Imagine this...
…You are reviewing the weekly spreadsheet that's just been delivered
to your email. You spot an anomaly in the financial data that you don't
understand—despite the pivot table provided in the report that allows
you to drill down to at least some level of detail.
You ask your operations analyst what's going on. To which your analyst
responds, "I'm not sure. Let me find out."
The next day, the analyst tells you that the reason for the anomaly is
the fact that productivity was way down at the manufacturing plant.
"That doesn't make sense," you say. "Can you ask Human Resources if sick days
are impacting the productivity numbers? Or could it be that there was an
issue with the time-capture application at the plant?"
"It will take a week to get that data and merge it with the financial data,"
your analyst says.
"Can't you just send me a dump of the data from the ERP and time
application, and I'll work with it myself?"
The analyst responds,
INTRODUCTION
"I don't have access to the data, and it will take a few
days to submit the right tickets to get access to it."
2