver cultural assessment services using my model. More on that topic in the coming months…

Media Exposure:

In the past week, I have participated in some interviews, podcasts and webinars. These interviews center upon my upcoming book and related topics of interest. I encourage you to take a look:

September 21, 2009Interview with Doug Henschen at Intelligent Enterprise regarding my upcoming book.

September 21, 2009Interview by Dana Gardner (Briefingsdirect.com) on the subject of web data services and business intelligence (podcast and transcript).

September 17, 2009 Podcast interview on searchdatamanagement.com covering my new book and performance-directed culture.

Upcoming Activities and Events:

Over the next several months, I will be supporting a number of industry events, where I will be unveiling several new presentations, based upon the new book. Although there are a number of new activities that are in the works, here are several that I can announce today:

CIO Magazine’s The Year Ahead Conference – November 8-10, 2009 – Indian Wells, CA:

At this important event targeting CIOs, I will be joined by my colleague Tom Wadsworth of Cleveland Clinic, one of the premier case study subjects from my new book. Together we’ll deliver a keynote presentation entitled: Culture as Culprit: The Real Story Behind Business Intelligence Project Failures.

The Palladium Group’s Americas Summit – November 11-12, 2009 – San Francisco, CA:

At this strategic event for business leaders, led by luminaries Drs. Kaplan and Norton, I will present a keynote entitled: Culture - The Missing Link in Performance Management.

Those using the discount code "DRESNER" will receive a $600 discount on standard Summit registration rates.

Other events:

DM Radio – September 24, 2009 – Topic: Making the Most of Performance Management

I will be a guest panelist on this live web-based event, and will discuss some of the key points and lessons learned from my upcoming book.

Webinar on SaaS BI: Targeted Business Analytics: How Large Companies Leverage SaaS BI (Sponsored by OCO) – recorded on September 9, 2009.

In this recorded webinar, I discussed the future of business, the importance of business intelligence and the role of SaaS BI.

As always, I hope you’ll reach out and share your views on the industry, your company, the new book or anything else that’s happening.

Please let me know if you’ll be attending one of the events above. It would be great to see you there!

All the best,

Howard

P.S. Please check out my website for the latest news and updates for Dresner Advisory Services.