FREE DM Review Site Registration!
Sign-up today and access DM Review on the Web!

Your FREE registration entitles you to:
FREE email newsletters

FREE access to all DM Review content

FREE access to web seminars, resource portals, our white paper library and more!

   

BI Applications Deliver on the Promise of Enterprise-Wide BI and DW

BI Solutions

My June 2006 column "Making the Case for an Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehouse (DW) Capability" highlighted the need for businesses to "get serious" about their approach to developing an enterprise BI and DW capability. When pursuing this capability it is important to adopt a holistic view, followed by disciplined investment and execution. To develop the future vision for this capability, you should consider seven interrelated areas:

1. Strategy
2. People
3. Process
4. Metrics
5. Applications
6. Data
7. Architecture

This column explores the key considerations of the "applications" focus area.

"We just need a good reporting tool and the users can serve themselves."

This is a prevalent thought in many companies and usually reflects a relatively immature approach to BI. This "all we need is a tool" approach often does not result in significant benefits. I am not saying that self-service reporting doesn't have a place in an enterprise BI and DW strategy - quite the contrary - the point is that it is just one of many types of information delivery approaches that should be considered.

BI applications represent the bringing together of technologies and data to serve the needs of the people who are part of a particular decision-making process. The concept of BI applications follows a similar maturity curve of other IT areas. Many IT revolutions began with the advent of new technologies - COBOL, RDBMS, C++, VB, Java, HTML, etc. - but the real value of these tools comes from the applications that can be created with them such as business applications for processes related to payroll, accounting, customer service, supply chain management, online retailing, etc.

What is a BI Application?

BI applications are designed to improve or automate decision-making and performance management processes. For example, if there is a periodic review of the performance of a particular business process you could create a BI application to provide this functionality. The BI application will have a set of users that know that they need to use this application in order to perform their role in this process. From the users' point of view the BI application will consist of all the different views of the information that are needed to support their part of the decision process.

The BI Application developers will create this solution using the appropriate technologies to create the user interface, as well as all the behind-the-scenes technologies such as RDBMS, data modeling, OLAP DBMS, ETL, data cleansing, etc. These technologies provide the means to deliver the information that is relevant to this process - specifically the important data, metrics and dimensions that are needed to answer the questions related to the decisions that are made in this process.

Where to Start?

You'll need to figure out what applications you need, which to work on now and which to do later. Luckily, when most companies embark on an enterprise BI program, there usually are one or two BI application needs that are driving the demand for the enterprise BI program itself - so these are the best place to start. Initially focusing on these applications will allow you to start delivering some early wins and establish credibility for your BI program.

Once some early credibility is established, you'll find that many new BI applications are desired by the business groups. However, before immediately responding to all of this demand, it's critical to define how these fit into a longer term BI applications roadmap. It helps to align your application roadmap to a unifying concept - such as key business themes, major cross-functional processes or business function needs.

Regardless of the unifying concept you choose, you'll want to find the pockets of people within your company that need similar information to make decisions and try to match the planned applications up to these groups. Prioritize the applications in your roadmap based on expected business benefits. The actual sequencing of projects to deliver these applications can be determined based on a balance of the business priorities with the cost, time and feasibility to deliver the solutions.

Application Capabilities

When designing your BI applications, you'll want to incorporate the appropriate BI "presentation styles" to match the needs of the users. Common presentation styles seen in BI applications include:

  • Static published reports
  • Interactive parameter reports
  • Ad hoc reports
  • Ad hoc OLAP analysis
  • Dashboards
  • Scorecards
  • Alerts
  • Forecasting

Several different technologies may be used to deliver all of the styles, but ideally the applications should make it seem like they all fit together seamlessly. For example, a user should be able to drill from a high-level summary dashboard into some supporting reports or ad hoc analysis views in order to investigate the "numbers behind the numbers" and gain a deeper understanding of a particular situation. Structuring your application this way can allow the application to be used from the executive level down to the front- line employees, should this be needed. Portal tools can be used to help organize the different BI content for easier navigation.

Of course, the heart of a BI application is the star schema data mart and/or the OLAP database that contains the relevant information organized to meet the needs of the application's users. If you don't put a lot of care and attention into getting this part right, the application will be of little use regardless of how slick your application UI is.


Robert Farris, Hitachi Consulting Vice President and Business Intelligence Capability Practice Leader, has more than 19 years of information technology and consulting experience. He has served both in consulting organizations with Andersen Consulting, Navigator Systems and Hitachi Consulting, and in industry organizations with Bankers Trust and American Power Conversion. Farris specializes in developing the strategy for a BI Program, specifically defining and implementing the team organization, architectures, technologies, methodologies and internal processes. Farris is a graduate from Purdue University with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management with a minor in Computer Science. He may be contacted at rfarris@hitachiconsulting.com.

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:



Industry Vendors