openSAP

Semantic Notation The Next Big Thing in BI?

Week 1 Unit 1
00:00:10

Hello and welcome to this openSAP course Semantic Notation -- The Next Big Thing in
Business Intelligence?

00:00:23

My name is Rolf Hichert. I am president of an association called IBCS, International Business

Communication Standards.

00:00:31

And together with my partner Juergen Faisst, I will try to show you our understanding of a
semantic meaning in business communication, which is new.

00:00:47

We will break it down into 10 units and I will start with a little introduction about what we see
today

00:00:58

when we look at these presentations, PowerPoints, dashboards.When you look at Google

picture search and ask for good PowerPoints, you find this overview.

00:01:13

Colorful, very fancy, driven by corporate design ideas and the ideas of developers and
software programmers and

00:01:23

maybe controllers and reporting guys. It's no constant to be seen. It's just a visual fantasy of
colors and designs.

00:01:36

Looking at dashboards, we have here a sales dashboard with these little tiles, which is very
fashionable at the time being.

00:01:45

White background. And another sales dashboard of another company might look like this here.
Dark background, other colors,

00:01:56

fancy spedometers, other gauges in visual design.And when we look again to picture search in
Google

00:02:06

and ask for excellent dashboards in business intelligence, you get this overview.There is no
clue, no idea of a uniform visualization at all.

00:02:20

The nice little pie charts, the columns, bars, charts, visuals, no constant at all.Differently, the
musicians. Hundreds of years ago, when you look for sheet music,

00:02:33

you find this. Hundreds of years ago, the musicians had decided and developed and used a
language for their content, for the music.

00:02:45

And this is what we are looking for. We need something similar communication language for
financial data, for business data, and this is the objective

00:02:56

of our course and we'd like to convince you that this is very helpful.We will break it down into
10 units.

00:03:05

The first week, we will cover the different aspects of meaning measures, notation concepts,
and the pros and cons and the benefits of it.

00:03:17

And then next week, we'll touch other chapters of business communications, such as a clear
message, well-structured storylines, and stuff like this.

00:03:30

I would like to start with the first unit which looks at semantic notation concepts in other
disciplines.

00:03:41

The other disciplines are electricity, architecture, music, and so forth.

00:03:51

When you look at this picture, most of you will see this is a No Entry sign and when we look at
the list of signs in this country

00:04:01

it looks almost the same as in any other European country, mainly.It is Kuwait. It is more or
less the same standard worldwide for traffic signs

00:04:13

and we had to learn these traffic signs when we wanted to pass our and get our drivers
license.Look at this sign. A capacitor.

00:04:24

Every electrician worldwide will know how a lamp a resistance, a capacitor, or something like
this would have to be designed.

00:04:34

And this little circuit is very clear.It's very easy to communicate worldwide. And even more
complex plans

00:04:45

that could be much more complex than this will be easily understood by anyone who is trained
in this topic.

00:04:56

Again, coming back to music. There a very good example.Look at this one bar of a concerto.

00:05:09

And on two pages, you might have 30 or 40 times as much which represents this music.

00:05:18

Sheet music is an excellent example for a good notation with semantic layers.The next one
we'd like to look at is dimensioning in engineering.

00:05:33

Architects, engineers, have to dimension their gearboxes and their houses.And they are the
language worldwide, too, where houses like this

00:05:46

can easily, and the drawings, can easily be understood by anyone in architecture design,
these details.

00:05:55

So what do we have? We have rules like IFRS for the contents.We have XBRL for interfaces.

00:06:07

But we have nothing for the visual design yet, and this is what we're looking at. We would like
to have something like here:

00:06:13

a notation for scenarios like here, so we say okay, black is actual in the middle, outline means
this is planned, not yet there.

00:06:25

And the light grey might mean previous year.But when we look at the situation today in annual
reports and PowerPoint presentations,

00:06:36

we find pictures like this.Some are funny, fancy. It's these spedometers and dashboards.

00:06:47

It is pie charts, which are not always very helpful and even four or six or eight pie charts on a
page.

00:06:56

These triangles with a very creative form of visualization look at the time going up from 2009 to
2011 in this direction.

00:07:07

And these figures representing a growth of But when you look at the volume of these figures, it
is much more that 14%.

00:07:19

It's not showing the proper development of these data.Then there's the question of line charts.
Where do we start?

00:07:30

At 100 or at 0? Do we truncate axis, don't we truncate axis in this index chart here? I do not
really want to go into the technical details of these charts. We will cover this later.

00:07:44

I just want to show you about the wide variety of different visuals for similar content.Here again
we have cut axis for the cost/income ratio.

00:07:57

Here we have charts from an annual report where the operating profit looks exactly the same
as the operating margin with completely different scales.

00:08:13

So what I would like to come to at the end of this little intro is that we need a language like the
others. That means like we say actual is dark, solid.

00:08:29

And planned is outline and forecast is hatched somehow in between.We do not use colors for
this because we need colors for other applications,

00:08:45

for other forms of meaning.So this was the first unit of our course and I hope I

00:08:54

could give you a little intro of what we are looking at.And I thank you for being with us. And we
will go on in the next unit

00:09:03

with the top semantic rules we need in order to communicate our content.Thank you.

Week 1 Unit 2
00:00:10

Hello and welcome to our second unit.My name is Jrgen Faisst. I am the managing director of
the IBCS Association.

00:00:20

In the previous unit, my partner Rolf Hichert has introduced semantic notation in other
disciplines.

00:00:27

He has been showing you that in music, in architecture, in road signs, in electric circles there
are visual standards or visual languages

00:00:41

that help people understand the notations.In business communication, he pointed out we do
not have such a standardization yet

00:00:51

and he has been showing you a plethora of visualizations, of charts, and you see that they

00:01:00

from different colors, there are completely different chart types. Some people like pie charts.
Others like bar charts. Others prefer tables.

00:01:08

So there is no standardization at all.In this unit, we will be talking about topics that are worth to
be standardized.

00:01:18

And let's start with the first topic, and this first topic is scenarios.What is a scenario?

00:01:27

When talking about scenarios, we mean versions like plan, actual, previous year, budget,
forecast. You all know that from business.

00:01:39

And you know that plan data is something completely different compared to actual data,
because actual data already happened and plan data is ficticious.

00:01:51

It's in future. It might happen. It might happen differently. But it has not happened yet.So it's
worth to have a completely different visualization

00:02:01

for actual data compared to plan data.So our suggestion is to visualize actual data with a solid,
dark fill.

00:02:12

Let's say dark grey or black.And to visualize plan data hollow. What means outlined.

00:02:21

Not filled yet. It still has to be filled up with actual data.And consequently, something in
between like forecast is shown

00:02:34

in a hatched way. So it's in between.Better than plan, nearer to actual, but not actual yet. So
hatched.

00:02:45

How does this look like if we apply it, let's say, to a table? Let's look at this table. It's a typical
variance table.

00:02:53

So we see actual data, we see plan data, we see previous year data, and you see this
animation that actual, plan, and previous year

00:03:04

are visualized with exactly the visualization I've show you before, which means dark, solid for
actual, and plan, for instance, is outlined with these two lines.

00:03:16

Or if you look at a chart, let's say a column chart, here the same visualization applies. Look at
the columns.

00:03:27

The columns are black for actual and they are...the forecast is hatched and the plan is
outlined.

00:03:37

Now look at this little cartoon. That's what we suggest.Let's have our scenario collection. Let's
call it the 2015 scenario collection. And we propose

00:03:50

well, all the reports all over the world, at least in your company, would follow this rule: actual is
solid dark, plan is hollow, forecast is hatched.

00:04:02

And if something is in previous year, in the past, it's solid, still solid and still filled, but a little
lighter. Let's say grey.

00:04:14

That's what we propose for scenarios. There are other topics that are worth to be visualized
identically.

00:04:22

For instance, variances. When talking about reporting, it's always talking about variances.

00:04:30

So our suggestion for the visualization of variances is only use red and green for the purpose
of variances.

00:04:40

Never use green or red bar charts, green or red column charts or lines or whatever, nothing
red and green,

00:04:49

unless it shows a variance.And, well, of course the good variances are green and the bad
variances are red.

00:04:59

Maybe you use a kind of bluish green if you want to show this chart to people with color
deficiency, for instance.

00:05:11

And maybe you use a little different red to make it better readable.But still one color for good
and one color for

00:05:22

The next thing that is worth...no, pardon me. I want to show you how this applies let's say, to a
table.

00:05:31

If we look at a table, we could add to that table let's say, bar charts that are integrated in that
table.

00:05:39

And you see now exactly like a kind of highlighting, something like that, you can immediately
see the good variances,

00:05:51

the good deviations, and you can distinguish it from the bad ones because the goods are
green and the bad ones are red.

00:05:59

So I think this can be perfectly seen in those two columns.If we look at the next topic...

00:06:13

one thing we are often missing in reporting is the identification of a chart and a table.What is
actually seen in that chart, in that table, in that report?

00:06:25

Wouldn't it be great if we had a kind of standardized title so we actually know where to look at
in order to identify

00:06:35

what we see in that chart or in that table? What we suggest is to have a three-line title in the
upper left corner

00:06:44

of every chart, every table, every report.And in this title we see the organization unit or the
reporting unit,

00:06:55

a project, a company, or something like that.In the second line, we apply the notation of the
measure and the unit.

00:07:08

And in the third line, we show the scenarios and some timeline if it's necessary.If that would be
a standard, we would immediately see what's shown in a chart

00:07:20

or what's shown in a table. Again, let's look at this table and you see in the upper left corner
that we have exactly this three-line title of this table with integrated charts.

00:07:35

The next topic I want to talk about is to differentiate the two major visualization aspects we
have in business.

00:07:46

Either we show time series, and the time series we would propose to show it with a horizontal
axis.

00:07:57

Or we look at structures. We compare products, we compare regions, we compare whatever.

00:08:05

And we suggest that if we compare structures, we do it vertically.If we would apply this rule
completely to all reports and all presentations

00:08:16

we would immediately see whether it's a time series analysis or whether it's a structure
analysis.So of course, this is a time series analysis because we have a horizontal axis.

00:08:29

We do not have to think about it. We know it's time series.There are more topics worth to be
standardized by semantic notation.

00:08:38

For instance, we can look at the terminology. Wouldn't it be great if we would have the same
terms, the same abbreviations,

00:08:48

the same numbers, the same units, the same way we put dates, at least in one company?

00:08:56

Wouldn't it be great if the descriptions to a chart or to a table would be visualized in the same
way? The legends, the labels, the titles, the messages.

00:09:07

At the same place, in the same fonts, with the same distance to visualization
elements.Wouldn't that be great?

00:09:16

We've been talking about dimensions. Let's say the scenarios, we've been talking about the
scenarios.

00:09:22

But other dimensions are worth to be standardized. Let's say, the measures.If, let's say, sales
revenue would be shown in yellow, always in yellow,

00:09:35

so if it's yellow, you know it's sales revenue.I do not want to suggest to do it yellow, just to
understand what we are talking about.

00:09:45

Standardize the measures. We do not have a suggestion yet for specific measures but I'm
sure this will come in the next steps of the International Business Communication Standards.

00:09:57

We have been talking about analysis. We have been talking about the variances, that we have
a visualization for variances.

00:10:05

We have not been talking about the visualization of structure analysis yet.But, well, this is a
field for future standardization.

00:10:16

And last but not least, wouldn't it be great if the visualization of highlighting, if you want to
highlight something that you mention in your message,

00:10:26

that this visualization would always be the same? So let's say we take a blue circle around the
number we are talking about in the message

00:10:37

so you immediately see where this message is visualized in a bar.Okay. Those are aspects
that are worth to be standardized in a semantic notation.

00:10:48

If you want to see more about that, visit this open source Web site: ibcs-a.org.There you will
find all the suggestions from IBCS Association

00:11:02

how to visualize different aspects of business.At the end, such a standardized visualization
has to

00:11:13

be put or to be set up in a kind of notation manual.A notation manual that is applied to your
specific organization, to your business.

00:11:26

Like, let's say, you know that from corporate design they have a corporate design manual for
your company.

00:11:32

And in future, there will be design manuals, notation manuals, for the design of reports,

00:11:43

of PowerPoints, of presentations, of charts, and of tables.And this will be what we will be

talking about tomorrow.

00:11:52

Hope to see you again.

Week 1 Unit 3
00:00:10

Hello and welcome to our unit number 3: Business Notation Manual.Juergen already
introduced some basic semantic rules in the last unit.

00:00:26

And today, I would like to explain to you how we have to build our own notation manual
something like people doing it in corporate design

00:00:37

standards that we use to create our charts, tables, dashboards, and so forth.I would like to
come back to the semantic rules and then go into the details

00:00:47

of a typical notation manual.When you look at this template chart with two layers of variances,

00:01:00

absolute and relative, then what Juergen told you that we say well, scenarios are

00:01:11

used in this way, so we have, let's say, actual is dark and outline for plan.Here you see that the
different variances have a clear concept.

00:01:26

Absolute variances on this level and, above, the percentage variances.And then he said,
number 3 of the basic semantic rules, we have a clear title concept.

00:01:39

Here, it starts with the company and then the measure and then some information about time
and scenarios.

00:01:50

The next one, time is going from left to right.Structure is from top down.

00:02:00

In practice, we need to define our own notation manual.It's a manual consisting of 20 to 50

pages

00:02:14

defining all the details for the software developers, for the report developers to apply for the
creation of their screens and PowerPoints.

00:02:26

So this, of course, is not the reporting at openSAP. So here would be your company.This is
our standard, which can be used and adopted to the needs of different companies.

00:02:42

Quite a few large organizations have downloaded this concept and applied it, adopted it to
their needs.

00:02:49

And it covers these five chapters.We have already talked about IBCS with SUCCESS, and
we'll do this in more detail next week.

00:03:01

I don't want to touch it now. I would start with the basic layout. We have some basic rules of
how to design our content,

00:03:11

similar to the corporate design manual.It's about the grid, about typography, about numbers,
lines, and so forth.

00:03:21

Let me select a few pages out of this chapter.The first one is we have a clear picture of what is
the grid we use

00:03:34

for PowerPoints, for report pages, for screens.How are the margins and what is the size of the
different parts of this page, of these pages.

00:03:48

This is the page layout.The next one is about title and message. You already have heard this
now. This is a very important part of the concept.

00:03:58

We have a title concept. On every slide, on every chart, on every table, the title has the same
three or maximum four rows.

00:04:10

And of course we have a message that shows what we want to tell the audience or show the
readers.And some details about title and some messages.

00:04:23

Of course, typography is an important issue. Which fonts do we use? Which font sizes?

00:04:31

Which is bold and which is regular and italics and so forth? Here is all the details about the
typography.

00:04:40

Then the currency. Currency is an important part of many financial reports.We have to talk
about how do we write the currencies, how do we abbreviate them.

00:04:54

It's like EUR for euro and how we do, let's say a million euros.How we do we abbreviate them?
Is it mio? Is it mil? Is it m?

00:05:06

We say m is for million and b is for billion and k is for kilo or thousand.Of course, this can be
done differently in your companies, but this is our suggestion for the standard.

00:05:18

Colors. We have mentioned before, colors are so important for our visual perception. We have
to be very careful in using them.

00:05:27

We use red for the negative variances. We use green for the good variances.We use blue for
highlighting.

00:05:37

And have some other rules for using these different colors including gray, hatched, and dark.

00:05:46

So this is an important part. We have to define it and we have to define the use of these
colors.Then the semantic notation, as Juergen started already in the last unit.

00:06:00

We have these five chapters I'd like to go through briefly.We have to talk about the different
measures.

00:06:11

That means how do stock values look like, how do flow values, how do good or bad values
look like, ratios and so forth.

00:06:23

Then we come back to the issue of time and structure. Time is always from left to right

00:06:31

and we have different categories on the horizontal axis for years.They are wider, the category
here, compared, let's say, to month here.

00:06:46

That allows us to see right away oh, this is months or this is weeks or this is days and years.Of
course, we need clear definitions for the abbreviations, the type, how do we say is it

00:07:02

second quarter, is it Q2, and so forth, all these abbreviations. This is clear.How do we say
from-to the time span, for instance, just to give one example.

00:07:12

We say is Feb...June.That means it is from-to. It's not a minus, because a minus means FebJune.

00:07:23

There are some details. The first day of the month is a full stop before the month and the last
day is a full stop behind and so forth.

00:07:32

Some details about the time series analysis.Now back to the scenarios because they are so
important in our reports today and

00:07:42

we are almost lost if we start using colors for scenarios because then everything will be very
colorful.This is typical today. Very often companies use colors to differentiate different
scenarios.

00:07:54

So we say no, as you have learned now. Solid dark actual and outline is used for budget or
plan and so forth.And the application as you see it here would be this is bars for previous year,

00:08:11

this is using the previous year in a table, and this is forecast in a column chart and this is plan
in a line chart.

00:08:20

They're symbols using these different types of scenarios.Coming back to the next chapter,
which is variances.

00:08:35

We have two different types of variances. We have absolute variances here. This is a bar chart
and absolute variances here.

00:08:48

The variance, the width of the bars have the same width as the basic bars.And this year, these
pins you see here is always...pins are used for

00:09:00

relative variances. You see here the basic data, actual and plan or forecast.as a column chart
and you see the variances expressed in those pins.

00:09:11

This pin here means it's actual, because it's black compared to outline axis we mean it's actual
compared to budget or plan which means it's delta plan.

00:09:25

Here we're using...the head of this pin here is hatched and so it is forecast compared to here
the plan axis. And so forth.

00:09:39

Here this axis, the base, is a previous year axis so it's called a delta previous year in percent.

00:09:48

Okay. This is a short overview to the different variances.Now the last chapter of these five
chapters in the major semantic parts is indicators.

00:10:02

Indicators we have three or four basic types.It's differences,

00:10:09

that means difference markers showing there is a difference from 1.2 billion or something.Then
a trend, a positive trend using a green line and...

00:10:21

a green arrow, and a red arrow would show a negative trend.Again, a difference marker. And
here outliers are represented by these little triangles

00:10:35

so if percentage value is out of focus, very way out, then we use those triangles.Okay, this was
chapter 3 of the manual

00:10:48

and now with a brief look about other chapters. This is charts and tables.In the Charts chapter-we will come back to this in more detail in the next unit--

00:11:04

we have a chart selection matrix. So we see which chart has to be used for which application,
for which expression, for which message.

00:11:12

And we have different column charts, bar charts, lines, and so forth. Let me go into some
details.

00:11:18

These column charts have to be defined in detail. The size of the font, the exact position, the
exact way we position this -79,

00:11:33

and these vertical separators and all the details. Here's another separator between actual and
forecast.

00:11:42

These details have to be defined in detail for programmers on one side and the users and
controlling and finance, how to use it properly.

00:11:54

Of course, it needs tools which follow these rules.Another example of charts is the details for
these pins

00:12:09

showing relative variances. We talked about this before.And here a typical waterfall showing
the quarterly development

00:12:21

in a variance plus and negative variances, red and green.And of course, we also have to look
at tables,

00:12:33

the different table rows, table columns, and embedded charts in tables.And here I would only
show one example.

00:12:44

of a typical table with a previous year, plan, and thereof column at the end.

00:12:59

There's a clear concept for this, which are the margins, which are the font sizes.The first sum
here, this first sum has to be written this way

00:13:11

and the last one looks like this. We have positive and negative signs here

00:13:18

and so forth. All the details have to be defined. We'll come back to the tables in a later unit and
show you some more details.

00:13:27

Together, I want to say we have this notation manual as a basic idea, as a basic concept, of
what we have to do when we define the different tools,

00:13:43

the different applications, the different PowerPoints covering these semantic rules and of
course giving examples. So at the end,

00:13:51

when we look at this manual, our charts, like this column chart with the variances, and maybe
this area chart for headcount development

00:14:03

or this tree chart here or this table.have the same layout, using the same semantic concept

00:14:13

the same meaning concept. And this is what helps the user, the visitor, the audience to
understand our reports and presentations much more quickly.

00:14:28

So this was what I wanted to tell you about the need of a notation manual.And in the next unit,
we'll talk about templates for charts in more detail.

Week 1 Unit 4
00:00:10

Welcome back to unit 4 of our course about semantic notation.In the units before, you have
learned that there is already a concept for semantic notation

00:00:23

and you have learned how we can apply this concept in order to produce a corporate manual,
very similar to a corporate design manual,

00:00:36

a manual for this notation. We call it a notation manual.Rolf Hichert has explained to you
what's the content of such a notation manual

00:00:46

and he has explained that there is some basic layout rules, some semantic notation rules,

00:00:54

and you can use it, this manual, if you want to build reports or you learn from it if you want to
understand reports following this notation.

00:01:06

In this unit, we will apply this semantic notation or this notation manual to specific chart types
and table types, of course.

00:01:18

So we start from charts, let's say a column chart, how it looks today.And then we try to change
the layout in order to be compliant with the rule set

00:01:31

that we've introduced in the units before.Let's start with column charts.

00:01:39

If we look at a typical column chart, for instance this one here, it's just a column chart. From
here it's from SAP in 2006.

00:01:49

But that doesn't matter. It's just a layout how a designer decided that this chart should look
like.

00:01:58

If we would do it compliant to the rules set forth in the units before, we would probably have a
layout like this.

00:02:09

You see in the upper left corner you see this title that we want to have on every chart and on
every table.

00:02:18

A three-row title with a unit, with a measure, and with the time frame.And you see that we have
an axis from left to right.

00:02:29

On that axis we have the semantic notation for actual and previous year.And we have some
highlighting for the increase that we have

00:02:39

with a positive increase from 2014 to 2015.Well. We could probably add some more
information

00:02:53

by not only showing the sales by business line but also showing the sales by industry or by
region.

00:03:02

And then we add a message and we highlight the message in the chart.So at the end, we have
a chart template for columns

00:03:12

that looks like this and could be used for many different purposes.Let's look at the next chart
type. If we talk about waterfalls.

00:03:24

Waterfalls are a very powerful instrument in order to visualize business facts.And let's just
create a typical template for waterfall charts.

00:03:36

We start with the columns again.You see columns for actual data in black or in dark grey.

00:03:44

You see columns for forecast data, hatched. And now we add plan and previous year.

00:03:52

We calculate the variance to plan and previous year and highlight it.Standardized, of course.

00:03:59

And on a next tier or on a next layer, we add the variances. Here we add percentage variances
like you've seen from Rolf Hichert in the last unit.

00:04:12

We do show relative variances as pins.Now let's look at bar charts.

00:04:21

Again, just let's take a bar chart from whatever source.Here it is an analyst bar chart and

00:04:31

the question is why is it this green-like, greenish color of these bars and why does it look like
this?

00:04:42

Again, it's the designer who decided who decided that it should look like that.If we would apply
our semantic notation to such a chart

00:04:51

it would probably look like this.Again, we have a clear title, we have a message, we have a
complete

00:05:00

similar look and feel of this bar chart.Let's continue with a waterfall which is arranged vertically.

00:05:14

It's not the horizontal waterfall we had before, but it's a vertical waterfall.So you already know if
it's vertical it's a waterfall on structures and not a time series waterfall.

00:05:26

So if we want to visualize, let's say, the sales for a chocolate company by regions in Europe
we could do it in the Excel style. This is an original Excel chart.

00:05:39

If we would do it in the semantic style we suggest, in the IBCS style, it would look like this. So
we first have a bar chart with the countries of Europe.

00:05:52

We have a clear title on top of that.And then again we add the annual totals for actual and for
plan and for previous year.

00:06:04

Then we calculate the variance, first on an annual level.And then we add the variances.

00:06:16

First we add the previous year in the bar chart and then we add the variances on regional
level.

00:06:24

So we now see which countries have contributed to the total variance of the year and so the
good ones and the bad ones. Again, the good ones green and the bad ones in red.

00:06:42

In addition, we could have a variance chart next to it.And probably the percentage variance on
top.

00:06:52

Let's continue. We continue with what we call a calculation waterfall.You probably know that.

00:06:59

You start in a calculation scheme with a specific measure and you calculate from this measure
another measure

00:07:08

like SAP did it in this 2016 chart from the annual report.It's a horizontal axis.

00:07:19

If we do it in the IBCS style, you know horizontal axes are reserved for time series.So we
cannot do it in a horizontal way. We have to use a vertical axis.

00:07:31

So let's change the axis and use a vertical one.And again, the question why is it yellow. Well, I
know it's probably the corporate color of SAP.

00:07:42

But in IBCS style, we would probably use this way. We have it in grey shades.And we have the
complete calculation scheme. We have the same title on top, a three-line title.

00:07:58

And now we can add additional information. Another year, we calculate the variance from
those two years,

00:08:05

and again we can calculate the percentage variance.Okay. We add a title and we highlight the
title in the chart.

00:08:18

Now we come to a different chart type.If we want to explain the causes of a specific
development.

00:08:26

For instance, we have a calculated measure and we want to know from what part of that
calculated measure the development stems.

00:08:36

Then we can do it like this.We first start with, let's say, the return on assets in a time series.

00:08:45

Completely IBCS compliant, with a title and no message yet.Then we add the next level of
calculation,

00:08:55

that we say okay, the return on asset is calculated from....And probably we have third level of
calculation.

00:09:02

And we can completely analyze the root causes of a specific development by using this ratio
tree.

00:09:12

We have a complete title, three rows. If we add a message on top, it's the same. It looks like

00:09:20

the same family of reports, the same family of charts, but now in the form of a tree chart.

00:09:30

What if we look at small multiples. Small multiples are used if you want to see a couple of units
at the same time. So all the products, let's say 25 products

00:09:44

or 16 regions at the same time. Here we have an example with regions. One region with one
chart.

00:09:51

Here, a column chart for Cologne.But we could add more regions. Here it's 16 regions, 4x4.

00:10:06

16 regions with their specific time series' in column charts.Again, with a title and again now
added with a message on top.

00:10:17

And this message highlighted in the lower right corner.Now the next one, it's not only about
bars and columns.

00:10:30

We are talking about line charts as well. For instance, we could start with a bar chart. Here
about the cash flow, cash in and cash out in a column chart.

00:10:40

And we calculate the cash as a stock measure on top of that and we visualize it with a line
chart.

00:10:50

Again, with a title. Again, with a message. And probably on top with the net cash flow in a next
layer on top of the first chart.

00:11:04

Or if we look at portfolio charts. You probably know those bubble charts with two axes or with
two measures that are shown simultaneously.

00:11:15

Again, we have a title, we have this typical chart with two axes, this portfolio setup.We add
some bubbles and a legend and we add a message.

00:11:32

Looks very similar. And last but not least, the tables.

00:11:38

Again, we have the title concept. Again, we have a clear concept for the rows and for the
columns of a table.

00:11:48

It's not arbitrary how high the columns and how high the rows and how wide the columns
are.It's everything defined in our corporate notation manual.

00:12:01

So here we have first the setup of the rows and then we have columns for previous year,
actual, and forecast,

00:12:08

of course with the semantic notation.Then we add some calculated deviations.

00:12:14

And we probably want to show that with integrated bar charts.What I wanted to show you is
with all those examples, with all those templates,

00:12:28

we have a kind of family of charts and tables very similar looking.So we start to create a kind
of pattern recognition.

00:12:39

So if you look at the column chart, if you look at this line chart, if you look at this tree chart, if
you look at this table,

00:12:48

all have the same look and feel what helps to understand it and what helps to create it.Okay.
We are at the end of this unit and the question is:

00:13:04

If we do all of that--so we have a concept first, we have then a notation manual, a corporate
notation manual, and we have some templates

00:13:14

that we use for building our charts and our tables-- is it really worth the effort?

00:13:22

Here we have a visual language and the question is: Is this visual language desirable?

00:13:29

And in the next unit, we will be talking about the benefits of such a visual language.Hope to
see you there again.

Week 1 Unit 5
00:00:10

Hello and welcome back to the last unit of this week.We would like to talk about the benefits of
these notation standards.

00:00:22

What do they do for us what is good? And we have now talked about these standards.

00:00:31

We have talked about this notation manual in the last unit and the different ways of visualizing
charts and tables, these templates.

00:00:46

And now it's about a year ago, a little bit more, SAP asked us whether we are willing to think
about benefits.

00:00:59

And they asked us to write a paper about this. This paper has been published a year ago or
so.

00:01:08

Notation standards in business communication and their practical benefits.It's a 10-15 page
paper. We're happy if you would like to download it.

00:01:20

And the question was: What is really helpful in business reporting compared to people? What
are the benefits in geographic analysis? People using maps?

00:01:37

What is the benefit of handing standards in maps? North is up. Rivers are blue. Roads are red.
You see it on these examples.

00:01:47

And it's obvious that clear rules for designing maps are very helpful for the user. Using the
same scale,

00:02:00

using the same colors for the same meaning.And coming back to music, Leonard Bernstein,
famous not only for his music in West Side Story.

00:02:14

When you see him, what is he doing here? He is writing the music. He is the sender.And what
are the others doing? What is the orchestra doing?

00:02:26

The orchestra is now some type of receiver.And what is the communication tool in between?

00:02:35

What is the link between sender and receiver? And this is sheet music. The transfer medium is
sheet music.

00:02:46

And this is what we have to look for when we have here the controller, the financial analyst,
the writer of an annual report, and here's the reader, the audience, the receiver.

00:02:59

Do we have this link in between like sheet music? We don't have it yet, but this is the goal of
our standards.

00:03:12

Let's have a look at the process of sender and receiver now in the world of business
communication.The IT people, they develop the systems. They provide data.

00:03:31

And then the result are these statistics, these dashboards, more or less coming directly from
IT. Dashboards.

00:03:42

And now the controllers, the people in controlling, the people in financial analysis and other
departments take these dashboards,

00:03:52

analyze them, and create messages.Now from a simple dashboard which has been produced
automatically

00:04:01

we come to reports. Reports contain messages. Reports tell a story. Reports are not only
statistics.

00:04:11

Reports really transport a story.And what does now management do? Management gets these
reports,

00:04:20

evaluates the messages, and makes good decisions, hopefully.This is the process where we
are in.

00:04:31

The more or less statistical dashboards without a message and then the reports and hopefully,
at the end, the good decision.

00:04:40

And in this process, between IT, controlling, and management, where are the benefits? IT
develops the systems. Controlling analyzes the data.

00:04:55

And management evaluates the messages and makes the decisions. So we have three
different areas of benefits.

00:05:06

First is improved quality.It's obvious that if we have really designed

00:05:14

optimal, best templates for different applications, then the IT people can use them and build
perfect systems.

00:05:24

The controllers take these templates and can use them in their reports. And of course the
quality of decisions relies on the quality of these reports and templates.

00:05:38

It's obvious that quality is improving in all three areas.Next thing is reaction time.

00:05:49

Do standards really help us to react faster? Of course. I mean, IT has a shorter development
time because it's clear what they have to do.

00:06:00

It's clear how the dashboards have to look like. The controllers writing and producing the
reports have clear concepts. It's much easier for them.

00:06:12

And of course it's easier for top management and all levels of management to understand
these reports quicker, faster, if they are using the same language.

00:06:24

I mean, just think of a piano player. If Mozart and Beethoven and Tchaikovsky would use a
different language. It's impossible

00:06:33

for him or her to play this piece because he or she doesn't know the notation.And the last one
is maybe the most important one.

00:06:43

It's also reducing the cost.I'm not talking about the cost of time use, but the cost in general

00:06:52

for developing different types of systems, for developing a vast majority of different report
types and pages and different types of charts.

00:07:02

And of course, it's a clear result that if management is able to find better decisions, that this will
reduce costs.

00:07:15

So in all fields, we have quite significant benefits but at the end, the whole project will cost us
investment.

00:07:26

Of course we don't get it for free.We have to make our own notation concept, which takes time.

00:07:33

It has to be defined, spread out, trained. We have to have management supporting this

00:07:41

and we have a project spreading out this on a worldwide basis.In large organizations,
sometimes there are hundreds of countries

00:07:52

and affiliates being touched.And the last thing is of course you need software.

00:08:00

Without proper software, we're not able to fulfill this.Ths software tools, some of them are
already and more are coming to be able to do this.

00:08:14

It's the third pillar we rely on. It's concept, it's management and project work, and it's the
proper software.

00:08:23

Just look at one example of people involved in this business.This is Philips in Eindhoven, a
large international organization.

00:08:34

We have asked the head of reporting What do you think about what we have been doing there
because we made a training concept for them.

00:08:44

We were engaging in the writing of their notation manual.And he says, IBCS has been a great
accelerator for us to take our business insights to the next level."

00:08:54

And even the CFO, he had shown us a picture of the CFO pointing on this poster of the
concept and saying well, this is where Philips is going to go

00:09:05

worldwide in the next years.And so to wrap it up, we feel that the standards of IBCS

00:09:15

are helpful for every type of business communication, let it be PowerPoint or dashboards,

00:09:25

and the last week, the last five units, we have talked about the semantic issues.It's probably
the newer part of the IBCS areas. But in next week, we have another five units.

00:09:42

We will talk about structure, about messages in detail, about perceptual rules, and other
aspects of these international business communication standards

00:09:54

We hope that you will come back next week.to see the other details of IBCS.

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