An Early Attempt at E2.0
In one of my first jobs in enterprise software, everyone involved with sales–sales, pre-sales, and marketing people–were able to attend formal presentation training. (One of my bad habits, which I have been able to since get under control, was pointing directly at people, by the way.)
All participants had to come up with a presentation to deliver in front of the class to be critiqued by all involved–bosses, co-workers, instructor. I don’t really recall what my presentation was about; I have a vague recollection that it had something to do with data volume. I do, however, remember Marcel Van Wingerden’s, my pre-sales boss.
In Marcel’s presentation–keep in mind this was circa 1997–he described a new feature he envisioned for our enterprise software which would enable a plant manager to be able to view the status of the entire facility at a glance. When Marcel illustrated his idea, he used the image of the plant manager hanging his coat on the door, turning on the computer, and if the plant was running well, putting his feet on his desk; if the plant wasn’t running well, the manager ended up on the plant floor, where no one wanted him to be. In his description of the computer, Marcel described gauges and graphs showing the general health of the organization under the manager’s lead. Remember this is in the days of character based client-server forms. Marcel had described a graphical dashboard before they existed.
Ten years later, we still run into organizations who struggle to implement dashboards, and it really isn’t because they are technologically difficult to create. Not having the proper technological tools, or the resources to use them, is part of the issue, but more often it is due to the data silos I have previously written about. Until an organization make the wholesale commitment to moving toward Enteprise 2.0, it might be difficult to get to the information that will enable the organization to make decisions as quickly as they’d like to.
There are, however, small steps that an organization can make which will move toward a more agile operation.
One of the small steps I came up with at FAMIS involved RSS.
A little-touted feature of most modern databases is the ability to perform SQL queries which return XML. With little effort, a relatively skilled database user can create a query which results in a well-formed XML document. Under the covers, an RSS feed is an XML document with standard elements within it. So, with a small amount of experimentation, the same database user can create an XML file which will serve as an RSS feed.
Once the query which results in the RSS feed which returns the desired information has been successfully created, it can be set up to be automated to run and create the proper file. The mechanism to automate the creation can be any number of things, from an OS script, to a stored procedure.
With the automated RSS feed generation in place, the user who would need access to the information would simply point their RSS reader to the file created by the above process. And there it is, near real-time access to critical information to help the decision making process.
So with a little effort, and no monetary expenditure, we have taken the first step toward E2.0. And while it isn’t a graph or a gauge, we have also taken the first step toward a dashboard as envisioned by Marcel. In a sense, we have taken our first bite of the elephant.
Filed under: Entperprise 2.0, FAMIS, RSS, Technology | Leave a Comment
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