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Strategic Mentoring
Ideally, your IT staff would have all the knowledge and experience it needed to accomplish whatever task
you placed before them. But in the real world, this is not always the case. This isn't a bad thing. It's
next to impossible to assemble a staff who knows everything about everything. Far more practical is to
build a team that's good at your main focus, and bring in outside expert help for the rest.
As the world shrinks, margins thin, competition becomes more fierce, and our expectations of technology increase
exponentially, more and more companies are looking at Business Intelligence as a necessary change in the
way they do business. Whereas it used to be an intriguing idea to consider building a Data Warehouse or
spinning up some cross-functional reports, implementing these and other BI components is increasingly
becoming necessary to compete. Business intelligence — the strategic use of your data to quickly make the most
accurate and effective decisions possible — is on the verge of becoming a mission-critical necessity, not a luxury.
And as that happens, the skills to build and maintain it become critical too.
So, here you are. You need BI, but many of the concepts and technologies are new to your IT staff. And you
have limited resources. What's the best way to maximize your team and your current investment in IT?
It is for this exact scenario that Capstone created our Strategic Mentoring offering. Capstone knows that,
when it comes to any mission-critical skill set, what you need is to become self-sufficient, which requires
mentoring and training from expert partners.
Capstone considers the distinction between "training" and "mentoring" to be a very important one. We consider
training to be in a formal classroom setting. A seasoned Capstone principal consultant would customize formal
training materials (PowerPoint presentations and handouts) for your unique culture and needs, design a class,
and conduct one or more classroom lectures and discussions. This could be a 4 hour class or a week-long series,
depending on the depth and complexity of the materials and the needs of our customers.
Mentoring is far less formal, far more project-focused, and in most cases (we find) far more effective.
 
In this
mode, Capstone will assess your needs, help you design "mentoring projects" (sometimes also called "pilot projects"),
and actively participate in these projects to help your resources learn from our experience. These are not throw-away
prototypes; they're real projects building real value for your company according to your strategic goals. Capstone
resources become a part of the project team, providing
project management,
architectural oversight, or
software development services. Your
resources are staffed right along side us to learn and grow. Capstone's consultants "pour into" your team, always
keeping these goals in mind and in balance: 1) short-term project success and 2) long-term self-sustainability for your business.
Give us a call. We can help. Capstone can assist you in putting
together the right program for your organization. Whether it's a three-day bootcamp to introduce
your team to effective BI or a one-day deep dive on a particular topic or a strategic mentoring
program, Capstone has the experience and expertise you need to make your project successful and
make your team self-sufficient Business Intelligence practitioners. In fact, here are a few ideas just to
get your imagination flowing...
- Five Day BI Bootcamp. Assemble the troops. Capstone will walk your team through
specific, targeted sessions to help everyone to understand BI, data warehousing, data governance, and
a host of other issues critical to your success. We'll discuss the
people, plan, process, data, and technology
your organization needs. It's a great way to introduce your team to the critical success factors of BI and
give them a solid foundation on which to build.
- BI Pilot Program. Capstone will
assess your BI initiative,
and help you plan your next few projects. Once planned, the right roles from Capstone will mentor your staff while executing
these projects, delivering real results both in terms of valuable tools for your business and
valuable knowledge for your team.
- Data Strategy and Governance for Executives. Capstone will help your senior leadership
understand the cost and benefits of BI, develop the business case and value statement, and align
your planned IT investment with your organization's key performance indicators. The goal of this
session is to build strategic goals and KPI's for your BI/DW initiative.
- Data Modeling. Capstone will teach your DBAs, data modelers, data architects, data stewards, developers,
and business users best practices and valuable techniques in dimensional data modeling.
- And much more. Contact us to setup
a brief, no-obligation conversation with one of Capstone's principal consultants.
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