Efficient BI Solution Presented by: Leo Khaskin, PowerCubes Lab Value of Information as Business Asset

BI Definition A broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help enterprise users make better business decisions. BI applications include the activities of executive information systems (EIS), decision support systems (DSS), query and reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, scenario modeling (“what-if” analysis), and data mining.

Justification for BI Support objectives set up by Management: Strategic Identify new opportunities Competitive Advantage Tactical Customer profitability Market Segmentation, etc. Operational Business Process Control & Optimization Improve bottom-line

BI Assessment & Roadmap Considerations: Request turn-around time? Self-service capabilities? Advanced Analytics? Milestones: Implementation Methodology Unified Modeling Environment Single BI Metadata Repository Sound Solution Architecture To what rate existing BI supports your needs?

Efficient BI Solution Specific to the business needs: focused on providing the most valuable informational assets, resolving most important issues Comprehensive: laying solid foundation for fact-based decision making FSM (Flexible, Scalable, Maintainable): adherent to proven practices and best industry standards

Solution Components (Milestones) Solution Architecture Dimensional Model to support business Best of breed tools – IBM Cognos Suite

Milestone 1: Implementation Methodology Every phase generates an asset

Configurability vs Programmability A business rules engine is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. The rules might come from legal regulation ("An employee can be fired for any reason or no reason but not for an illegal reason"), company policy ("All customers that spend more than $100 at one time will receive a 10% discount"), or other sources. A business rule system enables these company policies and other operational decisions to be defined, tested, executed and maintained separately from application code. Milestone 2: Business Rules Engine (BRE)

BRE Functions

BRE Management Challenge BR Repository Visualization Accessibility by applications Governance Change Management Ownership Configurability

BRE Management Challenge - continued Utilizing in-memory database

IBM Cognos 8 Controller - Financial consolidation, reporting and analytics to drive performance and compliance IBM Cognos® Planning is enterprise planning software that helps you develop budgets and forecasts faster and more efficiently Cognos TM1 High-performance enterprise planning software for budgeting, forecasting and analysis Milestone 3: Cognos – best tool on market

Delivery Model 1 - Traditional BI Architecture

Delivery Model 3 – Managed Services

BI Metadata Management

BI Metadata Lifecycle

Architecture Consideration Triage The growth each of the components increases the necessity of persistent semantic layer. Real-time requirements stipulates the use of in-memory tools. Baseline – the need of sound dimensional model

Areas of Expertise RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) BI Extract/Transform/Load (ETL) Data Warehouse / ODS Analytical Applications Operational Reporting Data Mining Data Mart / OLAP CFO Services Applications

BI Applications Purchasing ($14M savings) Inventory Analysis ($5M savings) Pricing (increase in wholesale margins) Customer Insight (17% ROI in one year) Profitability Analysis (20% ROI in 9 months) Budgeting, Consolidation & Analysis (80% less time to publish monthly financials) Theft & Fraud Detection (From discovery to deterrence) Predictive Analytics Sales Analysis

BI Applications (cont) Vendor Performance Analysis Balanced Scorecard Enterprise Performance Management HR Compensation Planning Ops / IT Allocation Analysis Government Tax Data Warehouse (1000% ROI in two years) Business Activity monitoring (Reduce loss prevention)

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