What is business intelligence?
Business Intelligence means using your data assets to make better business decisions. It's about access, analysis, and uncovering new opportunities.
Being able to consolidate and analyze large quantities of data in day-to-day operations for better business decisions can often lead to competitive advantage. For example, a nationwide retail clothing chain can tailor store inventories to suit local tastes, an auto insurance company can market to drivers that meet a certain profile, a pharmaceutical company can look for patterns in patient responses to drugs, a bank can determine what services are needed to retain existing customers, and a sales manager can look for trouble spots in geographic territories.
Business Intelligence refers to the ability to make better business decisions through intelligent use of your data assets. It's about giving access to the right data, analyzing the data for insights, and using the insights to make better decisions.
Today, business intelligence solutions are not just for the chosen few -- the goal is for any appropriate individual to have access to decision enabling information anytime and anywhere. The ability to gain insights from your data is possible, if you have the right applications and tools to analyze data and more importantly, if the data is prepared in a format suitable for analysis.
Business intelligence solutions
What comprises a Business Intelligence solution? Today's managers know that no matter what the core business, they are in the "information business". They must drive decisions that directly influence results. Businesses that effectively use information to manage and impact decision-making will have the greatest competitive advantage.
Quite simply, a Business Intelligence solution involves the gathering, managing, and analyzing of data -- and then transforming it into useful, actionable information. So it's gather, manage and analyze... transform it into information... and use it to run the organization. It's about creating an information-driven e-business.
One element of Business Intelligence solutions is the analytic application that provides in-depth analysis of business operations leading to better decision-making. The analytic application uses data prepared for analysis and stored in what is typically called a data warehouse or data mart.
So a complete Business Intelligence solution combines several elements:
The analytic application
- The databases and tools to build and manage a data warehouse or data mart
- Hardware servers and storage
- Consulting and services for planning and implementation
Today's Enterprise Challenge
..
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Senior Management is unable to identify key opportunites within their business. Constant pressure exist to increase revenue, decrease cost and increase profits.
With that in mind, top management is constantly monitoring the P&L statement, the balance sheet, cash flow amd financial ratios in order to identify business opportunities.
IT BUSINESS PROBLEM
End user requests of IT for access to corporate information are consuming IT resources. IT is looking to provide an environment so that end users can uncover business opportunities without their help.
Integrating several different tools to solve this problem is too expensive and risky.
Challenges
In organizations without a dedicated business intelligence system, information doesn't flow freely. In such an environment, users often rely on hard copy reports as the primary source for their analyses. Although reports can be useful when they're designed to support analysis (i.e., can print subtotals without the associated details), they are not very helpful when users must thumb through hundred of pages to find a few key figures.
When users utilize only a fraction of the data that appears on a report, they waste time, paper and valuable system resources. Lengthy report generation can also create logistical bottlenecks. Besides, report jobs can regularly degrade system's performance and users frequently complain about waiting for reports.
Business intelligence solution alleviates these problems by giving users direct, intuitive access to the data they require. This reduces the need to run and print voluminous reports. We, the technical team, view end users as customers and different customers have different needs. A store manager, for example, may only require an inventory tracking application to perform his or her tasks. Similarly, a well-written order entry application may satisfy the needs of a customer service manager. In contrast, upper level executives are less concerned with the day-to-day effectiveness of operational systems, requiring instead applications that support ad hoc analyses.”
WHY DATA WAREHOUSING?
One person in the company had a vision - data warehousing as the solution to their reporting woes.
He convinced the upper management that data warehousing would enable them to make better decisions with up-to-date & easy-to- access information.
Benefits Reaped
Management discovers more about their business - product, department & branch performances
- During weekly meetings, upper management is better able to gauge the problems at hand and extract ideas from the different branches & managers on possible improvements.
More Benefits
Similarly, end users can quickly produce ad hoc reports from centralized OLAP data by slicing their way through cubes of multidimensional data created by IS. As a result, users can easily perform free-form data exploration and create business performance reports with no need to understand underlying database complexities.
IS has the flexibility to implement both "push" and "pull" methods to distribute reports and cubes for analysis. These can be "pushed" to users' desktops, or posted in a central location from which users can "pull" information when they need it.
As a result, both operational user community and upper management are satisfied.
The need for enhanced operational visibility and agility has emerged as a top corporate priority, driving the need for corporate IT departments to quickly and cost effectively deploy business intelligence (BI) solutions to users inside and outside the enterprise. Faced with reduced budgets, fewer people, and less time, IT needs a solution that meets this critical objective: one that leverages existing assets, ensures rapid implementation and ongoing adaptability, minimizes costs, and delivers value to more users.
Biztrak Ultra BPM meets the needs of both IT and business users by providing rich functionality and flexibility without the high costs, complexity and training requirements that have left traditional BI solutions on the shelf.
Designed for the mass deployment and adoption of business analytics, Biztrak Ultra BPM is a business intelligence platform that quickly and easily delivers capabilities such as ad hoc query & reporting, and analysis via "out-of-the-box" dashboards. Ultra BPM is designed for usability, scalability and extensibility to ensure the lowest cost of ownership and quickest return-on-investment for analytic solutions. Highlighted features include:
The product of extensive market research, Ultra BPM was developed and designed with the user in mind - ensuring user satisfaction and rapid adoption by both power and novice users. Ultra BPM significantly reduces training efforts and cost. Ultra BPM enhances usability by integrating the full complement of BI functions - report viewing, ad hoc analysis, report creation, drilling, broadcasting, Excel interaction, etc. - into a single, integrated dashboard interface.
Internet/ intranet architecture
Ultra BPM leverages existing enterprise infrastructure, offers connectivity for mobile devices, communications tools, and authentication mechanisms. Designed for usability, scalability and extensibility, Ultra BPM ensures the lowest cost of ownership and quickest ROI on the mass deployment of business intelligence.
Robust Microsoft Excel integration
Ultra BPM offers the highest level of integration with Microsoft Excel including:
- Formatted Export to Excel - Exports data into new Excel spreadsheet.
- Export to Pivot Table - Exports to new pivot table in Excel for alternate analysis
Ultra BPM's Portal Integration Kit gives programmers easy-to-follow steps (and sample code) to integrate functionality from Ultra BPM into portals such as Ms Sharepoint, Ms Digital Dashboard, Plumtree, and Epicentric. Organizations that have not standardized on a portal framework can use the Ultra BPM dashboard-style interface to deliver unstructured data (such as documents, URLs, spreadsheets, etc.) in addition to reports, alerts and indicators.
Ultra BPM allows users to build their own Business Intelligence Systems by assembling pre-written components thus reducing time, cost and complexity of software development.
Ultra BPM is a component framework based Business Intelligence System that empowers management to act on data and information with reflex like speed. This is achieved by allowing users to build, remove and change business rules and present information with familiar and easy to understand objects like hotspots, dials, colour bars and traffic lights in an automatic process.
In addition, Ultra BPM allows management to drill down on problem areas and locate the source of problems. This fast and effective method promotes the execution of “business reflex”, allowing management awareness of the problems earlier, locate the source of the problems and act with reflex like speed.
Ultra BPM addresses the concerns generally associated with major Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management Systems such as high risk, high cost and delayed time to market, with positives such as low risk, low cost and rapid deployment. With Ultra BPM, management can even change business rules and drill down logic online without engaging technical personnel.
Ultra BPM is truly client implementation - web interface which deliver the benefits of accessibility and portability. Users can access the business information from any device, desktop, or location with access to Intranet or Internet environment. Ultra BPM has small enough in size to meet the varying levels of bandwidth available to users.
With the advantage of integration with Microsoft Analysis Services, it allows users to define the specific information on cubes according to their business functions and interact with the information through personalized analytic dashboard available in Ultra BPM.
Target market segment and user profile
The Ultra BPM is tailored to medium to large sized of organizations with a need of analysis on their business formation. The target market segme nts include of corporate companies, retails, manufacturing, advertising firms, insurance companies, financial services and etc.
- Three-tiered architecture, utilizing 'push' And 'pull' technology
- Platform for Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)
- Configurable 'Business Rules' and pre-programmable 'Alerts' Via SMS, e-mail.
- Personalized time and threshold-based alerts can be specified and delivered in real time
- Platform for Balance Scorecard
- Interactive and high impact Visualizations
- On-line collaboration while viewing on the information dashboard
- Forum to build a pool of knowledge base information
- Integration to e-mail servers i.e. Ms Outlook, Lotus
- Web-based ‘OLAP' (On-Line Analytical Processing)
- Highly valuable ‘Cube' for multidimensional analysis by leveraging Microsoft Analysis Services tool.
- Point-and-click template creation and analysis
- Dice and slice, drill-down etc. for data exploration to addressing the simple to sophisticated business queries.
- Available dashboards include hotspots on customizable maps, dials or speedometers, charting and color bars.
Ultra BPM delivers the true benefits which focus on various user groups like top management, executives, and IT team.
Top management (eg company or division heads) Able to analyze the business information in a breath and depth basis. Executives / employee Able to take right and immediate action to the identified problem from the analyzed information. IT team Able to customize reports which tailor to the business or management requirements. Stakeholders (eg Customer, Supplier, or any contacts) Relevant information can be delivered to the stakeholders in an appropriate and effective manner.
Simple interface for interacting with business information residing in cubes (Analysis Services).
Personalize individual reporting layout with available presentation objects/dashboards like hotspots, dials or speedometer, colour bars and traffic lights.
Together with Analysis Services, users are given wizards to define reports, data connections, create simple to advanced business measurements without any IT dependency. This means that users can analyse information from their individual business perspective in minutes, instead of weeks or months.
Capability of OLAP slice and dice, drill down analysis to obtain the summaries to underlying details level with access to the entire breadth and depth of data contained in a cube.
Access information from anywhere at anytime.
Ease of use means that end user can adopt the tool easily without requiring any specialized training. Users can point-and-click to access the necessary set of information.
To facilitate the business decision-making process from the perspective of management, human resources, project management, customer relation, individuals and corporate performance. Ultra BPM provides simple navigation of information to quickly drill down into most business questions.
To promote collaborative capability by sharing the personalized reports, KPI, and metrics.
Push and Pull technologies for acquiring or notifying users on critical information.
Dashboard or analytical results can be delivered to a wide array of information devices like PDAs, and WAP-enabled.
Able to integrate with other databases like Oracle, DB2, and etc.
Dashboard can be presented in rows and columns for data pivoting (swapping of rows and columns) in order to facilitate real time what-if analysis purposes. Once users satisfy with the changes they can commit them back to the predefined cube.
Analytical information can be exported into Microsoft Excel or other BI applications for further interacting with the data.
To support on screen query and reporting filtering by further redefining the cube data or the base structure of query so that immediate responses can be obtained for the vast majority of requests.
In addition to the pull technology, users are able to subscribe the available reports or KPI which are regularly accessed and automatically send to users via email or other common channels on a scheduled basis. This self-subscribe is to ensure the delivery of information that is relevant and timely.
Able to integrate with the common standards like Web Services, XML and SOAP to enable sharing software functionality over the Internet.
Personalized data and role based access control to the data.
Supporting new Microsoft OS and perhaps other application systems.
Product architecture and technologies
Ultra BPM product architecture develops on a comprehensive three-tier architecture solution leveraging on the Intranet /Internet infrastructure.
Ultra BPM utilizes the OLAP tool – Analysis Services which bundled with the most familiarity relational database Microsoft SQL Server, to deliver the basic functionality of building analysis application, including allows users to create pre-built cubes to support simple to sophisticated business queries and data mining capabilities.
Solution architecture
Ultra BPM's business intelligence engine's components
Ultra BPM comes with a comprehensive Repository of business presentation objects that perform business reflexes to management.
An example of Ultra BPM's business presentation object is the Dial and Traffic light method which defines data structure, create cubes of data, define formulae, drill-downs etc. With Ultra BPM, you can create business reflexes by simply choosing the required business presentation objects from the Repository and placing it on your Business Intelligence Dashboard/Enterprise Information Portal.
Drill-down analysis and business rules model
Ultra BPM allows you to create your own special page layout, drill-down and business reflex needs, by simply placing the business rules on your workspace. For example, you may want to reflex sales performance on your database, and drill-down to profit and lost analysis. In this case, you can use the formula business object, which allows you to define business rules to allow sales performance and profit reflex, then use page layout designer and drill-down utilities to define the drill-down logic.
Users see your new formula as a business reflex on the relevant workspace. Ultra BPM automatically treats this formula as information stored in Ultra BPM's Engine. In other words, your Business Rules Model is kept in line with the business objects that you deploy on your component repository.
With the Drill-Down Analysis and Business Rules Model, Ultra BPM's business logic is not static. It is flexible and can be changed at a moment's notice. Changes to the Business Rules Model can be implemented immediately - without the need for programming changes or re-compilation of the software.
Ultra BPM comes with a configurable user interface for the user. The user interface's look and feel is not hard coded meaning the user can tailor the screen components to his/her liking. Users can tailor colour or use of icons and buttons.
Part of the definition of your organisation include the creation of authorised user records, and the permissions given to users in terms of
- Which information user can access,
- What tasks user can access in the main menu,
- Whether user can update information about a task,
- You can also maintain security access models by user groups.
The following tools have been utilised for developing and supporting the Ultra BPM.
- Microsoft ASP scripts
- Java scripts
- ActiveX controls
- Microsoft Analysis Services
