Index versus Data Base

Index versus Data Base.

How many of your employees can extract their own reports from DB? What do they do if they cannot? Does using IT create a bottleneck?

How long does it take to extract reports from the DBs, generate the query plus search latency?

Are you finding you have to recreate very similar reports because existing ones are not meeting users needs?

Would it be powerful to give this access to all users with a natural language search?

Unlike, Rather Than:

Without the need for SQL knowledge FAST allows free text ad-hoc querying over structured database data.

Business Objective, Business Challenges:

Empowering all users.

Increased employee productivity.

Would it benefit you if you could?

Not only tech experts than can extract reports.

Get access to information faster.

I can give you an example:

We worked on a project with a Portuguese Bank who had 1.5 TB of scanned copies of cheques spanning 15 years. Database search was prohibitively long taking up to several minutes to respond with results.

Replacing the database solution with FAST ESP we were able to reduce the result response to sub-seconds over the same corpus of data with rates of up to 140 queries per second. This meant they could serve more customers in less time with less resources.

Databases are not conducive to search. When designed they were modelled on the most common form of data storage at the time – the filing cabinet. The databases were the cabinets and the tables the drawers.

The pre-structured nature of databases is optimal if we place data into the drawer the same way we take it out, for example transactions. Let’s say I organise my garments at home by type, which I don’t, socks in one drawer, trousers in one drawer and jumpers in another drawer. This is an optimal method of storage if I am asked to return all my socks or a certain pair of trousers. I know where to go.

However today’s organisations demand intelligence across data. For example, return to me all red garments. If this was a database we would need to open up each drawer and rummage around – what we call a full table scan. Databases are not optimised for this type of searching so it can be extremely time consuming.

Unlike databases, search is modelled on human dialogue. It’s how you would ask an expert for advice and expect the answer to be presented. You don’t want to have a list of links to where you may find the answer dumped in front of you. You want to engage in conversation to narrow candidate results to a manageable handful.

FAST Mapping - Pre Developed Connectors

Preamble questions:

How many different interfaces must an employee check?

How much time would you estimate, is spent logging into, and searching at each of these sites?

How costly is it to maintain these legacy systems? Would it be beneficial to decommission these legacy systems providing that you still had a means to access the data?

How costly is it to create the middle-ware communication and linkage between systems?

When acquiring new companies how do you plan to merge business data?

How long do you think that effort will take and how long can you wait?

Unlike, Rather Than:

Rather than having to traverse several silos in several locations FAST can consolidate all those disparate data silos to one single location.

Business Objective, Business Challenges:

No costly MIGRATION.

No costly DEVELOPMENT.

Phase out legacy systems.

Consolidate the information to a SINGLE LOCATION.

How much time spent searching? More time on high Value tasks.

Would it benefit you if you could?

Have no need for costly consultants.

Reduce cost of data management.

Reduce specialised skills & required maintenance costs.

Offload data collation teams.

Less time gathering & collating.

I can give you an example:

We recently worked on a project at RBS to provide a Single View of a Customer based on intelligence from different sources. This was to enable business developers to ‘warm up’ a cold call, qualify winnable business and understand the language and dynamics of the industry.

Previously when gathering information on a customer employees would have to consult a number of different data sources including a CMS system, Customer Records data base, Several other internal repositories, External sites, external blogs, Google, OneSource, Lexis Nexis and Factiva.

This was excessively time consuming.

Users resisted the extra effort to check each of these repositories as they were typically under time constraint.

This meant they were making decisions based on incomplete knowledge and a partial view of the picture.

After we implemented the integrated portal, employees could effortlessly pull together data from the multiple sources in real-time and exposed it in consumable manner employees.

Employees were subsequently more knowledgeable and aware of opportunities in the market and were better positioned to ‘warm up’ a cold call with relevant and up to date intelligence.

How do I get an opponent on side?

''Start with an intriguing truism - The opponent begins by agreeing with you.''

- You do agree that oil is a non-renewable resource

TBC

How do I remove the negativity from an answer?

You will need to invert the negative term to its positive antonym and pre-fix it with a not. Best to illustrate with some examples:

Will it will decrease our benefits? - versus - It will NOT increase your benefits

Is it less important - versus - Well it is NOT as important

Did she do a poor job - versus - She did NOT do the best job you could have

Why doesn't competition from rival sellers force all prices to the same level?

As Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations, the price of a product should not exceed the cost of producing it in the long run.

Otherwise, profit opportunities would include rival sellers to enter the market.

And entry would continue until increased supply would drive prices down to cost at a common level across all vendors.

Yet practise seems to contradict this principle as different buyers appear to pay substantially different prices for essentially identical products and services.

How can I increase my ability to understand complex problems?

"SO WHAT?" - is a very simple but powerful framework for extracting the maximum amount of information from a simple fact.

Starting with a fact, ask the question: “So what?'” - i.e. what are the implications of that fact? Keep on asking that question until you have drawn all possible inferences.

An example:

Fact: It rained heavily last night
• So What? - The ground will be wet

• So What? -It will turn into mud quickly

• So What? - If many troops and vehicles pass over the same ground, movement will be
progressively slower and more difficult as the ground gets muddier and more
difficult.

• So What? - Where possible, stick to paved roads. Otherwise expect movement to be much
slower than normal.

How can I be more creative in my problem solving?

Here are some tools to increases creativity:

"Reversal Tool" - To use it, ask the opposite of the question you want to ask, and apply the results.

An example:

Goal:Improve the response of our customer service centre.

Reversal: “How would I reduce customer satisfaction in our customer service centre?”

• Not answering the phone when customers call
• Not returning phone calls
• Have people with no product knowledge answering the phone
• Use rude staff
• Give the wrong advice
• ...

Solution: After using Reversal, you would ensure that the appropriate staff members were handling incoming phone calls efficiently and pleasantly. You would set up training programs to
ensure that they were giving accurate and effective advice and so on ..

We can use this Reversal Model to define the KPIs to improvement.


"SCAMPER" - SCAMPER is a checklist that helps you to think of changes you can make to an existing product to create a new one. You can use these changes either as direct suggestions or
as starting points for lateral thinking.

S - Substitute - components, materials, people, features
C - Combine - mix, combine with other assemblies or services, integrate, features
A - Adapt - alter, change function, use part of another element
M - Modify - increase or reduce in scale, change shape, modify attributes (for example, color)
P - Put to another use
E - Eliminate - remove elements, make as simple as possible, reduce to core functionality
R - Reverse - turn inside out or upside down
A - Addition - Add new features


"The 5 P's Reframing Matrix" - A simple technique that helps you to look at business problems from a number of different viewpoints. It relies on the fact that different people with different experience approach problems in different ways. What this technique helps you to do is to put yourself into the minds of different people, to imagine the solutions they would come up with.

• Product perspective: Is there something wrong with the product?
- Is it technically correct?
- Is it attractive?
- Is it well priced?

• Planning perspective: Are our business plans or marketing plans at fault?
- Are we approaching the right markets?
- Are we using the right sales strategy?

• Potential perspective: If we were to seriously increase our targets, how would we achieve these increases?
- How would we raise sales?

• People perspective: Why do different groups of people choose one product over another?
- How do customers see the product?
- Are they convinced that it is reliable?
- Why are they choosing other products?

• Professionals perspective: How would a doctor, engineer, lawyer, teacher ,.. look at this?


"Provocation Objective" - This works by moving your thinking out of the established patterns that you use to solve problems. State an impossible and "stupid" goal. Then determine what steps would need to be taken in order to achieve it.

An Example:

The owner of a video-hire shop is looking at new ideas for business to compete with the
Internet.

Provocation Objective: “Customers should not pay to borrow videos”.


• Consequences: The shop would get no rental revenue and therefore would need
alternative sources of cash. It would be cheaper to borrow the video from the shop
than to download the film or order it from a catalogue.

• Benefits: Many more people would come to borrow videos. More people would pass
through the shop. The shop would spoil the market for other video shops in the area.

• Circumstances: The shop would need other revenue. Perhaps the owner could sell
advertising in the shop, or sell popcorn, sweets, bottles of wine or pizzas to people
borrowing films. This would make her shop a one-stop “Night at home” shop. Perhaps
it would only lend videos to people who had absorbed a 30-second commercial, or
completed a market research questionnaire.