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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Become a full-fledged Qlik Sense Consultant with the help of this unique guide
About This Book
- Become a successful Qlik consultant with the help of this insightful guide
- Build what is in line as well as exceeding your customer's expectations from your Qlik Sense solutions using this highly practical guide
- Build result-driven optimized BI solutions using Qlik with the help of industry examples
Who This Book Is For
If you have basic familiarity with Qlik Sense and want to upgrade your skills to become a full-fledged Qlik Consultant, this book is for you. With this book, you will be able to create efficient business intelligence solutions that would fetch client satisfaction, and in turn, more projects.
What You Will Learn
- Understand the importance and expectations of a consultant's role
- Engage with the customer to understand the ir goals and future objectives
- Design the optimum architecture, using the best practices for the development and implementation of your projects
- Ensure successful adoption using real-life examples to make your learning complete
- Learn about the important stages of a Qlik project's life cycle
In Detail
Qlik Sense is a leading platform for business intelligence (BI) solutions. Qlik Sense helps organizations in making informed decisions based on the data they have.
This book will teach you how to effectively use Qlik for optimum customer satisfaction. You will undergo a metamorphosis from a developer to a consultant who is capable of building the most suitable BI solutions for your clients. The book will take you through several business cases – this will give you enough insight to understand the needs of the client clearly and build a BI solution that meets or exceeds their expectations. Starting from the pre-project activities, you will go to the actual execution of the project, the implementation, and even maintenance. This book will give you all the information you need - from the strategy to requirement gathering to implementing BI solutions using Qlik Sense.
The book will empower you to take the right decisions in tricky and diffi cult situations while developing analytics and dashboards.
Style and approach
This book will be a hands-on guide that will teach you all the what-to-do's, when-to-do's, and how-to-do's for becoming a successful Qlik Sense Consultant.
With the help of various business scenarios, the book will cover real-world problems that you can relate to.
Various solutions in the book will be backed up by the thought process of why are these solutions used and how you can implement them in your own business environment.
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Seitenzahl: 490
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Implementing Qlik Sense
Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing
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Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: October 2017
Production reference: 1171017
ISBN 978-1-78646-044-8
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Credits
Authors
Ganapati Hegde
Kaushik Solanki
Copy Editor
Alpha Singh
Reviewers
Karl Pover
Julian Villafuerte
Project Coordinator
Manthan Patel
Commissioning Editor
Veena Pagare
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor
Tushar Gupta
Indexer
Tejal Daruwale Soni
Content Development Editor
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Graphics
Tania Dutta
Technical Editor
Danish Shaikh
Production Coordinator
Deepika Naik
About the Authors
Ganapati Hegde is an engineer by background. He carries an overall IT experience of over 16 years. He is very passionate about technology and is always looking out to learn newer technologies.
He started his IT career with SK International where he headed Software Services and worked with myriad of technologies, including programming, databases, IT security, application virtualization, and cloud services. During his stint with SK International, he was involved in lot of integration projects and thus has good knowledge on API/SDK. He was instrumental in setting up practices such as RSA, Citrix, Oracle, and Salesforce.
He is currently working with Predoole Analytics, an award winning Qlik partner in India, in the presales role. He has worked on BI projects in several industry verticals and works closely with customers, helping them in their BI strategies. His experience in other aspects of IT, like application design and development, cloud computing, networking, and IT Security, helps him to design perfect BI solutions. He conducts workshops to increase user awareness and drive adoption.
He works on analysis of unstructured time stamped data and IOT as well, allowing customer to get business insights and help improve efficiency. This is being done with the help of big data platform Khika, which does real time co-relation of log data across sources. This helps customers mitigate risk and help in IT Audit and Compliance.
Ganapati is now working on improving his knowledge of advanced analytics using technologies like R and phython.
Kaushik Solanki has been Qlik MVP(most valuable player) for years 2016 and 2017. He has been playing with Qlik technology for more than seven years. He started his career being a Qlik developer and currently works with Predoole Analytics, an elite Qlik partner in India, as Qlik Project Delivery Manager. He is also a certified Qlikview administrator.
Kaushik loves to share his experience and educate others. He is an active member of Qlik community, where he helps in solving problems.
He has a great understanding of project delivery, right from business requirement to final implementation. His experience in various domains has helped businesses to take valuable business decisions.
Kaushik is an Information technology engineer by profession. He also holds the master degree in finance.
About the Reviewers
Karl Pover is the owner and principal consultant of Evolution Consulting, which provides QlikView consulting services throughout Mexico. Since 2006, he has been dedicated to providing QlikView pre-sales, implementation, and training in more than 50 customers. He is the author of Learning QlikView Data Visualization and a Qlik Luminary since 2014. Twitter: @karlpoverLinkedIn: https://mx.linkedin.com/in/karlpoverBlog: http://poverconsulting.com/First and foremost, thanks to my wife, Pamela. I owe you several long weekends.Thanks to the team at Evolution Consulting, especially to Julian Villafuerte, Carlos Reyes, and Jaime Aguilar for taking on more responsibility. A special thanks to Julian for taking the time to review the final version of the book, and Alejandro Morales for helping me to develop a few extensions. As always, thanks to my parents, Judy and Bill, for their love and support throughout my life.
Julian Villafuerte is a founding member of Evolution Consulting, a Mexican firm which provides QlikView consulting services throughout the Americas. Since 2010, he has helped several companies to define effective strategies for data management and business analysis. As a consultant, he has worked in application development, project management, pre-sales, and training for many industries, including retail, manufacturing, and insurance. In October 2015, he published Creating Stunning Dashboards with QlikView, a practical handbook focused on developing useful and engaging analytical applications. He has a Master’s degree in Information Technology Management and teaches at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico City. Recently, he has started a blog called QlikFreak (https://qlikfreak.wordpress.com/), where he shares tips and tricks about data visualization, scripting, and best practices.
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Table of Contents
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who is this book for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the example code
Errata
Piracy
Questions
Consultant - An Introduction
Understanding who is a consultant
Importance of being a consultant
Difference between a developer and consultant
Roles and responsibilities of a consultant
Roles of a consultant
Interacting with business users
Understanding the data sources
Setting the expectations correctly
Designing the perfect solution
Plan the Go-live
Plan for the future road-map
Responsibilities of a consultant
Doing value adds
Documentation
Implementing best practices
User Acceptance and Training (UAT)
Post Go-live
Strategy that a consultant should follow
Size of the company
What system do they use currently?
Why do they want a new system?
What are the objectives and goals?
Are the stakeholders identified?
Is there a project champion?
What are the data sources?
Is the data clean?
Future road map
Summary
Preparing for the Project
Knowing about the company
Understanding the existing landscape
Existing data sources
Customer Relation Management
Help desk applications
Human resource systems
Enterprise Resource Planning
Social media
Data warehouses
Miscellaneous
Existing BI systems
Manual reporting
Traditional BI tools
Next generation tools
Understanding the need for change
Challenges with manual reporting
Challenges with traditional reporting
Challenges with new age tools
Understanding organizational hierarchy
What you need to study and prepare
Identifying your champion
Summary
Prerequisites to Start a Project
Understanding business process
Looking at the sales function
Business to business
Direct sales
Indirect sales
Business to consumer
Direct sales
Indirect sales
Mixed mode
Product companies
Services companies
Product and services mix
New age companies
Understanding finance
Financial planning
Spend analytics
Cash flow management
Profitability analysis
Risk and compliance
Understanding human resources
Hiring and on-boarding
Reward management
Workforce management
Training and development
Understanding supply chain management
Material sourcing
Forecasting and planning
Production
Warehouse
Transportation
Material returns
Others
Understanding marketing
Understanding information technology
Understanding procurement
Gathering brief requirements
Brief project scope
Planning risk and its mitigation
Identifying risk
Evaluating the risk
Plan of action to tackle risk
Control and monitor
Documentation
Example
Summary
Requirement Gathering
Understanding requirement gathering
Importance of requirement gathering
Focused deliverables
Project timelines
Resource planning, roles, and responsibility
Milestone and task definitions
Success criteria
Executing requirement gathering
Functional requirement gathering
Technical requirement gathering
Infrastructural requirement gathering
Brainstorming
Requirement workshops
Document analysis
Reverse engineering
Questionnaires
Must have, should have, and good to have strategies
Must have requirements
Should have requirements
Good to have requirements
Questionnaires
Functional questions
Sales module
Technical questions (database)
Technical questions (non-database)
Must ask information
Business objective
Current business challenges
Success criteria
Key stakeholders
Common mistakes in requirement gathering
Lack of business understanding
Assumptions
Communication problems
No participation in meeting
No recurring conversations
Gap analysis
Documentation
Sign off
Authentication and authorization
Documentation
Front page
Introduction page
Introduction to document
Scope of the document
Assumptions and constraints
Meetings held
Abbreviations used in documentation
Requirement category
Functional requirement
Business use case
KPIs
Dimensions
Functionality requirement
Current reporting data flow
Data sources
Tables and fields listing
Other logic and mappings
Visualization requirement
Authorization requirement
Risk and mitigation plan
User acceptance
Example
Summary
Architecture Design
An introduction and importance
Parameters for infrastructure design
Hardware infrastructure
RAM (Random Access Memory)
CPU (Central Processing Unit)
HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
Number of concurrent Users
Number of Applications
Things to remember
Example calculation
Software infrastructure
Operating system
Microsoft office
Microsoft .NET Framework
Relevant ODBC/OLEDB Drivers
Qlik connectors
PostgreSQL
Security infrastructure
Network infrastructure
Hardware and software requirements
Installation architecture
Node
Site
Single node architecture
Multi node architecture
Qlik sense repository database
Synchronized persistence
Shared persistence
Backup and restore design
DR (Disaster Recovery) server setup
Physical backup
Applications
Application data
Log files
Qlik Sense certificates
Repository database
Example Scenario
Hardware requirements
Calculation
Software requirements
Security requirements
Network requirements
User access requirement
Installation architecture
Backup and recovery
Data architecture
QVF
QVD
Parameters of data architecture
Data source
Business logics
Frequency
QVD Tier Architecture
One Tier
Two tier architecture
Three tire architecture
QVF Architecture
Two Tier QVF Architecture
Three tier QVF architecture
Hybrid architecture
Example case study
Data Sources
Business logic
Frequency
Data flow diagrams
External entity
Process
Data store
Data flow
Example of creating a DFD
Summary
Development
Data extraction process
Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL)
Extract
Full Load
Incremental Load
Building Data Model
Common challenges of Data modeling
Synthetic Keys
Removing the Fields
Renaming the Fields
Concatenate
Link Table
Circular Reference
Multiple Fact tables with different Granularity
Match the granularity
Generic Keys
Script Management
Separate Code
Comments
Naming Conventions
Best Practices in Data Modeling
Data modeling Validation
Row Count
Field Meta Data
Security Strategy
Visualization Strategy
Choices of Objects
Use of Extensions
Visualization best practices
Story Telling
Finding the insights for the story
Creating the story
Adding the Screenshots
Adding Text
Add shapes
Add effect library
Add images
Add sheets
Story presentation
Sharing the story
Summary
Validation, UAT and Go-Live
Introduction and importance
Data validation
Data type
Null values
Duplicate values
Script validation
Business logic validation
Visualization validation
Chart type validation
Dimensions and expression validation
Business flow validation
Performance validation
User acceptance testing
Go-Live Strategy
Summary
Post Go-Live
Adoption strategy
User training
Train the trainer
Qlik Sense Administration training
Training Process
A single long training
Multiple short trainings
Training Methodology
User Manual
Technical document
Administration
Product Usage
Functional document
FAQs
Top management use
Videos
Technical Videos
Functional videos
Maintenance strategy
Application performance
Upgrade infrastructure
Application optimization
Review visualization
How much data to keep
On-demand app generation
Data quality check
New updates and versions
Source changes
Auditing strategy
Documentation
Summary
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
The art of listening
Importance of documentation
Avoiding Over-Committing
Preparing for the Unexpected
Avoiding last minute surprises
Missed timelines
Infrastructure
People changing
Data Validation Issues
Hand-holding
Summary
Knowledge Sets
Getting to know Insurance
Insured
Insurance Companies
General Insurance
Life insurance
Re-Insurer
Terms frequently used in insurance
Insurance organization
Distribution
Sales
Marketing
Service (Post Sales)
Front Office
Product Management
Underwriting
Investments
Operations
Policy Administration
Claims Processing
Back office
Finance
Collections
Risk
HR
IT
Analytics
KPIs which are used in Insurance
Use cases in insurance
Sales performance
Marketing Performance
Investments
Risk
Underwriting and Claims
BI/IT/Reporting
Knowing Pharmaceuticals and Life-sciences
Vendors
Pharmaceutical company
Distributors
Pharmacy
Online pharmacies
Doctors/Physicians
End consumer (patient)
Terms frequently used in pharmaceutical industry
API
Batch Processing
Brand Name
Continuous Processing
Expiry
FDA
Generics
KOL
New Drug Application
OTC
Primary Sales
Secondary Sales
Tertiary Sales
Therapeutic Areas
Pharma organization
Sales
Marketing
Finance
SCM
Research and development
IT/Reporting
Manufacturing/Distribution
HR/Training
Clinical
KPIs which are looked at by Pharma industry
Use Cases in Pharma
Sales and marketing
Executive management
Supply Chain Management
Finance
Human resources
Knowing Retail
Retail organization
Sales
Marketing
Finance
IT/HR/Analytics
Merchandising
Supply Chain Management
Summary
A Real Life Case-Study
Introduction to Adventure Works
Preparation
Studying AWC Website
Understanding the Business Process
Getting to know Organization Hierarchy
Identifying Business Champion
Understanding the existing system and landscape
Understanding Business Challenges
Gathering Business Requirements
Defining approach and solution architecture
Execution of project
Extraction
Extraction in our example
Data modeling
Dashboard
Story
Post Go-Live Steps
Summary
Preface
Implementing Qlik Sense is a book intended for readers who wish to do a great project implementation on Qlik Sense. This book will give readers all the information, right from strategy to requirement gathering to implementing BI solution using Qlik Sense. Various scenarios in the book will empower the readers to take right decisions in tricky and difficult situations while developing analytical dashboards.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Consultant – An Introduction: This chapter will give the readers an understanding about what is consultancy, how it differs from being a developer, and the importance of consultancy in making a project successful. The readers will learn about what they are supposed to do as consultants, the importance of their role in making a project successful, expectations that are there from a consultant, and the roles they need to play.
Chapter 2, Preparing for the Project: This chapter will give the readers an understanding about how to prepare for a project and the homework they need to do. The readers will learn about the initial homework they need to do, how to understand the customer better, and how to accordingly plan the strategy. The readers will also understand what is expected from a consultant and the roles they need to play being consultants.
Chapter 3, Prerequisites to start a Project: This chapter will enlist the various aspects needed to start a project. It will help to understand the various aspects along with their importance, and the tactics to handle them. The readers will learn about the important aspect of starting the project which is often missed and can lead to failure of project. They will also learn about scoping the project along with learning about documentation and its importance.
Chapter 4, Requirement Gathering: The focus of this chapter is to start the project execution with requirement gathering. Requirement gathering plays an important role in successful project execution. The take away for the readers from this chapter will be the tactics about requirement gathering and getting acquainted with the common mistakes which are done by most of the developers and project managers while executing this phase of a project.
Chapter 5, Architecture Design: This chapter is about architecture design where the focus will be to design infrastructure architecture and data architecture. This chapter will teach the readers about the importance of architecture design and the various aspects which will help to design architecture. The chapter will touch upon strategies to be used to ensure easy scaling and expansion.
Chapter 6, Development: This chapter talks about the actual execution of a project, where business requirement starts taking shape in form of dashboards and interactive analysis. The readers will learn the best practices of data modeling and visualization. They will also learn about handling tricky situations in this phase in an effective manner.
Chapter 7, Validation, UAT and Go Live: This chapter will focus on data validation and visualization validation. The chapter will help the readers understand how validation can be done quickly and how to ensure that the dashboard displays correct results. The readers will take away the skills to perform validation of the data as well as visualization. They will learn about the way to conduct the UAT with the business users and take the project to Go-live Stage.
Chapter 8, Post Go-Live: This chapter will teach the readers about the post Go-live activities which are required to make a project successful. It will talk about the adoption strategies, maintenance, auditing and documentation. The readers will learn about the importance of post Go-live activities and how they can make a difference to make project successful.
Chapter 9, Avoiding Common Pitfalls: This chapter will teach the readers about the most common mistakes and the steps to avoid them. They will learn about the importance of post Go-live activities and how they can make a difference to make a project successful.
Chapter 10, Knowledge Sets: This chapter will make the readers aware about some of the domain terminologies. It is important for any developer to have a basic understanding of domain. The readers will learn about the importance of various modules under each domain, which will help them to provide value added services to their customers, to improve customer satisfaction.
Chapter 11, A real life case-study: This chapter will make the readers understand how to apply the earlier learnt concepts in a real-life scenario. The names used in the chapter are not real but scenarios are real. The chapter will make the readers go through a real-life example to understand the challenges faced and the ways to handle them.
What you need for this book
The examples provided in the chapter will require you to have Qlik Sense Desktop installed on your PC. The Qlik Sense Desktop is a free software available for download from Qlik web site. The software runs on 64 bit Windows 7, 8.1, or 10 operating system. Recommended config is 4GB Ram or more with Intel i3 or higher processor.
The examples provided use Microsoft Access database. The user just needs Microsoft Access odbc driver to connect to the mdb file from Qlik Sense Desktop.
Who is this book for
This book contains guidelines for Qlik Sense developers who wish to become Qlik Sense consultants and ensure successful project implementations and drive greater adoption. The readers are advised to know the basics of Qlik Sense, starting from installation to basic configuration, like licensing the product, allocating roles to users, allocating the licenses to users, and so on.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and explanations of their meaning.
A block of code is set as follows:
REM Full Load from Excel file "Sales" ;Sales:LOAD Region, SalesID, Product, SalesAmt, LastModifiedDateFROM [lib://Chapter 6/Sales.xlsx](ooxml, embedded labels, table is Sheet2);REM Store the data into Qlik Data Mart i.e QVD;Store Sales into [lib://Chapter 6/Sales.qvd];Drop table Sales;
In-text code is highlighted in font and color as here: LOAD. The file and folder names are also shown in the same style, for example, Chapter6/Sales.xlsx.
At several places in the book, we have referred to external URLs to cite source of datasets or other information. A URL would appear in the following text style: http://finance.yahoo.com.
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: In order to download new modules, we will go toFiles|Settings|Project Name|Project Interpreter.
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of. To send us general feedback, simply email [email protected] and mention the book's title in the subject of your message. If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Customer support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the example code
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Questions
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Consultant - An Introduction
In this chapter, we'll talk about consultancy and its importance, and how wearing the hat of a consultant helps in delivering successful projects. This chapter is useful for developers who aren't aware of who a consultant is, and what is expected from a consultant.
This chapter assumes the reader is conversant with basic Qlik development and is aware of terminologies used in business analytics. The BI market is growing at a phenomenal rate, and hence it is natural that consultants will play a big role. The figures quoted by Gartner for Analytics are mind-boggling indeed.
This chapter will be covering the following topics:
Understanding who is a consultant
Importance of being a consultant
Difference between a developer and a consultant
Roles and responsibility of a consultant
Strategy which a consultant must follow
Understanding who is a consultant
Before we start the discussion on who a consultant is, let's take an analogy. Though the analogy has nothing to do with Information Technology, it helps you to relate the point which we are trying to make.
For a moment, let's assume you are sick. The sickness is causing you a lot of discomfort. It is decreasing your efficiency and your ability to work effectively and doesn’t allow you to focus.
For obvious reason, you go to a doctor. You wait for your turn. When it is time, you enter the doctor's room, but you see that the doctor is impatient and looks in a hurry. You complain about your ailment (say, stomach pain) and lo and behold, the doctors writes a prescription, collects the fees, and you are out of the clinic feeling disappointed. You might take the medicine or rush to another doctor. You would agree that the experience was not pleasant.
Let’s take the same example, but say that instead of an impatient doctor, you come across a doctor who is calm, composed, and welcomes you with a smile. He makes sure you are comfortable. He starts asking you questions. You complain of stomach pain. He asks you detailed questions, such as:
Is it the first time you are facing this or does it happen regularly?
What time of the day does it bother you?
Do you have any allergies to any specific foods?
What did you eat in the last 24 hours?
Plus, more questions which help in correct diagnosis.
As he asks these questions, you feel comfortable and that you are in safe hands and with the right doctor. The doctor proceeds with examining you and checks your pulse and blood pressure. Only then does he prescribe medicine. The doctor shows genuine intent to make you well and asks you for a follow-up visit to ensure that you are fully fit again.
Did you note the contrast in the approaches?
This is exactly what happens in IT world. If we equate it to the doctor-patient analogy, we can say the patient is similar to a customer who has business challenges and is looking for a doctor, who is, in this case a consultant to overcome the challenges and provide the right solution.
Just like every patient is different with a different constitution, similarly every business is different. In fact, the situation varies drastically across different industry verticals and across geographies.
Moreover, in the real world the situation is more complex, as a consultant must deal with multiple teams in an organization and each team has its respective set of challenges and different expectations.
A consultant is a person whose approach is to understand the business challenges and find solutions to them.
A consultant is the one who does a lot of ground work before he/she starts working on a project. The consultant brings in the best practices during various stages of the project. (The details will be covered in subsequent chapters.) A consultant must the business of the customer, understand the process, and the way existing reporting/analytics are done.
A customer will always prefer a person who understands his concerns, thinks proactively, and gives suggestions. A consultant needs to play an important role in all the aspects of a project. The book will take you through each of these aspects and help you in your transition towards becoming a consultant. The various aspects are mentioned as follows:
Preparation
Getting ready with the prerequisites
Requirement gathering
Architecture
Modeling
Designing
UI (User Interface)
UAT (User Acceptance and Training)
Go-live
Post Go-live steps
Each of these steps is important in its own way and each of them will have its own challenges. The book will also cover a consultant's journey in each of these steps. We have tried to give examples to make it easy for you to relate to the points which we are making.
Importance of being a consultant
After having understood who a consultant is, let's look at the importance of being one.
Before we get into the importance of a consultant, it’s important to understand the power of analytics and the role it plays in any business organization.
Business users are no longer looking only at just reporting. They now want analytics which helps them to look at data in a more scientific way. In fact, analytics has now become a decision-making system. As businesses become dynamic and competition fiercer, the window for making decisions is also shrinking.
With changing technology, companies no longer have an ERP as a data source. The information is now spread across different applications. The applications too are no longer on-premise; some of them have moved to the cloud. Even social media applications like Facebook and Twitter are now considered sources of information for companies. Big data is one of the buzz words, and Microsoft Excel still remains one of the prevalent data sources! It's important for customers to get the best from all the data sources.
Companies look at Analytics in multiple areas, such as:
Sales
Marketing
Finance
Operations
HR
Supply Chain
IT
Analytics brings great value to the company in each of these areas. We will delve deeper into these areas in further chapters, but for a brief understanding, let's look at why these areas consider analytics so valuable:
Sales looks for increasing profitability and increasing revenue
Marketing wants to up-sell and cross-sell, and improve
R
eturn on Investment
(
ROI
) on campaigns
Finance wants to find ways of reducing cost
Operations wants to streamline the process
HR wants analytics for talent retention, succession planning, reward management, and performance monitoring
The supply chain wants better sourcing and better vendor management
Information Technology looks for better asset management, service delivery, and IT project performance management
Let’s take an example of a fictitious company, say PQR Corp, which is a manufacturing company. PQR has a turnover of 150 million USD and has all the previously mentioned functions of sales, finance, operations, HR, supply chain, and IT.
If PQR Corp invests one million USD in Analytics (with the help of a good consultant, of course!), then a good consultant can not only recover the cost for PQR but can also make the investment turn substantially beneficial:
If he/she can help improve sales revenue by 10 percent, a company’s revenue can grow from say 150 million USD to 165 million USD, which is an increase of 15 million USD in revenue USD
If he/she can help in reduction of the inventory cost from 30 million USD to 20 million USD, it is a savings of 10 million
Similarly, if the consultant can help improve sourcing strategies and help save 5 percent in sourcing cost from 60 million USD to 57 million USD, a saving of 3 million USD can be achieved
The statistics are amazing. Considering the preceding example, one can easily see an overall benefit of 28 million USD. If one adds other benefits from other functions, like HR, IT, and/or operations, these numbers will grow.
When you look at the Key Result Area (KRA) of each of these functions, you can understand the mammoth implications of getting the BI strategy right. KRA are areas in business for which an individual or group is responsible.
You will appreciate how analytics plays a crucial role for a company and how you as a consultant can influence the success of an organization. The power of analysis helps organizations to understand their data better and to take better business decisions. A poorly executed Analytics implementation gives no added value to the organization and the investments go waste.
After being a developer, a natural progression in one's career is to look at becoming a consultant. Organizations look at consultants as trusted advisors. A good consultant always commands great respect from a client.
After years of development experience, a person is expected to want a more challenging role. A consultant carries tremendous responsibility on his/her shoulders. The approach which a consultant takes will have a direct impact on the fortunes of a company. Any company which invests heavily into an analytical software, like Qlik, will expect a good Return on Investment and a low cost of ownership.
Difference between a developer and consultant
In the previous sections, we looked at who a consultant is and the importance of being one. In this section, we will look at the difference between a developer and a consultant.
Being a consultant is a natural progression for a developer. It is always good to start your analytical journey by being a developer. In the lifecycle of a developer, one gets to learn the technical aspects of Business Intelligence(BI). A strong technology base is a very critical aspect that makes a developer a good developer. This phase exposes the developer to the execution phase of the project.
Let's say someone is planning to build a great building. He/she may hire the best of the people to build it and the people may put in their best efforts for that. A lot of time, effort, and money will be spent for this building to come up. It will take years for this effort and the building will be built. But when it’s time to occupy the building, the person may realize that there are a lot of design flaws which make the building difficult to use. The people who moved in will then slowly start moving out, simply because it's tough for them to live there.
This analogy holds true for many BI projects, where huge investments are made and the best of developers are hired, but the adoption of software is not up to the mark. The reasons could be many but the situation is certainly not the ideal one.
For a moment, in the preceding example, let’s say the person hires a fantastic architect. The architect spends a lot of time to understand what the person expects from the building, what purpose it is meant for, who the people are who will be living there, and what kind of lifestyle they will expect.
He/she then starts working on a detailed plan, going in to the minutest details of planning everything, such as the depth of the foundation, the number of gates in the building, the location and size of car parking, the number of elevators, the size of apartments, safety measures, and all other important aspects.
Now, when this meticulous planning is executed by a a set of experienced people, the result will be amazing, won't it? The project is bound to be successful and will deserve all the applause and accolades.
No doubt, a developer is an important part of a BI project; it’s important that the direction is right. Hence, it’s imperative that a developer, after a certain years of development experience, transitions himself/herself in to being a consultant. This is the precise reason why we are writing this book for budding developers--to help them move into a consultant role and contribute to and own project success.
Roles and responsibilities of a consultant
The previous section gave an idea about being a consultant and why a developer must look at progressing towards being a consultant.
This section will cover the overview of the roles and responsibilities of a consultant. The subsequent chapters will cover these in greater detail.
Roles of a consultant
The roles of a consultant can be summarized as:
Interacting with business users
Understanding the data sources
Setting the expectations correctly
Designing the perfect solution
Planning the Go-live
Planning for the future road-map
Interacting with business users
This is one of the most crucial phases of any BI project. This phase involves spending time with end users, understanding the business challenges, and the goals of the function and organization at large.
Usually, it’s not possible to get everything in a single meeting and several follow-up meetings will be required. Business users will fall in to various categories. There will be senior management, middle management, and regular users. Each of these profiles of business users will have different sets of expectations and KRAs. It’s important to map all these users as their buy-in is important for a project's success.
Understanding the data sources
One of the reasons people look at implementing BI solutions is to have a single source of truth. The technological advancements have made data spread across different applications. It’s important for the consultant to understand all the data sources. There could be Excel sheets, ERPs, cloud CRM, social media applications, big data, and legacy applications.
Qlik can usually connect to most of the data sources, but a recheck is important to ensure that it does. If a direct connection is not possible, alternate ways need to be explored. It could be as simple as taking CSV dump from that data source, or it could be using the SDK to write a custom connector.
Setting the expectations correctly
This is an often-neglected factor which later leads to disgruntlement among the users, and can lead to feeble adoption and project failures. It’s important to discuss with the users what is possible and what is not. Any workarounds which are possible should also be discussed. If a non-Qlik solution is being used, the business users may be accustomed to the way the earlier software worked.
The way a functionality worked in earlier software may be different in Qlik. Alternately, a consultant may need to look at other ways to achieve the exact functionality using extension objects. All of these need to be discussed, so that the users know what to expect and you can avoid backlash at a later time. Most of the non-Qlik BI solutions are query based and the reports developed in such solutions may show near real-time data. The consultant should discuss these aspects as well and prioritize which data needs to be refreshed at frequent intervals and which can be done at a periodic intervals.
Designing the perfect solution
A perfect foundation is required to build a structurally strong building. Similarly, a consultant has a crucial role to play in planning the solution. The solution architecture must be robust, scalable, and flexible. One of the important reasons for lower adoption is poor performance. Business users will not have the patience to wait for data to be refreshed when they select something.
The consultant must take this into account and understand all the factors which affect performance. For multi-geographical deployments, ensure multi-node deployments. The business users are always paranoid about security aspects. Qlik is very good at governance and security, and offers powerful ways to meet the security requirements. Modeling and design also play important roles.
The UI should be simple and intuitive. Since Qlik is based on responsive HTML 5 design and offers single development for laptops and handhelds, the design too should be well-thought of to make it easy for the users to use in multiple form factors.
Plan the Go-live
The consultant must properly plan the Go-live stage. The users, being new to the system, will be anxious and will expect a lot of support. This part of the project can be made easy with a planned UAT phase.
The consultant takes care of the minutest details to ensure client satisfaction. Simple factors like single sign-on can make the initial experience satisfying for the users. The queries raised should be addressed as soon as possible. Make the documents/manuals easily accessible to the users. Users accessing during non-office hours should also be able to refer to the same.
Plan for the future road-map
This, too, is an important point which gets missed out. Organizations start with functions which are high priority for them and subsequently roll it out to other functions. A function that potentially has a large user base may not have been considered and then suddenly the architecture may run into performance issues.
The consultant must also make a note of the rate at which data is growing and plan accordingly. The Qlik platform approach makes it a very versatile solution, allowing it to be used as embedded analytics as well. Hence, the consultant must plan if the organization is wanting to extend analytics to external users.
A consultant carries huge responsibilities, as he/she must implement the solution from start to end. A consultant must get involved in all the phases of development.
Responsibilities of a consultant
The responsibilities of a consultant can be summarized as :
Doing value adds
Documentation
Implementing best practices
User Acceptance and Training (UAT)
Post Go-live
Doing value adds
Business users broadly fall into two categories:
Users who are new to Analytics
Users who have been using an existing solution
The consultant must have different approaches for both the sets of users.
The consultant, while doing the requirement gathering, should also come up with suggestions which will be beneficial to the client. Any alternate approach which may better the end result should be proactively suggested. The value add should happen in UI aspects and even future road-maps.
Documentation
A great way to ensure that all major and minor points are noted is in the form of documentation. Documentation must happen in all the phases of projects. The consultant must ensure that he/she is prepared for requirement gathering stage by having a proper questionnaire.
This approach ensures nothing gets missed out. The requirements must be scoped, and if required, be broken into functional and technical parts. A project plan with timelines and a responsibility matrix helps both of the parties and avoids confusions. All prerequisites and system requirements from an infrastructure perspective should be documented and sent to the client.
A good approach is to run through the documents jointly with the concerned stakeholders and then take acceptance. Before the actual development starts, it’s important for the consultant to ensure that he/she and the client are on the same page. The documentation part takes some time, but shouldn't be ignored or taken lightly. A consultant must ensure that timely communication is sent out to the client during the development phases and that regular reviews are done to avoid last minute surprises.
Implementing best practices
Once a solution has been designed and agreed to by the client, the implementation process starts. Implementation has various stages, including the installation of Qlik Sense software, connection to the data sources, data modeling, user interface, validation, and testing. Using the best practices plays an important role in the performance of the software and helps with ease of use. The best practices also improve the flexibility and help increase adoption.
Best practices include writing perfect logic to do incremental data loads. Incremental loads help with faster data refreshes and at same time ease the load on the source systems. If multiple options are available, choose the one which gives better performance; for example, if you have the option of using ODBC or OLEDB, choose OLEDB, as OLEDB gives better performance.
A good approach is to make development as modular as possible. This approach makes the code flexible and easily manageable. The data modeling should be optimized to ensure performance even with an increase in data volumes.
The UI is another critical piece which has a direct impact on how the end user perceives the software. Ensure the Qlik Sense application is neatly categorized and the Dashboarding Analysis and Reporting (DAR) approach is followed. A sheet should be pleasing to the eyes. Too many objects make it difficult for the end users to comprehend.
Aspects like comments in code and brief descriptions of logic shouldn’t be ignored. Validation and test cases should be done thoroughly. Nothing irritates the user more than seeing incorrect data.
User Acceptance and Training (UAT)
Once the development is over, the crucial phase of User Acceptance and Training (UAT) starts. Just like a good trailer propels user interest and adds to the value of a movie, the UAT phase is where the consultant starts creating excitement in the end users. A lot of effort is required to make this phase successful.
A lot of time needs to be spent with the end users to make them comfortable. After validation from the consultant side, validation must also be undertaken by the end users. Any deviations should be noted and promptly fixed. Validations should be done thoroughly. Security aspects such as role based access, application rights, and data level security should be taken care of. On completion of the validation part, significant time should be allocated for user training.
The creation of an easy and user friendly manual must be done beforehand. Always remember that though you know the system thoroughly, the system is new for the user. Trainings should be conducted with small user sets. The size of batches for training should be such that every end user can be given attention. Record the sessions, thus making it easy for the user to refer back to it whenever required.
Simple, self-explanatory how-to videos (for example, how to make selection) make the user comfortable. Seeing a video is always easier than going through lengthy paragraphs! The training, if required, should be repeated. Ensure that the users are comfortable and can do the basic stuff easily. Allow the users to use it on both their laptops and handhelds. Also, publish a FAQ document.
Post Go-live
Once the project goes live, it’s not the time to relax! This phase will decide the adoption of the software and the overall success of the project. Use the Qlik Monitoring application to check all critical parameters, such as System performance.
Ensure all reload jobs are executing properly and that users see the correct data. Look for users who aren’t using the system. This can be infectious and spread to other users. Address their concerns and ensure a positive word spreads about the software. Plan an adoption strategy with the stakeholders.
At some organizations, the carrot and stick approach may be required. One good way to drive adoption is to ensure senior management uses it regularly; educate them on the benefits of doing their reviews on the Qlik application. Once the seniors start using the software, the other users are bound to start using it too. Identify your internal champion who will keep up the adoption drive once your job is over.
Qlik keeps releasing newer versions. Lot of times, new functionalities are introduced. A consultant must also plan for these upgrades. This gives an additional opportunity for the consultant to touch base with the end users by conducting a follow-up workshop/training.
Strategy that a consultant should follow
Though the topic mentions the strategy that a consultant should follow, in reality, there is no particular strategy which will work. Why is this so? Read on to find out.
Let’s again use an analogy. Consider that three obese people, who wish to lose weight, go to a dietitian. Will the dietitian prescribe the same diet plan for all the three? The probability of this happening is very remote. Why? Simply because the same plan will not work for all three!
The dietitian must look at several parameters before he/she can decide the plan. The factors he/she has to look at could be the age of the person, BMI, height, weight, ethnicity, medical history, diet preferences, the temperament of the person, food allergies, and so on.
Only after doing this study will the dietitian be able to make a diet plan which suits the patient. The plan may have to be fine-tuned a few times once the dietitian gets feedback from the patient. The diet plan may have to be coupled with exercise plans to meet the objective of weight loss in a scientific manner.
The BI consultant also faces similar situations when he/she has to plan the strategy. Every organization is different, and so the same strategy will not work every time. Let’s look at the parameters which can affect the strategy.
Size of the company
The size of company matters when deciding the BI strategy. A large organization is very different from a small organization. In a smaller organization, one person may perform multiple tasks. The C-level executives (CEO, CFO, COO, and CMO) can be accessed relatively easily. They will be willing to spend time with the consultant during the requirement gathering session, making the exercise simpler and faster.
Compare this to a large organization, and there is a huge level of hierarchy. The C-level executives are almost impossible to be reached. The people in the lower level of the hierarchy may have different thoughts, and hence, the consultant must spend a lot of time doing the requirement gathering sessions. The subsequent phases requiring user interaction will require a lot of detailing.
What system do they use currently?
How does this matter? It matters a lot because accordingly the approach and strategy of the consultant would vary. For example, a company which largely uses MS Excel would need a different approach; the users will be new to analytics, and hence the strategy for the roll-out would need to deliver a mix of analytics and reporting, and then gradually move to analytics.
The users of an organization who use a traditional BI system, like Business Objects, would already be exposed to some amount of Analytics, and so the excitement would be more towards data discovery and self-service. There could also be another category where the organizations are shifting from a new age BI solution, like Tableau or Power BI.
These will require different approaches and the users will largely be looking at bringing in multiple data sources and co-relations between different sources. The training for these different sets of users must be done according to the BI maturity levels.
Why do they want a new system?
This question is important, as the success of the project will depend on this. If the client is already using a BI system, there will be a strong reason to look for a change. The consultant needs to understand the bottlenecks faced by the end users and ensure that the new system overcomes them, and that it also delivers a lot of additional benefits.
What are the objectives and goals?
If the end user is not sure about the objectives and goals, the project is likely to suffer. Many a time, the users may not be able to express the requirements correctly. This is where the skill of a consultant will be tested thoroughly. The consultant has to ask the right questions and get the answers. It's best to proceed only when the objectives are clear.
Are the stakeholders identified?
No one likes to board a ship without a captain. Similarly, the stakeholders play an important role in the success of a project. There could be one stake holder or there could be multiple. The stake holder takes responsibility for a project from the client end and the consultant must work closely with the stake holder.
Is there a project champion?
A project champion is an important link in the BI cycle. The champion is usually the one who will get the credit for implementation of a project and who works very closely with the consultant to make the project successful. He/she helps the consultant to get interviews with the business users, helps to define the scope of the project, and plays an active part till the roll out. The champion becomes most valuable when the role of the consultant ends.
What are the data sources?
Though Qlik can connect to most of the data sources, this point is important. While planning a strategy for known data sources, such as SAP, Navision, or say, Oracle Business Suite, these being known data sources, there is a good amount of predictability. However, some customers have legacy applications or custom developed applications. The consultant needs to be aware of the potential challenges these systems may throw and plan the strategy accordingly.
Is the data clean?
Clean data is a consultant’s delight. This helps with implementation, and even the validation process gets easy. The challenge usually comes when the data is not clean and the consultant must also work on the strategy to clean the data.
