1. Lawson Business Intelligence
JGI Business Intelligence Presents Lawson Business Intelligence (LBI): Overview and Implementation of Thursday, September 28th, 2006 Matthew Nye JGI

2. Agenda Concept Components Discuss Features Best Practices Demo
Lawson Business Intelligence
Agenda
Concept
Components
Discuss Features
Framework Services
Reporting Services
SmartNotifications
Best Practices
Demo
First on the agenda will be common concepts related to Lawson's Business Intelligence vision. We won't be covering every component, as that would take quite a bit of time, but I do want to touch on the high level structure. Then we will get into some of the core components: FS, RS and SN. After that I want to spend some time in best practices. And finally wrap up with Q&A and a live demo.

3. Lawson Reporting Offerings
Lawson Business Intelligence
Broadcasting
Enterprise Reporting
Lawson Reporting Suite
Lawson Business Intelligence
For the old school, you remember Broadcasts, arguably the best analytical app Lawson has offer before LBI.
ER, ehhh, no so much, gives great scalability but data security is a bit difficult
LRS, very good effort but may have frustrated more than satisfied
LBI, ahhhh, now we’re cookin’ with gas, no offense to any Electric companies here today

4. Lawson Business Intelligence Components
The Lawson Business Intelligence consists of the following components:
Framework Service
Reporting Services
SmartNotifications
Additional Lawson analytical and reporting offerings:
Scorecard
Today we will be covering three major components of LBI. It should be noted that this grouping is a functional grouping not necessarily a Lawson marketing grouping (ie. MS Add-Ins maybe licensed separately) and is not meant to be all-inclusive.
Microsoft Add-Ins
Process Flow
Design Studio
Analytic Architect

5. Example Lawson Environment
Lawson Business Intelligence
Example Lawson Environment
Server Configuration
Portal
Java 2 SDK 1.4.2
Lawson Applications or later
Repository DB: SQL Server 2k, Oracle 9.2 or later
Lawson Environment 9.0
Database Drivers: SQL Server for JDBC, Oracle OCI
IOS or later
Crystal Server XI or Crystal Enterprise 10 Embedded
Win Server 2000 or later
Application Servers: Tomcat 5.0, WebSphere 6.0
End User Configuration
These are just some common configurations in no particular order. I find that a lot of questions revolve around versions and I think this is a good time to address this. Because LBI is “Bolt-On” product, Lawson is NOT a requirement. You could be an SAP customer and take advantage of some of the key features of LBI such as Rights Management and Bursting. So Lawson versioning is of no consequence. Now Lawson provides added functionality with LBI and Lawson apps integration, and for some of this, IOS, Env and apps versions are important.
IE 6.0 or later
Adobe 7.0.5

6. Simplistic Implementation
Lawson Business Intelligence
Simplistic Implementation
Simplistic Implementation
This is the most common installation of LBI. Variations include breaking SN out onto a separate server. Another is having them all on the same server but each having a separate application server (Tomcat or Websphere) instance. For those that are more technical, we can have a break out after the Q&A to address any questions or concerns you might have regarding setups.

7. Extended Implementation
Lawson Business Intelligence
Extended Implementation
In this implementation, we see RS, SN and FS on separate application servers and two separate servers for the RS Crystal Engine. The application server will determine what requests are sent to what servers based on priority that you give each.

8. Framework Services Administration
Lawson Business Intelligence
Framework Services
FS is a web application that allows you to organize, secure and deliver information to your users. A single point of truth for business critical data. FS seamlessly integrates with [click] your network security, [click] Lawson security, or for the smaller or perhaps test instances [click] you can administer users via text file.
[click]
FS also allows your IT staff a central point of administration for many of your web based bolt on product, Lawson or not.
SC [click], PF[click], RS[click] and SN[click] can be administered and retain sign-on integration capabilities via FrameworkServices. There is also the capability to create custom services, all that is required is a url. For example, for those of you that have a Service Level Agreement Ticket management system such as Remedy or CAs Help Desk, these could be registered as a service and later placed in the proper dashboards of groups that need access.

9. Reporting Services Lawson Business Intelligence
Not to be confused with Lawsons prior reporting product, Enterprise Reporting, Reporting Services will now be the primary report delivery application. The differences are many and varied, but to sum up as simplistically as possible, ER was essentially an OEM version of Crystal Enterprise. While Reporting Services still uses a trimmed down version of the Crystal Enterprise engine, known as Reporting Application Server (RAS), they have created their own proprietary user interface, scheduling and security functionality for web delivery using J2EE technology.
The biggest enhancement from the previous release of Reporting Services is its Scheduling and Bursting capabilities. With the Rights Management module, you have the ability to map users to specific data values and either push the content out, referred to as Bursting, or filter the content when the user requests the reports via web delivery, know as View-Time Filtering. While the actual set up can potentially require a large amount of administration on the front end, it provides functionality that is non-existent in many BI offerings from other vendors.
Its also important to understand that RS is NOT a stand alone application. It is used in conjunction with FS.

10. Lawson Business Intelligence
Reports can be added to Dashboard modules as a search of registered services within FS or individually specifying links. Another convenient enhancement with LBI is the addition of Report Lists. This allows you specify the reports you want a group of users to have access to, embed that list in a dashboard with the appropriate uses with permissions to view. This means you don’t have to create multiple links in a dashboard to create a view for your users.
Here we see a screen shot of the improved parameter page. For those of you on ER, this will be a welcome change as the ER parameter page caused confusion with some end users.

11. Lawson Business Intelligence
Reports can be added to Dashboard modules as a search of registered services with in FS or individually specifying links. Another convenient enhancement with LBI is the addition of Report Lists. This allows you specify the reports you want a group of users to have access to, embed that list in a dashboard with the appropriate uses with permissions to view. This means you don’t have to create multiple links in a dashboard to create a view for your users.

12. SmartNotifications Lawson Business Intelligence
SmartNotifications is a robust content delivery system. Utilizing view time filtering and bursting capabilities, it allows you to effortlessly deliver content to your business users and all they have to do is login to a web site or check their .
One thing to keep in mind is that LSN is not some much a data mining tools such as a Crystal Report Writer or Lawson Query Builder, but a delivery tool. It has some business logic functionality, but for best performance, all grouping and aggregation should be performed prior to pulling the data into a Note.
There are few enhancements with the 9.0 release of SN. The one major enhancement is the usage of Tomcat 5 with provides stability and increased performance. For those of you that have used SN, you know it is a memory and processor hog.

13. SmartNotifications Delivery
Lawson Business Intelligence
SN allows you to define triggers, schedules or web delivery modules to deliver content to your business users.
The source of your notification can be varied. Any source that is accessible via JNDI or JDBC as well as file locations and Lawson DME connections, etc. The event that updates the data in a notification can be as simplistic as a reoccurring schedule or as complicated as integrating into a click event within a custom application.

14. FrameworkServices Dashboards
Lawson Business Intelligence
Now that we’ve covered SN and RS, Id like to return to FS to discuss Dashboards. Dashboards is the design aspect of FS and is really where all of this culminates. With dashboarding you have the ability to embed your information, reports, etc, then apply security for your users. FS can be used as a stand alone application (useful for organizations with Lawson and Non-Lawson users), acting as a company portal or for those of you with Lawson Portal version or later, FS can be embedded and set up as users default page when they login.

15. Form and Function Lawson Business Intelligence Form and Function
For those of you that already have existing intranet applications that youd like to integrate with company branding, efs is skin-able. All that is required is intermediate JavaScript and HTML coding knowledge. Keeping in mind that Lawson doesn’t support customization on upgrades and patches.

16. Best Practices Vision Ownership Review & Refresh Concise Actionable
Lawson Business Intelligence
“… there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane." Francis Ford Coppala    
Vision
I was tempted to make this slide the first slide of the presentation because its so incredibly important but I want this to be the last thing you see. So many failed BI projects can be directly attributed to lack of Business Process Management. I encourage you to forget about the application you want to use or have purchased and focus on the business processes that have the greatest effect on your bottom line. Pick them apart and find 10 areas that need improvement. From there, you start to develop analytics around that. Functionality of a software can be thrown out the window if your metrics have no impact on your profits and losses.
So, with that in mind I have a quick list of 4 items to apply to your BI implementation.
Ownership – each piece of content should be owned by a specific person in the organization
KPIs, Dashboards, reports, notifications, etc often can loose their relevancy over time. A review process should be set up to make sure each and every item is still being utilized. Web statistics can be implemented on view time content and a polling of end users can help to determine if the content is being used or has just become clutter. If your users are not even opening bursted content, this is a good indication the information is out dated
Concise – content should be easily understood, there shouldnt be so much information that the user is over loaded, thus loosing their impact on the user.
Actionable – users should be able to take some positive action based on the content
A common term in all BI circles is Dashboarding. Depending on the vendor, this term can mean many different things. But in general you can envision dashboards, just as literally as possible. Your dashboard on your car. There are many different indicators: amount of gas, engine temp, speed, rpms, etc. But none of these are meant to be something you spend a lot of time looking at. Its made so that you can momentarily glance at and get a gage of any actions that need to be taken.
Speed limit is 55, youre going 60…depending on the driver…you apply pressure to the accelerator or let up on the accelerator
Check engine, take the car to a mechanic
Tank is on empty, siphon gas from your neighbors car
Ownership
Review & Refresh
Concise
Actionable