This review is based on Ken Hilburn's article published in December 2008 on the Juice Analytics website. The author noted that the trigger for writing the article was a request from one of his clients to provide their business team with the ability to run ad-hoc reports. This request made him wonder whether the ability to generate ad-hoc reports is necessary to make non-analyst users work more effectively. In his article, the author presents five stages of maturity that knowledge workers go through in their attempts to become more efficient in consuming and acting on existing information. This article reviews the stages while addressing the dimensions of breadth (how comprehensive should the coverage of all required information be), depth (how deep should the understanding of the information being discussed be), accessibility (how easy is it to access the required information), who is the typical user of the analysis method, and what are the signs that the organization is already mature and can move to the next stage.
Stage 1: Tribal Elders: Getting Answers from Experts
At this stage, the organization relies exclusively on the expertise of one or two employees who use their business wisdom to obtain information. These people, whom we'll call tribal elders, have usually been with the company for a long time and "have seen it all." These tribal elders can run all the information in their minds and make good decisions based on their analyses. At this stage, where analytical reports do not yet exist, the expert constantly observes the environment and acts in the best possible way based on their interpretation. This stage ends when the business becomes more complex through growth, market conditions diversification, or following the expert's departure from the organization. Suddenly, managers find themselves in a situation where they cannot make decisions at the desired speed, and the expert's exclusive and enormous knowledge, which was previously a source of strength, now becomes a burden.
Stage 2: Static Reports
An organization reaches the second stage, concluding that it can no longer rely solely on tribal elders. At this stage, organization employees begin to prepare a list of all the questions that regularly occupy them. They use this list to build reports that can answer these questions. The limitation of this stage is that tribal elders still need to answer questions that fall outside the standard range of "questions I know to ask." The beginning of the end of this stage occurs when an unforeseen event happens, and it dramatically and negatively affects business performance. The logical question arises, "Why didn't we anticipate this?" and is immediately followed by the answer, "We didn't have the information." The organization begins after this point to transition to the third activity stage.
Stage 3: Larger Static Reports
Once the organization understands that it needs answers to questions it doesn't yet know, it produces various combinations of variables on all its information. It distributes the reports to "those who need to know" regularly. In many cases, an analytical team is established whose job is to manage requests from the business side for additional information. In some cases, existing reports can be adapted to user requests, but for the most part, new reports are created. The analytical team works hard to maintain the flow of information for individual requests to provide all the information that consumers will ever require. The main disadvantage of this stage is its expression through very long reports of dozens or hundreds of pages. The report, a kind of "Oracle of Delphi," appears in your inbox. For a while, there was excitement about the "I never knew I could get all this information" kind. However, people quickly realize where the answers to their questions are, and they look at the lines they need and leave the rest of the information "for later review" (meaning, of course, that the report will find its way to the recycling bin...)
Stage 4: Ad-hoc Reports: Answer Your Questions
The current stage begins when several people receive the 124-page report and realize that "if only I could filter the information, I could better understand the questions that concern me." This understanding leads the organization to provide its end users with the ability to create ad-hoc reports. Now, users can build reports tailored to their needs and answer unique questions about the information. However, this stage is not without its "traps." The first trap is that although users know what questions must be asked, they ask the wrong questions. The second trap is that most people in this situation are business-oriented and not technical.
In most cases, the tool provided requires too much technical skill for businesspeople to overcome and use efficiently. The third trap is that even if users know how to access the information they need, they lack the analytical skills to interpret and make it usable. These three obstacles result in users becoming "analytically paralyzed" or simply giving up.
Stage 5: Experienced Guide: Answers to Questions You Should Know
To overcome the obstacle where a lot of information is available only to technical users, mature organizations provide solutions that allow discovering and interpreting information to be accessible to those who influence business performance (in other words, everyone involved in the process). These solutions do not focus on technology or data but provide information that quickly translates into practical actions. The results are presented in a way that allows access to the correct information by guiding the user through the process so they can answer known questions for themselves, discover new questions worth asking, and explore what the answers to these questions are. This stage can be likened to a tour you would take on a safari trip. The skilled guide will make sure you can see the animals you came to see in the first place but will also show you interesting things along the way that you didn't initially think about. You might even discover something unique and exciting that you didn't even know existed. Good information tools are just like a safari guide. The unfortunate part about "experienced guide" type information tools is that so few are currently on the market. The positive point is that we are seeing more and more knowledge workers and decision-makers who "see the light" regarding understanding their needs for such tools. The author concludes the article by saying that as more and more organizations mature and experience the challenges of the first four stages, they will increasingly see the advantages of the fifth stage and implement solutions that help us all become more efficient information users.
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