Using Business Intelligence to Gain A Competitive Edge
Using Business Intelligence to Gain a Competitive Edge
If you run a business, you’ve probably found that organising and working with data can be very challenging, especially in a scenario where the data is too large to be handled easily. If this sounds familiar then you need a business intelligence solution to avoid further delays in reporting and results.
Business intelligence strategies like data warehousing and data mining ensure that all the information in a modern business system is integrated, and that knowledge can be shared across the whole organisation smoothly.
For effective use of business intelligence solutions, you need to have good tools. Oracle Hyperion is the right tool. By helping you classify and organise the different types of information within your organisation you’re able to leverage information you probably didn’t even know you had. Two of the most important strategies that are employed in data management through business intelligence are:
- Data warehousing – If your business has many departments and information is scattered across these departments, you’ve probably been finding it difficult to create a good overall report. The fact that certain information may be too detailed only adds to the complication. Good business intelligence software seeks to overcome these limitations. With the right use of business intelligence, you can create a central repository for data which will make it easier to manage data.
- Data mining – Did you know your massive data banks can give you the competitive edge you’ve been looking for? The more data you archive within your organisation, the less you use it. This doesn’t have to be the case if you have a system whereby you’re able to handle it properly. By using the right business intelligence software, it’s possible to sort through data and reveal important patterns and strategies. You can learn what did not work in the past and why, and also what you can do in the future. This is also a great tool for market research.
Business Intelligence Software
Business Intelligence Software
For any modern business, data management poses a serious challenge. How do you control the flow of information and make past data work for a better business future? As the modern communication and storage system grows more capable and complex, there is a need to manage all this effectively. Business intelligence is the answer to this. However, before looking into which software you can use for your business, it would be worthwhile spending some time understanding business intelligence.
What is Business Intelligence?
There is so much data being generated today that businesses don’t know what to do with it. If all this data can be analysed and handled properly, it can give you valuable insight into the finer details of your business market.
At the same time, business intelligence aims to increase productivity and effectiveness. Take reporting, for example. It is a very important function in today’s organisations, but if the data to be accessed happens to be spread over many departments, as it invariably is, then generating helpful reports can become a problem.
All these problems can be solved by using the proven strategies of business intelligence.
- Data warehousing – This approach deals with the storage and management of data in a way that makes reporting and integration easy. All data is centralised and follows a particular protocol, which makes it easy to expand the system as need be. The direct benefits of data warehousing then become apparent. Data management becomes easy, and reporting improves.
- Data mining – Data mining is a brilliant business intelligence strategy concerned with analysing and interpreting vast amounts of previous data. It reveals various business trends and what costly mistakes were made in the past, and suggests new tips for the future.
Benefits of using Business Intelligence software
The benefits of business intelligence are apparent. To implement these practices, you need sound software like Oracle Hyperion, which analyses and improves your business processes. The right software can make all the difference to your business.
If you are looking for a sound business intelligence software solution in South Africa, then contact Intellient, an EOH Oracle Services companhy right away and learn how we can help you improve your business management with the help of state-of-the-art business intelligence strategies.
Business Intelligence Solutions
Business Intelligence Solutions
Running a business effectively is no easy task. Apart from a host of other problems modern South Africa businesses face, the most common is data management. A sound business intelligence solution seeks to increase the productivity of your business by improving the way it manages data.
What is Business Intelligence?
A modern business can be viewed as a collaboration of many systems. For example, a company could have many departments spreading the workload between each other. However, without data warehousing or business intelligence software, it can become difficult to extract meaningful data from this or make useful reports.
Business intelligence tools like Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management make this task easier for business owners. Let’s take a quick look at what the most important strategies consist of:
- Data warehousing – Do you run an organisation where information is scattered and sparse? While all the records may be available, it can be near impossible to draw on all of them and create a good report. Data warehousing looks to overcome this defect by applying sound practices of data management. If properly implemented, such a system integrates the entire information flow at a single point, and it becomes very easy to generate good reports and manage the data.
- Data mining – If you’ve been in business for a long time then surely you’ve accumulated vast amounts of observational data. The correct interpretation of this data can be very beneficial – it can provide the overall picture, indicate what could have been done differently, and reveal the market secrets to you. Such systematic and meaningful extraction is known as data mining, and it is a very common business intelligence tool.
Business Intelligence Solutions in South Africa
A business intelligence solution should be implemented by a proven expert in order for it to be of real value. We provide the very best business intelligence tools for South African businesses and enterprises and have implemented solutions with outstanding results.
Our dedicated team is committed to creating better solutions for your company so that you can increase your organisational efficiency.
Contact us now!
Get in touch with us right away to learn more about business intelligence and how you can help your business do better with this tool.
Business Intelligence: What sets the giants apart?
Business Intelligence: What sets the giants apart?
There are a few companies in South Africa considered the elite of the business world. The top 100 JSE listed companies are the benchmark by which the rest of the business community measure their success.. Many researchers have conducted studies with regards to the difference between those who make it to being listed as a top 100 company, and those who don’t. What do they do differently?
In addition, many studies have been embarked on to determine the characteristics of world class companies. But what exactly is a world class company? Bosman (1998) defines a world class company as being equivalent in every respect to the best in the world. This entails an holistic approach to productivity and quality improvement and a focus on the elimination of all forms of waste and non-value adding activities in the organisation. Bosman states that success is achieved through creating a habit of continual improvement based on the involvement of the total workforce.
Some other criteria established as common denominators amongst those successful companies in business are the alignment of management objectives, managing for quality, good operational practices, staff empowerment and a strong customer focus.
Other characteristics include having visible measurement systems, knowledge sharing throughout the organization coupled with purposeful communication, and valid, accurate and accessible data, leading to good decision making. The success of an organization fully depends on the efficiency of the decision making processes. The ability to analyse the historical data, the macro and micro environment, predict the future and make decisions accordingly, will set a company apart. Scholars have developed different techniques and methodologies to assist in sound decision making, but with all those tools and techniques, such as the decision tree, accurate data is still necessary before a decision can be reached. Top CEOs are expected to make various good decisions on a daily basis. The effectiveness of the decision making process will have a direct impact on the success or failure of the company.
Wouter van den Heever, Group Internal Control Manager of Sappi Limited, says that accurate data on which to base decision making, although crucial, is only the starting point. The correct tools with which to analyse the data is necessary to reach the correct decisions at all times. “There are so many tools in the market today, we are spoilt for choice. The tool should provide accurate reporting in real time and in a format that is user friendly,” says van den Heever.
Sappi chose to engage with Intellient, a member of the EOH Group, since 2000 to provide the Hyperion Financial Management system. The system is used, amongst others, to provide accurate financial reporting. “The archiving system is good, data is accurate and accessible and reports are provided regularly and customised according to the needs of each division. Sappi implemented the system globally and have found it stable and able of being fully integrated with other systems in the organisation. Intellient provides good back-up support with seamless access to the Oracle know-how and training,” concludes van den Heever.
Jeanine Janse van Rensburg, who joined Sappi in the Group Finance division in March 2008, says that the first criterion for effective reporting is to prevent data from being manipulated. “When data is consolidated on Excel, each person working with the data can easily manipulate the data to suit the current situation. This could lead to situations where data has to be checked continuously to determine accuracy. After all, decisions involving billions of rands are made according to the reports provided”. Furthermore, by 2011 it will be required by USA legislation to submit annual reports to the USA Securities Exchange Commission in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). Sappi is striving, with the help of the Hyperion system, to be prepared for this requirement by late 2010. Janse van Rensburg is confident that this goal will be achieved as a result of the help received from the Intellient helpdesk.
Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting offers the XBRL Manager, using XBRL to convert data into a standard format that can be read and processed automatically. It is common knowledge that the variables in financial data and reporting are vast. Simultaneously, the most onerous responsibility for compliance is in the financial field. The Hyperion XBRL Manager assists financial managers and investors through providing a standards-based method to prepare and exchange financial statements.
“Business processes were improved through the implementation of the system, which was done in line with the Sappi business requirements. “Through the use of XBRL interactive data, investors will be provided accurate financial information from public companies, such as Sappi” concludes Janse van Rensburg.
The message is clear for aspiring companies striving to move into the world-class arena and become part of the top 100 elite in South Africa; good decision making, based on correct data and sound analysis thereof, coupled with continuous learning and management for quality, based on good communication and knowledge sharing throughout the company, will go a long way towards a company reaching its goals.
Intellient is the performance management and business intelligence company to connect with.
How to best do YTD calculations in Essbase
As we all know, Essbase is unmatched when it comes to performing complex calculations. I sometimes think the problem when doing member formulas or calculation scripts is not so much whether Essbase can actually do some horrendously difficult calculation, but rather choosing one of the various ways Essbase can do the task.
One example of this is something conceptually extremely simple, namely doing YTD calculations in Essbase. Before I go any further, I have to state that the built-in dynamic time series functionality in Essbase has never really done it for me. I prefer to create specific YTD members in Essbase, as I find that makes the usage in reports and analysis much easier.
So if we focus on YTD members, the question now becomes where do we put them? As these are related to the time aspect of your cube, it seems logical to plonk them into the time dimension. This is the route some of my colleagues prefer, I however do not like this, as I prefer to minimize maintenance of formulas. Assuming you have Month as your most granular time dimension level, then if you put YTD members in your time dimension, you have to create 12 new members with a member formula for each of them. And assuming you don’t make use of a separate Year dimension, but have all years in one time dimension, then you have to create a duplicate of all your months, each with their own YTD formula.
This approach obviously does not lessen maintenance. What it does offer though are easier formulas, because you specifically write a formula for each month, so you know exactly the logic for that month. In essence you hard-code the YTD logic for each. This is something else I don’t like, anything leaning towards hard-coding in Essbase probably means you are missing a more elegant, simpler solution.
The approach I like to take with YTD is to create a new dimension, let’s call it Periodicity for arguments sake. Assume for this example that years and months are in 2 separate dimensions, as you will see this approach will work even if they are not. Also assume the input data is monthly, and Essbase needs to calculate the YTD values. Then the Periodicity dimension will have only 2 members, Monthly and YTD. Monthly will be the default input member and will be stored, while YTD will be a dynamically calculated member (it could be stored as well for query performance sake, but to prove this approach we will make it YTD for now). The Periodicity member itself will be Label Only. This means the new dimension has only one stored member, and therefore will not increase the size of the cube. In addition you probably want to make it a dense dimension, especially if Time is a dense dimension.
So the issue now becomes what should the formula for YTD be? Do we have to test for each month in an IF statement and hard-code the formula per month? Definitely not, remember hard-coding is preferably to be avoided. If possible the same formula should be used across all months, irrespective of where in the year.
Luckily Essbase has some fancy built-in formulas which will make this easy, in this case specifically @CURRMBRRANGE provides the magic key to do this easily, in conjunction with @SUMRANGE. Assuming the Time dimension is called Periods, the months are at level 0, and the year dimension is called Years, the formula is:
@SUMRANGE(“Monthly”,@CURRMBRRANGE(“Periods”,LEV,0,,0));
This will always calculate the sum of months starting with the first month in your time dimension, and ending with the current month being calculated. This works because of the startoffset and endoffset settings for @CURRMBRRANGE. The ” (null value) for startoffset means start the range at the first member in the list, and the ’0′ for endoffset means stop at the current member being calculated.
The main benefit of doing YTD in a separate dimension, apart from the easy maintenance of just one formula, is that it makes it extremely easy for an end user to switch between YTD and Monthly, or do a YTD vs Monthly comparison. The user does not need to select specific YTD month members, they only need to select YTD or Monthly from the Periodicity dimension.
Managing your financial challenges with Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
Remember when you were a kid and you were scared of ghosts and monsters or the boogeyman hiding in the closet? It’s funny … As we grow up, most of us lose our childhood fears, but all of us will certainly acquire new ones. Our mature fears tend to fall well within the bounds of realism and deviate from the realm of the impossible (although some grown men and women might still be afraid of Casper for all we know).
What scares us most often is that which CAN happen, that which IS possible – for instance, the loss of a loved one, loneliness, disappointment, inadequateness or the more tangible phobias such as heights or small spaces or having to live with the huge tarantula that shows up every few days for but an instant, only to disappear just as quickly, thus causing you to watch your every step.
As much as the above fears are apparent, there is one that is consistent with most of us, if not all of us – the fear of losing or not having money! According to British scientists, losing money or experiencing an economic loss (i.e. financial pain) has the same neurological roots to physical pain.
From a business or corporate or enterprise perspective, this “pain” is aggregated through the encompassment of fears of its employees. As an employer, how do you curb these fears? Well, the answer is fairly simple – you give them the assurance of a safe and secure future at your enterprise just as a parent would assure their child a pleasant night’s sleep by tucking them in or leaving the light on until they’ve fallen asleep.
In order to be in a position to offer these assurances however, your enterprise needs to make a profit. This is the bottom line to every business. The biggest profits are realized when every process, every individual, every team, and every department are working together toward that uniform goal. Managing this synergy can be a cumbersome task for any employer … but not anymore! Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) systems are here to help keep those business demons hidden in the closet for good!
EPM systems are a specific tier of the Business Intelligence (BI) toolset. Managers can now assess the performance of every component of their enterprise by understanding and analyzing where they’ve come from and where they currently stand (i.e. using the historical and current data of the business). Once this is done, a link can be formed between these operational activities and a business strategy that increases future profits. This is the goal of Performance Management – it gives you insight into the future so that you can cure your employees’ and consequently your enterprise’s fears of the present. Go ahead and turn your business’ lights on by investing in an EPM tool – knowing is always better than not knowing!
“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today” – William Allen White
For more information on Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management products, see http://www.intellient.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=1142
What are my competitors using Essbase for (or: why do they know more faster)?
Essbase has a reputation of being an excellent platform for financial analytical applications, but not much else. In some part this perception is created by competitive vendors who benefits from pigeon-holing Essbase, so that their tools can rather be used. Also Hyperion were traditionally strong selling into finance departments, and neglected IT in the pure BI applications arena. While it is certainly true that certain types of financial uses hit the sweet spot for Essbase, it can definitely be used for a large number of other analytical applications beyond the financial arena.
Essbase offers a OLAP platform for the construction of basically any kind of analytical application. With the addition of aggregate storage functionality the possible uses for Essbase expanded exponentially. While very strong in complex calculations and financial-type functionality, Essbase suffered badly from multidimensional explosion if the number of dimensions or number of members in dimensions increased to very large numbers (more than 10 dimensions, more than million member dimensions). Aggregate storage addressed these issues and it is now possible to create cubes with large numbers of dimensions, and multi-million members in dimensions. All this while not loosing the intuitive and responsive end-user experience Essbase offers.
In this blog I would like to share some of the Essbase applications I have experience of beyond just pure finance. Hopefully this will provide a reference of other uses for Essbase to help people trying to sell Essbase, as well as people already using Essbase and thinking of ways to expand its usage. Note this is just a selection of some of the applications I have personal experience with, please feel free to comment on any other non-financial uses of Essbase you might have come across.
Telecommunications industry
- Customer usage analysis – a cube based on the call detail records (CDR’s) which allows analysis of subscriber usage by minute, region, package customer demographic. Helps to understand usage of packages and customer segments and plan for better focused products.
- Customer demographic analysis – analyze the customers by all demographic information, such as age, gender, income, region etc. Helps to understand the customer base and better target products.
- Customer profitability – understand which customer segments are the most profitable, and maybe more importantly which are not, and who to target for better structured packages.
- Network quality – a cube which get loaded with hourly raw data from base stations, and which then calculates a large number of key statistics. which allows for better analysis of the quality of the network, where problem areas are, and helps plan expansions an network reconfigurations.
Motor vehicle manufacturing industry
- Market share analysis – use publicly available data to build a cube which shows all car manufacturers market share, by all vehicle attributes. Helps to determine where strong and weak points are, and support marketing efforts.
- Car flow planning – plan the flow of vehicle construction from parts to vehicle stock yard, based on demand forecast. Handles complex issues like ensuring optimum stock levels, planning for enough raw parts to meet demand, and the flow tempo through each segment of vehicle construction.
- Sales analysis and planning – analyze the vehicle sales by region, dealer and vehicle type, as well as customer demographic, to better understand the market and plan distribution to the dealer network.
Banking industry
- Customer Profitability analysis – understand profitability per individual customer (in the millions, this is an aggregate storage cube) to see which offerings actually make money, and across which customer segments.
- Market Share analysis – use publicly available data from banking regulators to understand market share in a large number of banking instruments, such as loans, mortgages, deposits etc. Helps to quickly identify growth areas as well as areas with declining share, and to plan better products.
- Risk Scoring models – use Essbase to calculate the risk for corporate customers based on quantitative (financial statements) as well as qualitative (perception of the company, market strength) factors. Essbase calculates key ratios, scores, and risk ratings based on a complex set of rating business rules.
- Exposure analysis – understand the exposure the bank has across various instruments and clients, to help early identification of risks and better plan investment activity.
- Funds Transfer Pricing modeling – perform complex FTP modeling in Essbase, where the flow of cash within the bank based on complex rules is calculated.
- Cash flow forecasting – model cash flow on a daily basis based on surplus and shortfalls, using treasury rules to determine investment options and movements of cash.
Energy utility
- Demand forecasting – use Essbase to forecast energy production and usage demand based on various factors such as seasonality, historical usage, expected growth factors etc. Use as a basis for revenue planning, as well as production plans.
- Environmental analysis – understand the environmental impact of energy generation based on models in Essbase. Track emissions and pollution factors per generating unit over time, and serve as early warning system.
- Production/generation analysis – cube which houses production of energy per generating unit to serves as basis for dashboards used at board meetings to discuss generation issues and forecasts.
Insurance industry
- Broker performance – a cube which provides daily updates of each broker’s performance compared to their peer group, based on sales per product, region, demographic. Used as a basis for broker commission calculations, and to run broker competitions to award top-performing individuals.
- Customer profitability – understand profitability per customer and customer segment across all types of insurance products.
So as you can see, the usage of Essbase spans way beyond the pure financial reporting and analysis applications most companies use it for. If you would like details on any of the applications above feel free to contact me, details below.
To read more on Hyperion Essbase go to the following URLs:
http://www.intellient.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=1157
http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/essbase.html
Business Intelligence in the current economic climate
Hi Everyone!!
This is my first post so all your feedback, criticisms, comments and suggestions are very welcome!
I would like to start with a brief description of myself with regards to my expertise. I am a graduate and have been working as a Hyperion Business Intelligence consultant (my first real job) for the past 9 months. I am infinitely passionate about the subject of Economics and the effects and consequences that even the smallest decisions (individually or corporately) can have on our day-to-day lives. Thus, don’t be surprised if my blogs have either a mild, or distinctly pungent economic flavour attached to them.
I came across an interesting article recently and would like to share it with all of you (click on the link to access it). There is a part I and part II to it so be sure to read them both!
http://www.swifteconomics.com/2009/05/16/pretty-girls/#comments
http://www.swifteconomics.com/2009/10/14/pretty-girls-part-ii/#comments
Why did I ask you to read those? Well, with the current economic crisis being the talk-of-the-town, and with everyone (including the “pretty girls”) having to ration out their incomes and change their behaviour in order to keep their heads above water, the decisions we make today are probably more likely to have larger impacts (good or bad) than ever before. From a corporate point-of-view, these impacts have even greater implication – most specifically, financial. In order to for these implications to work for you rather than against you, you need to be equipped with the right tools, and more importantly, the right information. This is where the concept of Business Intelligence comes in.
Business Intelligence basically refers to skills, processes, technologies, applications and practices used to support decision-making. The age we live in has commonly been recgonised as the “Information Age”, and with good reason. There is so much information out there today – a simple search on Google can yield an answer to the price of your next fashion accessory or to the cure of your stiff neck (which, before the search, you probably mistook for a fatal disease!). The point I’m trying to make is that being able to acquire and consequently analyze the right information at the right time can put you in a position to make the best possible decision for you or your business.
Don’t waste any more time! If it’s information you need, Business Intelligence has a component for you!!
