The Link between Business Intelligence and Intelligent Furniture

By Alex Berry

Into yet another boardroom meeting; members shuffling in, wishing they had prepared for the grilling. Discussions commence with deep-seated questions flooding the floor; blank faces prove the fact that preparation is either failure to plan or a luxury many still do not have.

Steering the corporation is getting easier though, because key business data is being aggregated and analysed faster than ever and generating more detailed management information and business intelligence that is supposed to support business operations.

Managers are digesting more than they ever have in order to answer to their superiors - who in turn answer to theirs. Meanwhile, back in the boardroom, the same questions loom and the faces responding are no doubt in danger of repeating themselves.

Divested & Diluted Responsibility

The common hierarchical structure of large organisations makes management targets slow and inefficient to achieve. The structure implies that the further down the hierarchy one goes, the greater the divestment and dilution of responsibility – thus creating chains of overhead communication within management because the responsibility itself generally lies elsewhere. Ring a bell?

Those who thought they had it, quickly find out they don’t. Those that do have it generally find they don’t have all of it. So it takes a while to traverse the path to sanction or approve an item, because that’s the way it is in some large corporations. Apart from the repetitive and inefficient nature of modern management of such, the fact is, the responsibility and the sense of urgency also seems to become greatly divested the further down the hierarchy that one looks.

I guess some people come to expect that – and perhaps – are comfortable with life that competes with snail mail?

The Conch

For those who remember the conch shell in The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, you'll remember the empowering effect when it was used to make a sound and when it was held when speaking.

Similarly, it seems to me that the Board represents the business version of The Conch and with it, they weald their wise ways upon the senior management below them who in turn continue the ripple effect through to the soldiers in the front-line.

How many corporations instil the sense of urgency to focus on and achieve the right results is clear then - it's hierarchical. Those monthly meetings convey the sense of organisation amongst the staff and business leaders. Yet, month-on-month, behind the scenes (and sometime most visibly) people are scrambling around to compile the latest numbers for "their" respective monthly meetings and regardless of the impact they create on sub-serviant staff, they invariably end up presenting a rather rosy picture of operations - as best they can at any rate.

Thinking about how many departments, how many managers and how many monthly meetings - makes me a little curious about how large corporations run themselves. And of course, the argument is fair I guess, "that's the only way we know and therefore it's the best way" said one anonymous CEO.

Of course, not all corporations are like that are they? Some quickly adapt and embrace new techniques; they calculate risk and adamantly execute change.

The Clock

What an impact a good one can make to a room. Some clocks are such imposing items of furniture, albeit in traditional or contemporary style and just look what they do – merely inform us of the time. How we tell the time has certainly evolved over the years - from Sun Dial to Clock Face to LED-thing to Digital Watch to Mobile Phone.

So let's just consider what the clock face did for us again. Since the early 1300's, clock faces began to appear in public places. They tended to be quite large; big enough for many people to glance at and consume the time quickly and easily even at a distance. The effect of knowing the time can be remarkable for groups of people, especially when they are under pressure to meet specific deadlines.

Recent technological developments have enlarged and flattened digital screens so that they can be strategically positioned around the business.

These days, it's hard to find a screen that isn't showing the news, departmental performance, financials, a music video, DVD or a canned company presentation or even blaring out unsociable noise. The displays themselves are typically located in corporate receptions, restaurants, operational/departmental areas and boardrooms and can be, if digital, disastrously unsightly.

It's also quite common to see a row of clock faces showing World time at different international locations - and since the Clock itself has become a key part of our furniture in business as well as the home, it's no surprise that people who treasure the best, have paid over $30,000 for the pleasure.

The point is: the clock and it’s ever changing face, for all of its simplicity and over 700yrs of public use - is still helping us stay on time, work to a schedule, coordinate meetings and organise ourselves. Not only is it such a simple device but also it is so very effective at what it does. We know where it is, it is always on, it works, we all understand it and most of all and nearly all of us are capable of using it to our benefit. In my view, it was the earliest form of Intelligent Furniture.

The main differences between a clock and a corporate dashboard are that a clock is always visible, nearly always right and generally reliable.

A dashboard on the other hand is usually digital, partially visible (unless displayed or projected), only as accurate as the data feeding it and reliable to a point of trust, i.e. trusting the data that feeds it.

The thing is, if you put an ordinary clock inside a software application or corporate dashboard, one inherently understands and believes its information - perhaps not quite the case with corporate intelligence?

The process of understanding the time comes almost naturally to everyone, not so when understanding a corporate dashboard. It takes some additional tacit knowledge, therefore making the appreciating audience far smaller due to the fact that dashboards are more complex to understand relative to an ordinary clock.

Rate of Business

With businesses operating on different operational time scales, it's easy to see how one competitor can out-play another, just by being more flexible or responsive. Some work to a standard time schedule and change, act and re-act at a morbid pace, while others are much more agile and fleeter-of-foot than their contemporaries; with those in this category standing a greater chance of continued success.

The Rate of Business is the rate at which an organisation can operate against it's maximum, a bit like the RPM gauge on your car dashboard. To construct the rate of business we tend to use management information and business intelligence that will help us understand how we are doing against targets.

The rate can be established using generalised measures or ones specific to your business and as long as they can be modelled to reflect a consistent but overall view of business performance then that is the Rate of Business. It is another KPI, and once a solid definition has been agreed, it can bring a good measurement to the forefront of a business. How it is conveyed to the masses is another question. I mean; it doesn’t have the same qualities as a clock does it? Or does it?

The Rate of Business is clearly just one of many metrics that we may favour depending on what is important to us. For some, the factors involved in arriving at the metric are far more important than the metric itself.

For others, somewhere between 12-20 KPI’s is all that it takes to establish a good understanding of how well the business is performing. That may be fine for an executive but almost meaningless to staff, therefore, it is better to choose measures that can be explained and understood with great ease and if they are consistent across the enterprise then everyone can focus on the same page. When it comes to adding context and perspective, software dashboards come have their place and can produce the 2nd level of dissemination.

The Business Conch

Has a corporate dashboard or business intelligence package appeared on your computer yet? Actually - do you even have time for a computer? These software applications and dashboards are already somewhat commonplace around the enterprise today and some have propagated to the boardroom and the exec’s desktop.

Perhaps you have a browser-based version that you use to gauge how well the business is performing? They are great for keeping the finger on the pulse of performance and can be used to focus efforts in the appropriate areas. They offer us a contemporary perception of the business at a certain point in time - and they can convey much more informational value than a relatively trivial clock – right.

What you get if you combine a bespoke corporate dashboard with exclusive hand made furniture is an exclusive public display that can be used like a Conch in and around the business. Staff can appreciate the company they work for; people can better understand those that they are about to do business with.

Staff can be reminded of how things are changing around them; they can congregate to discuss the current status in an open and social way. They can also admire how the information is being presented.

The software dashboard relies on proactive user viewing, and I believe it fails to infiltrate the masses with effective one-way, unchallenged information, unlike the simple concept of a clock. It’s possible that technology has evolved so rapidly as to bypass some of the traditional and effective ways of doing things.

Indeed, many people prefer digital screens for everything; which is subjective preference. I’ve seen them in the NHS, Train Stations, Institute of Directors, Corporate Receptions, etc, and often in places where I wouldn't expect; perhaps most annoyingly, in the supermarket aisles - but that's my view.

I’m sure there’s hundreds of thousands of units in the UK alone. Super?! What the Clock does is “constantly” remind all of us of the time, what we acknowledge, is that displays should constantly and visibly remind us all of how the business is doing and it is that effect which underpins each intelligent furniture creation.

If you already have a business conch, then perhaps intelligent furniture would be redundant in your business. If you don’t, then it is quite possible your organisation could benefit from having one and intelligent furniture could be the way to go.

Clearly, I’m not advocating that it’s the only way to go, nor am I predicting a mass-market for these types of display - that's the difference between hand made and unique versus machine-automated production copies.

Alex Berry creates exclusive intelligent furniture displays. His innovative approach to humanising technology within furniture is creating a new slant on business intelligence where each unique display offers business performance comparisons and performance prediction. See http://www.corpdash.com