Making the Case for Business Intelligence Getting beyond the jargon to its relevance as the solution TO …

… to knowing where you are headed Absent an “Oracle of Delphi” You need to: Know where you came from. (past / trends) Know where you are. (present / status) Have your own crystal ball, or magic mirror of intelligence into which you can gaze to know where you are going. (future / what if / forecast)

… to Management Challenges Core product of a manager is decisions. Quality of decisions are dependent upon: Information quality, timeliness, availability Information regarding outcomes (Goals + Information) = (Decisions + Actions) Faster, better decisions & targeted action

… to Operational Challenges As Above So Below…. Middle managers Supervisors Line Staff All must constantly decide and act in the best interests of quality and efficiency All need easy access to the information appropriate to their decision-making

…to Customer challenges Satisfaction and retention View into business conducted with you Self-service, on-demand, inquiries Presenting your best image to customers

… to other challenges Compliance Tracking Evaluating Reporting Industry-specific issues Remembering !

… to the toughest challenge of all Generating and Delivering all of this critical Intelligence Traditional reporting tools & methods just can’t do it efficiently, if at all.

BUSINEss intelligence vs. reporting Knowledge enables clear seeing. Clear seeing is self-corrective. Whatever you look at and measure tends to improve. Everyone in an organization needs the best possible, and most relevant information. Information matched to purpose is golden. BUSINEss intelligence vs. reporting

Business Intelligence Basics Refers to any information useful for business evaluation and decision making. BI s/w is optimized to generate information from data by aggregating facts and measures according to various attributes and dimensions. BI is presented in objects that simplify presentation of complex information into quickly and easily understood forms.

Information Tools Evolution Automation captures endless details Early systems spit details back out as: Listings: detail or summary, with totals Comparison and exception reports Slow, static, dated, inflexible, generic, paper-based (public / not secure) “Information” is often just too much data

Information Tools Evolution Graphing products to visualize totals Standalone, tedious to use, static, slow, dated, inflexible, generic, public … Reporting Platforms to ease the burden... a bit faster to develop – more of the same Business Intelligence Tools Data warehouses (ETL tools) Aggregation Engines (optimized for BI)

Information Tools Evolution Modern Business Intelligence Largely screen-based Immediate access / on-demand Interactive Flexible Consolidates multiple data sources Highly matched to purpose Secure

Business Intelligence Platforms Expose the data (connectivity system) Distill intelligence from the data Design / processing / aggregation system Deliver the intelligence User interface and delivery mechanisms Security at all 3 layers Access, auditability, content filtering

BI Platform Differentiators Cost Complexity Scalability Security ETL Methodology Design Tools Delivery Systems (host OS & application) User Interface

The Case for Dynamic AI Very high productivity development tools Negligible end user-training Speed and ease of server deployment Zero-configuration client deployment No ETL step / real-time intelligence 100% Browser-based Automated, interactive graphs Scheduled or condition-based email Customizable via CSS and javascript Extensive security Single, central repository for reports, users, etc.

Seeing the big picture. Knowing when and where to look further. Real world examples …

Static vs. Dynamic Interactive Document

KPI Dashboard: “cold – hot” & “pass – fail”

Top 10 Dashboard …

Multi-run Dashboard

Sales Rep. Period Peformance This dashboard is made from 4 reports – 2 reports duplicated, one for the grid, one for the tile: Sales for period. Sales for year. It runs the sales for period reports once for for each value in the Period drop down list.

Operational Intelligence… (sales reps.)

While I’m already looking at that…

Calendar magic …

Integration w/Apps & Web sites