How 2 - ensure success in SAP HANA

By Jan 2013 as an executive you already have way too much on your plate. AS a Business Intelligence Leader, CIO and business owner you have a lot more on your plate. Staying focused on the technology alternatives can be a tough ask- with Gartner reporting that “..less than 30% of BI projects will meet business expectations..” in th 2011-14 period. . Staying focused can be tough when your business users are clamoring that they do not have access to their decision based analytics. Staying focused can be difficult if you just finished a $3, or 5, million BI project and your business users can hardly use the delivered reports, i.e. user satisfaction is low.


Is it the same for HANA projects?

The simple answer for January 2013 is that the same rules that have applied for your traditional BI deployments apply to a very large degree to your HANA BI Appliances.

Now as we enter the new world of HANA we need to minimize defects and thereby increase the probability of success. Proactive executives need to ascertain that we do not fall down the Albert Einstein chute of ‘Doing the same things and this time expecting different results” Which simply translates that if you continue to implement your HANA BI initiative as a technology only solution then your HANA results could be quite similar to your BI results of the past. As one CIO quoted “Our BI project was a technical success, but a total business failure”

So the advice for 2013, BI Implementations and HANA initiatives is 3 critical facts

1. Brutally Honest Partners and advisors

2. Without business in business intelligence BI is dead (Gartner 2010)

3. Take the 2x2 hour training for business stakeholders prior to moving ahead with your HANA initiatives. It is full of checklists, totally vendor agnostic and absolutely scientific in design.

Our brains are finely attuned to distraction, and in today's digital environment makes it especially hard to focus.

Uno: Brutally Honest HANA Advisors

1.1 Undertake a Brutally honest ‘Current BI State Strategic Workshop. Find out whare you currently are.

1.2 Understand where your business needs to be. Document their expectations and then design to meet their expectations

1.3 Get brutally honest findings with minimal interpretations, for unless we accept our current state of reality we may simply step into another fog.

Dos: ‘Without business in business intelligence, BI is dead” Gartner 2010

This statement was made by Gartner in 2010 and stands true from 1004 till date. Decisions enhancement and operational performance measures are not technical solutions but business ones.

The critical difference is between ‘Value’ and ‘BVA’, or Business Value Attainment.

The former is an external definition of value and what your business needs. It normally consists of generic measures that at best will make all companies working with the exact same method of measuring their business and its performance. No company will have any unique competitive differentiators.

BVA on the other hand is an internal and professional method of understanding your business expectations and your unique competitive advantages

Tres: Take HP’s 2x2 hour Executive Stakeholder training for HANA

Understand your weaknesses: We are used to working on our strengths. However, in BI it is critical to understand that the CIO, CFO, VP Sales, VP Procurement, i.e. your Key Stakeholders know little or nothing of SAP HANA or how to undertake a professional selection. Use the 2 x 2 hour HANA executive workshop

Strengthen your weaknesses: The workshop is basically a 2 hour session that comes with checklists and documents that can be used by non-IT stakeholders to verify that the selection process. The second 2 hour is to actually assist the team fill the checklists in a professional manner. It empowers stakeholders to undertake strategically professionally decisions.