Is Business Intelligence an Oxymoron?

Transcription

1 Is Business Intelligence an Oxymoron? Presentation by

2 Agenda A Quiz! BI Definition and Concepts Components of a BI Solution Project Methodology Business Analysis BI Products BI Roadmap (time permitting) Q&A

3 A Quiz Do You Know Your Business Intelligence? Excerpts from an article by Gabriel Fuchs, published June 27, 2006 The older term for business intelligence was decision support systems (DSS). Why is it important to know this? A. It clarifies that the information being used to make decisions should be more than just pretty colored graphs and formatted reports, it should actually be intelligent. B. It shows that today s business is moving ever-faster and that, consequently, shorter abbreviations are better than longer ones. C. It isn t.

4 A Quiz (cont.) Do You Know Your Business Intelligence? Excerpts from an article by Gabriel Fuchs, published June 27, 2006 Some say that a BI implementation is not a project but a whole process. How will this affect the business user of the BI solutions? A. It means that in order to make it look normal, a forever ongoing project is instead called a process. B. It means that they will have to continuously deal with the BI developers until the end of time. C. In reality, it means nothing.

5 BI Defined Common definition of BI Business intelligence (BI) is 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 decision support systems, query and reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data mining. Definition used by multiple information sources, such as Webopedia.

6 BI Defined (cont.) Effective decision making Specific goals, concrete measures, foundation and feedback information in a timely manner Business Intelligence delivery of accurate, useful information to the appropriate decision makers within the necessary timeframe to support effective decision making Layout v. data led discovery v. data mining

7 BI Consumers Decision Makers Specific Goals Concrete Measures Timing of information Upper management Long-term Highly summarized KPIs Latency OK Mid-level management Short-term Summarized data with drill-down Weekly-monthly latency Presumed unimportant Day-to-day Detail-level data Hourly-daily latency

8 BI Concepts OLTP v. OLAP Data Mart v. Data Warehouse Comparison article ETL Star Diagrams and Slowly Changing Dimensions

9 Data Warehouse ETL Transactional Data Advanced Analytics Data Mart Analytics Data Access Layer Scorecard / Dashboard Application Layer Ad Ad--Hoc Query Report Components Enterprise Reporting User Interface Client (external) Reporting Components of a BI Solution

10 Project Methodologies Iterative v. waterfall Is the development methodology for BI different than operational development methodology? Sid Adelman, Larissa Moss DM Review Online, July 2, 2007 Q: Can we not use waterfall or iterative development methodology? Sid Adelman's Answer : They are different. Do not use waterfall for BI, use an iterative or spiral approach. Look at The BI Roadmap by Larissa Moss and Shaku Atre.

11 Business Analysis Techniques Reporting tool summary List available reporting tools and their general purpose Reporting tool feature comparison List features applicable to your project / important to the business and rate the tools Report requirement analysis questions Create a list of questions that will help guide the analysis process and assist in choosing the right tool Example

12 Business Analysis Tips Keep your eye on the ball Analysis time take what you can get! Learn the business process Know your toolset Utilize mock-ups / product demos / prototypes Identify data points Don t lose continuity with hand-offs

13 BI Implementation Success Factors Driving business need Management commitment Implementation resources Business partner, Analysts, Architects, DBAs, Developers, QA Planned architecture Adoption plan Maintenance plan (feedback loop) Properly set expectations

14 Requirements and the Design Analysis tool for slicing/dicing sales resulting from the employee product discount program, including: Filtering and grouping by the products, product categories Filtering and grouping by employee and their department Displaying the average discount rate (based on product cost and amount paid) Displaying the sum amount of product purchase Displaying the number of employees participating Viewing all data over time (grouped by time periods of daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly) Product Dim Product Cat Dim Product ID Product ID Time ID Employee Dim Product Employee ID Full Date Employee Dept Dim Product Cat Time ID Month Product Cost Fact Product Cost Quarter Amount Paid Order Qty Fact Fact Employee ID Amount Paid Order Qty Employee Cnt Time Fact Dim Employee Employee Dept Employee Cnt Year

15 Example BI Environment

16 BI Products Gartner Group Magic Quadrant Predictions article 2009 spending article

17 BI Products of Yore Gartner Group Magic Quadrant

18 A Pop Quiz! Do You Know Your Business Intelligence? Author unknown, August 2008 Why did Microsoft recently enter the BI arena? A. They originally thought it meant to add more intelligence to their applications. B. So they could sell their tools as a Suite and make more money. C. There were still several little guys to crush so they thought it would be fun.

19 BI Roadmap Before the solution Objectives Success measures Resources Set expectations Planned Architecture

20 BI Roadmap (cont.) The solution Process Best Practices Tools Components

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