Using Metadata to Manage Data Integration Change

7 09 2011

Last week, a long-time Informatica customer told me about how he is managing change in his data integration environment on a truly massive scale.  The story he told reminded me of someone doing a heart transplant on themself while running a marathon.  … blindfolded.

  • First, he is delivering several innovative new applications. One to improve customer service.  Another, proactively monitors operational performance and suggests where the business needs to invest more to improve their capacity and service levels.
  • Next, he is rolling out new systems that will collect customer sentiment analysis from social media sources (Big Data) and integrate that with ongoing campaigns and company planning.
  • On top of that, he is managing the data integration aspects of a galactic merger between his company and another large company. In this effort, he has to manage application consolidation, application retirement, data migration, and data integration projections between the two companies.  The merger has to be accomplished while keeping everything up and running.
  • Finally, he also has to deal with a complex and changing regulatory compliance environment that makes demands in terms of security, privacy, and financial reporting and auditing.

It’s a challenge to manage change on that scale, and at the same time, to maintain the data integrity of all of the enterprise software applications .   But, most Data Integration managers I know are doing exactly that without the visibility necessary to effectively manage change on that scale.  Managers worldwide are struggling to manage change in complex Data Integration environments where a seemingly simple change has huge business risk and can result in material negative impacts.  The problem is that multiple systems may have cross-dependencies on the data objects that are being changed.  A change to one data object cans cause ripple effects across the system, impacting multiple applications, reports, and dashboards. A loss of data integrity in any of these could lead to bad business decisions costing millions.

Examples of Data Integration Environment Changes

Common examples of changes to the data integration environment  that can negatively impact data integrity include:

  • Business Efficiency Initiatives – Such as,  application virtualization, application consolidation & migration
  • New Business Initiatives – Such as, new products, new offers, M&A activity
  • New Data Types – Such as, cloud data, third party data services, social media data

The list goes on, but each change has a web of interdependencies that carries a level of risk to the business.

Managing  Data Integration Change With Metadata

When Data Integration change requests have the potential to impact the quality of the data underlying key business decisions, it’s critical to have the right tools to manage that change process.

Metadata management tools provide the ability to capture the metadata in your data integration environment and to give you the tools to visualize, manage, and control that change.

The key capabilities of good metadata management tools such as Informatica Metadata Manager include:

  • Visibility: A visual map of the data flows within your Data Integration environment.
  • Data Lineage: The ability to trace data from source-to-target within the Data Integration environment and they ability to inspect transformations, business rules and reference data.
  • Impact Analysis: The ability to see what other data objects upstream and downstream of the data object you are changing would be impacted by that change.
  • Metadata Connectors: These automatically collect and present the  technical metadata found in data integration tools, applications and repositories, data warehouses, Business Intelligence tools and data modeling tools.

For more information on managing change, see the Informatica  Chalk Talk Video:  Metadata Management to Reduce Delivery Cycles

One question I hear a lot is: “Is this the right time to make the investment in a technical metadata management project?” Before responding, there are a couple of questions to consider first:

  • What is the likelihood of a change to your Data Integration environment causing bad data?
  • In your environment, what is the cost of a bad business decision?
  • How important is it that you able to “prove” your numbers to auditors?

Increasingly, the data is the business.  Your business is only as good (and as competitive) as its ability to manage the integrity of the data it uses or provides.  Nobody should perform heart surgery blindfolded, and nobody should make changes to their data integration environment without the tools to give them proper visibility either.

For more information, see the previous metadata blog: “Who Needs Metadata?”


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Categories : Business Glossary, Metadata Management, Technology

Who Needs Metadata? (for Data Integration)

6 09 2011

Consider this situation: Would you try to ride a bicycle blindfolded? You could probably pump the pedals and steer without trouble, but you would be lacking the visual feedback that the changes you are making in direction and velocity will keep you on your intended course and avoid harm.

This question undoubtedly sounds crazy, but people are making changes to their data integration environments every day without the tools in place to visualize the environment and to tell them the impact of proposed changes.

There are good tools available today to help with this problem.

Metadata Management

The first thing you would need to manage a complex data integration environment, is a visual map of where the data is coming from, how it is flowing through the system, and what targets are using that data.  Metadata Management tools, such as Informatica Metadata Manager, provide connectors to automatically collect metadata from repositories, Business Intelligence tools, data modeling tools and Informatica PowerCenter.  That data is then presented as a visual map of the data integration environment.  Having a good map is an important starting point.

Good metadata management tools can also tell you the impact of proposed changes to your data integration environment before you implement them.

That’s the technical side of metadata.  It’s all about gaining the visibility to see and manage what is going on in your data integration environment.

Business Glossary

On the business side of metadata, there are products such as Informatica Business Glossary, which business term owners use to create, document, and publish business terms.  These terms become the common vocabulary of the business.

The business vocabulary can then be linked with the underlying technical metadata  to enhance the quality of communication between the business and IT sides of the enterprise.

  • How many of your projects have suffered delays as your staff struggled to simply agree on the definition of a business term?
  • How many projects have failed because of a lack of a common vocabulary to use between business and IT?  Many studies (including Gartner) have shown this to be a major cause of IT project failure.

The business side of metadata is all about building a common vocabulary to improve collaboration, reduce mis-communication, and speed up project delivery.

For more of an introduction to metadata, see the Informatica  Chalk Talk: Getting the Most out of Your Data Integration with Metadata Manager & Business Glossary.

For many people, metadata can sound a bit esoteric and complicated.  But, ask yourself this; Would you get on that bike blindfolded?

Who Needs Metadata?

Consider this situation: Would you try to ride a bicycle blindfolded? You could probably pump the pedals and steer without trouble, but you would be lacking the visual feedback that the changes you are making in direction and velocity will keep you on your intended course and avoid harm.

This question undoubtedly sounds crazy, but people are making changes to their data integration environments every day without the tools in place to visualize the environment and to tell them the impact of proposed changes.

There are good tools available today to help with this problem.

Metadata Management

The first thing you would need to manage a complex data integration environment, is a visual map of where the data is coming from, how it is flowing through the system, and what targets are using that data.  Metadata Management tools, such as Informatica Metadata Manager, provide connectors to automatically collect metadata from repositories, Business Intelligence tools, data modeling tools and Informatica PowerCenter.  That data is then presented as a visual map of the data integration environment.  Having a good map is an important starting point.

Good metadata management tools can also tell you the impact of proposed changes to your data integration environment before you implement them.

That’s the technical side of metadata.  It’s all about gaining the visibility to see and manage what is going on in your data integration environment.

Business Glossary

On the business side of metadata, there are products such as Informatica Business Glossary, which business term owners use to create, document, and publish business terms.  These terms become the common vocabulary of the business.

The business vocabulary can then be linked with the underlying technical metadata  to enhance the quality of communication between the business and IT sides of the enterprise.

  • How many of your projects have suffered delays as your staff struggled to simply agree on the definition of a business term?
  • How many projects have failed because of a lack of a common vocabulary to use between business and IT?  Many studies (including Gartner) have shown this to be a major cause of IT project failure.

The business side of metadata is all about building a common vocabulary to improve collaboration, reduce mis-communication, and speed up project delivery.

For more of an introduction to metadata, see the Informatica  Chalk Talk: Getting the Most out of Your Data Integration with Metadata Manager & Business Glossy.

For many people, metadata can sound a bit esoteric and complicated.  But, ask yourself this; Would you get on that bike?


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Categories : Business Glossary, Metadata Management, Uncategorized

Time For Some Changes

4 09 2011

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, I am about to make a change in focus.  You might have notices that I have not written a lot in the past couple of months.  A few months back I took a Product Marketing job at Informatica (Data Integration).  There, I’m responsible for the product marketing of two fairly-technical products aimed at a technical audience of data integration experts:

  • Informatica Metadata Manager & Business Glossary.  I will write a lot more about this subject, but for now let’s say that MM&BG gives you the visibility and control needed to manage a complex data integration environment. In particular, it is very useful in helping to manage change in that environment.  Simple changes often run afoul of unseen cross-dependencies.  A simple change can cause a ripple-effect of unintended consequences across you data integration environment.  The results can be bad data and bad business decisions.
  • Informatica Data Validation Option.  DVO is a tool to test and verify data after it has been moved or transformed.  It’s a way to detect and prevent damage to the data .
The interesting thing is that the blog has kept up its readership very well without any new content!
This blog has always focused a great deal on social media and the application of social media to the marketing of technology products.  That will continue.  Only now, it will be a lot more personal as I apply social media best practices to my two products at Informatica.
I have had some conversations with people recently who do not see how social media applies in this space.   A lot of people see social media as a way to reach vast audiences.  But, social medial marketing is also really good at “Long Tail” maketing — reaching small, scattered, but well-defined markets.  This also is a topic that I will be exploring in upcoming blogs.
Up next, a few blogs on metadata.  Who needs it and what does it do for me?

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Categories : Business Glossary, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Metadata Management, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Technology

So, You Want to Hire a Community Manager

31 01 2011


You have the beginnings of your social media marketing strategy going for your business and now it is time to hire a Community Manager to run it all.  That all sounds pretty straightforward.

The problem is, most of the job postings I see for these positions say something like: “We are looking for a social media God who knows all about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, etc., etc.,”  The more advanced postings say something like; “Proven track record of delivering measureable marketing results through social media-driven campaigns.”

Being a good Community Manager is far more than having 500 Twitter followers, a deep knowledge of the latest “bright, shiny thing” in Social Media, or even a track record of running some successful campaigns.  This is a good start but not nearly enough to ensure long term success.

Your Community Manager is an extension of your company brand. This person is the human face that will interact with your customers, probably more than anybody else in your company.  Think of them as your company’s Colonel Sanders, only one that actually talks to your customers on a daily basis.

Sticking with the Colonel Sanders / fried chicken business analogy for a minute, picture what happens to your business in these scenarios:

  • Your Community Manager decides to leave for another more interesting (to them) job at another company.  It is their identity that your customers associate with your brand.
  • It becomes obvious over time that your Community Manager, while good at social media marketing, never had any real passion for the fried chicken business and doesn’t actually know much about fried chicken
  • Or, worst of all, your community manager likes your fried chicken ok, but has no empathy for your customers, their issues, or their concerns.

It’s time to stop thinking of Community Managers as social media Gods and think hard about them as extensions of your brand.  Sure, you want your Community Manager to know social media marketing, to know how to run campaigns that deliver measurable results, but there is more.  It is time to start thinking of Community Managers in terms of:

  • How long are they likely to stay in the job?  Or, with the company?
  • Do they really have a passion for your product or service?
  • Are they effective evangelists for your product or service? (Or, do they just pass product questions off to other people?)
  • Do they have a deep and genuine connection with your customers?
  • Do they provide read value to your customers in their interactions?
  • Are they going to stay around long enough to be measured on the effectiveness of the campaigns they are proposing or are they going to be off to the next cool thing?

There is always a lot of hype around any new technology and social media is no exception.  For serious business users of social media marketing and campaigns, the core values still apply.  Social Media gives us great new tools for creating genuine two-way relationships with our communities, but we still have to do the hard work of building and growing the relationships.


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Categories : Enterprise Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Social Media Strategy: Collaborate Internally Before You Attempt to Collaborate Externally

28 01 2011

Last night, I attended a talk/interview with Brian Solis at Clearvale Second Floor.  It turns out that Brian is a very good speaker and quite interesting.  He touched on a wide variety of social media topics, but I wanted to zero in on one.

Everybody in the social media world says that you have to be sure to have a clear strategy and objectives before you dive into social media (and make a fool of yourself).  Yet, when I look around I see companies everywhere that have Twitter and Facebook presences for no apparent reason.  The Big Question is: WHY should I Friend/Follow you?  What are you doing that is interesting or relevant to me?  It is unclear in many cases.

Or worse, I see companies with fundamentally horrible customer service trying to put a social media veneer on the problem.  Comcast Cares is a good example.  Mention the name “Comcast” in any group gathering and everybody will groan.  The good-intentioned people at Comcast Cares are doing their best, but until Comcast fixes their internal problems, starting with their culture, nothing will really improve.

So, where do you start to build your Social Media strategy?

Brian made the excellent point last night that it should start within.  You can’t collaborate with your customer, prospective customers, partners, friends, etc. until you have strong, constructive, two-way engagement with your own employees.  Ask yourself these questions:

  • Are all of your employees passionate about your product or service?
  • Are all of your employees passionate about making your customers successful?
  • Are all of your employees capable of evangelizing your product or service?  (Think Norstrom or Zappos.com).
  • Do your employees know how to listen?  Do they have the skills to engage in a two-way relationship?
  • Does your Marketing Department know how to bring a customer issue to Customer Service and follow it through to complete customer satisfaction?

The point is that if you do not have the internal engagement with your employees and if they are not empowered to collaborate creatively with each other to solve problems, then you are probably not ready to go out and engage with your customers via social media.

A key thing to remember when you are setting up your Facebook, Twitter, and other social media presences is that no matter what strategy and goals you have (and you should have them) you also need to be ready to get customer feedback.  …and you will get it. I promise.

The point is not to avoid negative customer feedback.  The point is to show the community that you are listening and responsive.  Dealing with a negative situation in a constructive way can be a powerful relationship-builder.  Does your social media team know how to do this?

 

 

 

 

Brian Solis recently published the book Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success on the New Web.  I am currently reading this and recommend it.  It is fairly B2B focused and highly practical in its approach.

Clearvale Second Floor runs an excellent speaker series, with a focus on B2B social media. It is free of charge and if you are in the San Francisco Bay area, I recommend it.  For more information.

 

 


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Categories : Enterprise Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Social Media and Customer Service

30 12 2010

Talking to people at holiday parties, this subject keeps coming up: Why would anybody use social media for a customer service issue?  Doesn’t it make more sense to contact customer service directly?

Not in my experience.  Have you ever had one of these situations happen to you?

  • Called a computer manufacturer’s support line because of networking problems only to have the customer support representative tell me with great solemnity that “Your computer is not compatible with the Internet.”  I got the rep’s name and told him that I was going to quote him on this and he still insisted that my PC was not compatible with the Internet.  (What training do they give these people???)
  • Called a different manufacturer about problems with another PC.  I had run diagnostics that showed that my PC was not booting because of memory hardware problems.  The service rep insisted that he could not authorize replacing my memory unless I first wiped and re-installed my operating system — and everything else on the computer.  I argued with him for hours and could not get him to budge on this issue.  (I resolved this one by writing a letter directly to the CEO of the company, which by the way, became famous for its poor customer service.)
  • Another time, I was having trouble with email.  The customer service rep for my service provider told me that the problem was that I was sending attachments too big for their email server to handle.  I went so non-linear that my family is still laughing about it.  It turns out that I was the Product Manager for that particular email server and I knew it’s exact specifications.  I had worked for the company that sold them the email server and had been personally and directly involved in the sale and installation of the software.
  • Most recently, changes at my service provider caused my email client to stop working.  When I asked them to fix it (and it took hours to get to the right person) he told me that he knew what the fix was but would not fix my problem because they did not support email clients, only Web clients.  I argued that they had caused the problem, but it was to no avail.  He was prepared to argue with me for hours when it would have cost his company far less money to just give me the fix.

Believe me, I am not making this stuff up.  I could never imagine this level of insanity going on in any professionally-run organization.  When a customer service organization reaches a certain size, Dilbertian behavior somehow becomes the norm.  There is something about the goal-setting process and poor training that results in this type of behavior.

So, why do people take their customer service problems to Twitter and Facebook?  On the surface, it does not seem to make sense.  Why blast your problem out in a broadcast to thousands of people when it would seem to be more efficient to handle it one-on-one with a trained customer service agent.  Here is why people use social media for service issues:

  1. Customer Service agents behave differently when the eyes of the world are on them. One-on-one they can and do say the most outrageous things to you. Before the eyes of the social media community, they need to be much more careful.  A mistake like any of the ones above could cause a viral firestorm on social media and severely damage the reputation of the company.  The stakes for the company are much higher on a stage that big.
  2. Customer Service agents on Social Media appear to be better trained. In my experience, customer service agents who handle social media are much more thoroughly trained, not just on technical issues, but in common sense and on social interaction skills.  Dealing with one giant telco who has a deep and well-earned reputation for poor customer service, I found the telephone support people to be worthless.  On the other hand, the Twitter support people were helpful, knew their stuff, and quite willing to fix the problem.  The telephone support was so bad,that I documented the entire experience, tracked down the VP of WorldWide Customer Support, and sent her a letter detailing the situation.  It took a month to get a response from her.  In the meantime, their Twitter support team had solved my problem cheerfully within 48 hours.

Culturally, I see some people struggling with these issues.  For some it seems like “bad manners” or something to broadcast a product issue out in a one-to-many fashion.  At the end of the day, you have to use what works and my experience is that social medial support channels just plain work better.  Why wast literally hours arguing on the phone when you can get a quick fix on Social Media?

The worldwide transparency of Social Media makes customer service organizations bring their A-Games. No enterprise wants to attract the Roving Eye of Sauron.


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Advice for Software Startups 2011

16 12 2010

As we head into 2011, the business picture for startups is continuing to improve steadily.  Around San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the startup “buzz” is reaching levels not seen in a long time.  Funding continues to grow, cautiously. The cost of launching a startup is falling.  The end game remains a bit cloudy: The vast majority of startups plan to exit by selling themselves to a larger company.  Here are my thoughts for 2011, with a particular emphasis on software startups.  (See also Silicon Valley Startup Investing Trends blog posting.)

Start With Non-traditional Funding. Angel funding in particular are gaining strength and with the lower financial barriers to getting a startup going, in many cases the Angel round can be enough for many startups to achieve escape velocity.  Also consider the investment arms of larger companies.  This is particularly true in CleanTech and BioTech but there are large companies that will invest in software startups as well.  VC funding is out there, but you need to have a running application with a vibrant and active community before seeking funding.

Build & Deploy in the Cloud. Startups can build and deploy  services in the cloud for much less up-front money.  Using platforms such as Amazon EC2, Salesforce.com, Heroku (acquired), Google, IBM, and even Facebook. The financial benefits  of the cloud will mean a much lower barrier to entry for new companies.  It has gotten to the point where nobody in their right mind would fund a startup that built their own datacenter.  Even if your plan is to have your own data center for competitive differentiation reasons, it still makes sense to start on the cloud first, test the viability of your idea, and then invest further.

Have a Plan to be #1 or #2 or Forget It. Geoffrey Moore spelled this out in his book, “The Gorilla Game” and it has never been more true.  With the speed of Internet innovation and the lowered barriers to entry, markets mature and consolidate faster than ever before.  The only companies who typically make money are the top two players.  Special exception: Sometimes it is possible to carve out a profitable niche market and defend it.  Think hard about the barriers to entry are in this market and prepare to defend them if this is the path you chose.  Niche Example: Security products and services in the U.S. Medical market requires specific  expertise in HIPAA privacy rules.

Solve a Specific Problem for a Specific  Customer. A lot of people are in love with the idea of “ship it, listen to your customers, and iterate.” That approach only works if you are the market innovator or a market leader.  In a crowded market  or when you are coming from behind, that approach does not work.  You must have a clear business value proposition and clear market differentiation to separate you from the rest of the pack.  Actually, that is good advice for every startup.  Example: Zynga found specific and unmet customer needs around social gaming.

Plan Your “End Game” Carefully. IPOs remain unlikely in the current economic conditions for all but the very most successful startups (Groupon, for example).

  • Be clear about what your end game is.  If it is to sell to a larger company, make sure that this is built into your business plan, that your core team knows it, and this goal is prioritized correctly.
  • Be clear about who your target buyers are and how you plan to position your startup to them.
  • Never only have one target buyer.  You always need a backup plan, even if it is just for bargaining leverage.  When you say you are willing to walk away from the table, you had better be willing to do just that – which means you have to have a Plan B.

Have a Community Plan.  Most startups with a social element to the offer will have some aspect of community to them.  The question is, where will you get your community?

  • Build Your Own: This is very hard to do if you are trying to build a large generalized community.  Even Google is struggling with this.
  • Specialize: Some topics are not for everybody to hear.  There may be ways to build community for specialized topics like neurosurgery, cloud computing, or startups. The challenge will be to offer a significant enough incentive to make it worth people’s time to create another online identity and profile.
  • Borrow One: You can build your service on the Facebook platform, for example.  This gives you an instant community of 600 million users, but comes with significant constraints and risks.

People Count. A lot of startups I talk to spend all their time thinking about innovative and cool ideas.  That’s a good start but, when it comes to getting Series A or Series B funding, the quality of your core team count for as much or more than your business idea.  Why is that?  See the next item below.

Listen & Iterate. Lots of startups launch, listen to their customers, and find out that they need to change their business direction.  Sometimes radically. Thanks to Agile Development techniques (example: SCRUM) and cloud platforms, many startups are able to make the changes required if they are listening to their customers.  The good news is that customers will happily tell you what they want and where you are screwing up, if you listen.  Social media makes that customer interaction even faster and more powerful.  Your customers generally will want you to succeed and will try to help you to do so.  Another key lesson here is not to go too far down the path on v2.0 until you have listened to and completely internalized the customer feedback from v1.0.  Everybody in your organization has to be listening after the release of v1.0 — and that includes the development team.

Low Barriers to Entry for You Means the Same For Your Competition. The good news is that you can get your startup operating and competing for a lot less capital investment.  The bad news is that your competitors can too.  So, the question is: How are you going to stay out in front of them?

  • Out-grow: Grow faster than your competitors and leave no breathing room in your target market.  For example: Facebook is in a dominant position just because of the sheer size of their community.  Users are fatigued with creating and managing multiple online profiles.  A startup that asks users to create a new one is facing a serious uphill battle in 2011. That does even for a competitor as powerful as Google.
  • Out-innovate. Listen to customers better, and provide more value that way.
  • Specialize: Carve out a niche and defend it by catering to the specific needs of the market.

Partner. There are a lot of good reasons to partner. The important thing is that if you are serious about the partnership then you have to staff them.  Partnerships managed by busy people in their “spare time” almost never work out.  Partnership goals include:

  • Whole Products: Partners can help you to fill in the gaps in your product and deliver a “whole product” or solution to your target customer, not just technology.
  • Apparent size: Small fish swim in schools to look like a bigger entity to larger predators. Partnering can make you look more viable.
  • Ideas: Partnering with other startups can help just through shared experience and ideas.
  • Market Access: Larger partners can help you get into markets. Just don’t look at them as sales channels for your products.  You have to bring value to the table and that usually means qualified customer leads and/or a way to make their products more competitive in the marketplace.
  • Your End Game: Build a relationship that may grow into something deeper.  Like acquisition. In many cases, it makes sense to partner first to test out the relationship before buying the company.

Right now, most of the software startup action is in social media and mobile applications.  That doesn’t mean there isn’t opportunity elsewhere, it is just that the path of least funding resistance is here.  With all the “action” concentrated in this space, it makes it all the more important to have clear market differentiation.

A couple of years ago, the advice to software startups would have been to develop offshore (to reduce costs) and to open source your software (to position it as open).  These two things are no longer flat requirements  for funding but can be useful tactics if they make sense for your business.

Best Wishes for 2011!


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Categories : Business Models, Cloud Computing, Social Media, Startup Funding, Startups

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