Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence & CPM
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Choosing a software provider: Advanced Business Solutions
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With so much competition and seemingly fewer differentiating factors between software systems, how are UK
businesses expected to choose one software supplier over another? It’s hardly surprising when businesses are left
confused and overwhelmed by the choices available to them.
This white paper is intended to help you as a UK business choose between one business software supplier and
another. It highlights the key factors you should consider during the tendering process so that you decide upon the best
choice of supplier for your business. The following key factors should be considered during the tendering process.
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Accessible, affordable financial performance management: TCM Infosys
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For the majority of businesses, an investment in a
financial performance management (FPM) solution will
deliver almost immediate dividends, helping to increase
revenue, improve efficiency and productivity, and
manage budgets more efficiently and effectively.
FPM software provides all the financial functions a
business needs, including budgeting, forecasting and
consolidation. Aligning and compiling data from disparate
sources, an FPM solution can also vastly improve the
processes surrounding regulatory compliance and
financial reporting.
In addition to the core financial functions, FPM software should provide a predictive analysis or ‘what-if?’ function that
uses historic and current data to predict future trends and provide essential information to the company’s decision
makers.
In this paper, Faisal Nadeem, CEO of TCM Infosys, discusses how FPM solutions have become more affordable and
accessible, particularly when adopted incrementally using existing general ledgers.
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Delivering strategic advantage using BI: Advanced Business Solutions
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The broadening and deepening of information requirements, together with accelerated timescales for reporting, means
that developing robust performance management systems is a high priority for most businesses. Yet over the years, the
delivery of business intelligence has often been poorly understood. As many organisations have found to their cost, the
notion that superior business performance can be delivered with specialised software tools alone is severely misguided.
However, as the BI market matures, realisation is dawning that achieving enhanced business performance and
enduring business change requires a more holistic approach. It must be driven from the very top of the organisation and
supported by robust methodologies. BI should not be treated as a ‘one-hit’ project. It is a living, breathing organism that
must become an accepted part of the corporate DNA. Successful delivery needs a clearly articulated strategy with a
common and widely communicated set of performance indicators.
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Spending wisely on analytics: Teradata
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Chief information officers currently making decisions about investments in data warehousing have more choices today
than ever before. Just as important, they can now also benefit from expert guidance in the best way to propose their
investment recommendations to their CEOs. This paper is written as an objective, informed, quick-reference guide to
examining data warehousing options and framing CEO proposals.
Despite the fact that an integrated, centralised approach to enterprise data management has been proven to be an
intelligence optimising, total cost of ownership (TCO) reducing exercise, it can be a challenge to convince the uninitiated
peers of the CIO – while the strategic direction of the company applies a brake on expenditure from one direction, the
allure of new technologies that can do more things faster, and perhaps more economically, pulls from another. Meanwhile, the current state of the organisation’s data warehousing/business intelligence environment cries
out for change. The result is the need to make some difficult decisions, though it’s not easy conveying relevant nuances
to those who can’t necessarily grasp all of the crosscurrents and tradeoffs.
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Dimensional excellence: build it or buy it?: Oracle
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Large organisations need to manage and align the dimensions that classify and categorise their operational,
transactional and analytical systems. Without alignment, analysis and reporting cannot be reconciled with confidence
across the enterprise. Deploying an effective enterprise dimension management system is a challenging process with
serious risks. Such a system must be scalable and flexible and should meet current and perpetually evolving future
business requirements. Those future requirements should be assimilated through simple configuration, rather than
requiring complex custom coding. The true total cost of ownership favours the adoption of a proven, configurable, best-of-breed tool for which the costs and implementation timescales are predictable, and through which risks are minimised.
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DataFlux data management methodology: DataFlux
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Since the economic downturn of 2008-2009, organisations worldwide have scrambled to reorient and reconfigure their
operations to maximise existing processes in the face of slowing sales. To do this, businesses turned to every asset –
including production equipment, personnel and facilities – to find ways to maximise revenue, reduce costs and mitigate
risks.
For many businesses, another corporate asset – data – has become a target in the search for a more profitable
organisation. But the dynamics of data management are more chaotic than ever. Data is now collected and saved from
every conceivable source – internet applications, front-office and back-office systems, trading networks, social media –
and this complexity requires companies to have a sophisticated, deliberate process for managing this vital information.
After all, data holds the key to sales, marketing, customer support, production and other initiatives. Without an accurate
view of customers, products, materials, locations and assets, how can a company compete in today’s marketplace?
Because of these factors, the need for data management has never been higher. This paper will explore a new
methodology for integrating data management principles into the organisation.
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EPM: key to rapid response for today's successful mid-sized companies: Oracle
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Never before have mid-sized companies been so pressed to react rapidly to changing market conditions. In many
industries, obtaining near real-time information for tracking and projecting key metrics like orders, inventory, staffing
levels and cash is no longer a nice-to-have luxury. It’s a survival skill.
This paper will discuss some of the ways in which the new unpredictability of external market forces has escalated the
value of precise internal forecasts and quick decision making for these companies. The right information technology can
help companies compete and win in this new business environment. Without it, they can lose the rapid response
capability that is one of their most important advantages when they go up against larger competitors.
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Choosing a standard for business intelligence: IBM
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Standardising business intelligence (BI) tools across an entire organisation has obvious benefits in terms of
simplification and cost savings. But for standardisation to be truly effective, it must revolve around the right solution, one
that addresses the organisation’s exact BI needs at a relatively low total cost.
IBM Cognos products – from IBM Cognos ReportNet for enterprise reporting to IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence for
complete BI capabilities – have a proven record of success. And with speedy deployment times that ease strain on IT
and intuitive interfaces that lead to wide user adoption, IBM Cognos solutions achieve a fast return on investment. The reasons driving standardisation in business intelligence and reporting are core to every company – cutting costs,
boosting revenue and increasing profits. What drives the increased interest in standardisation today is the fact many
companies are actually doing it. Other companies don’t want to miss the competitive opportunity.
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Financial governance: resistance is futile!: Rinedata
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Financial governance may still be a controversial subject in some boardrooms, but in the wake of recent accounting
scandals and the effect that the financial crisis continues to have on the global business community, it’s an aspect of
modern corporate life that is here to stay.
Indeed, the impact of this type of oversight has altered the role of the chief finance officer (CFO) dramatically in the last
10 years as finance teams have come under growing internal and external pressure to prevent financial irregularities
within the enterprise as well as increase the transparency and reliability of financial processes. The impact of governance on the role of the finance function can be seen as an increased focus on four related areas:
the delivery of verifiable financial information; the development and maintenance of efficient and reliable business
planning and reporting processes; the management of regulatory compliance; and the deployment and regulation of
comprehensive financial control processes.
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IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence for professional users: IBM
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Professional report authors need a single reporting solution that draws data from a variety of sources and enables wide
collaboration yet delivers the resulting information rapidly – at ‘business speed’.
IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence includes web-based reporting tools that allow individuals throughout the
organisation to join in the creation and delivery of BI reports that are richly detailed, customisable and easy to distribute.
This provides the kind of end-to-end view of business operations that supports good decision making. Given that most organisations today have deployed a number of business intelligence (BI), reporting and dashboard
software products, the challenge that this business environment creates is that each product requires concurrent
support, administration and maintenance.
Each product may access specific and different data sources that provide only some of the required report options.
Without completeness or ease of use, the professional report author must spend too many of their scarce resources to
advance every stage of the reporting lifecycle, from support and maintenance to creation, modification and distribution;
and too much time cobbling together the data from disparate solutions.
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Best practices for planning and budgeting: PROPHIX Software
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The continual changes in the business climate constantly challenge companies to find more effective business
practices. However, common budgeting limitations are preventing companies from moving forward; they have become
so universal and accepted in the marketplace that it is becoming more difficult to move ahead and progress the
business. Flexibility, accuracy and control over the budgeting process are three prominent factors slowing this
progression.
Many finance professionals want to grasp the big picture of the company’s position by having the flexibility to evaluate
and understand the effect of various factors. They want the ability to review previous years’ budgets, add/remove
accounts or change budgeting assumptions with ease. However, with the lack of flexibility in their current tools, the
depth of understanding and awareness are very limited.
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Deliver business data you can believe in with data governance: Kalido
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Have you ever delivered a loyal customer’s order to the wrong address? Or had to explain how a customer got a better
price by shopping at different outlets of your company? How many times have you heard stories of unhappy customers
who didn’t get the service they deserved?
Have you ever gone to look for the facts and figures to help you make an important decision, only to find that the data
you need is scattered across many different sources and doesn’t even make sense when you try to put it all together?
Does your organisation scramble to answer simple questions for your CEO like, “What did we sell across all divisions
and product lines this year?” and, “How does our growth compare to last year and before our most recent acquisition?”.
Whatever industry you’re in, these problems all share the same root cause – the data you use to run your business is
often low-quality, badly organised, or worse – it’s just plain wrong.
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Delivering strategic advantage using BI: FSN/COA Solutions
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The broadening and deepening of information requirements, together with accelerated timescales for reporting means
that developing robust performance management systems is a high priority for most businesses. Yet over the years, the
delivery of business intelligence has often been poorly understood. As many organisations have found to their cost, the
notion that superior business performance can be delivered with specialised software tools alone is severely misguided.
However, as the BI market matures, realisation is dawning that achieving enhanced business performance and
enduring business change requires a more holistic approach. It must be driven from the very top of the organisation and
supported by robust methodologies. BI should not be treated as a ‘one-hit’ project. It is a living, breathing organism that
must become an accepted part of the corporate DNA. Successful delivery needs a clearly articulated strategy with a
common and widely communicated set of performance indicators.
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How business intelligence should work: Information Builders
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Business intelligence (BI) has been around for a long time, and over the years has taken on many different forms –
reporting, OLAP, ad hoc, performance management, predictive analytics, data mining, etc. For someone who’s new to
the concept of BI, these various solutions can be quite confusing. Many potential users struggle to understand the
differences between the numerous technologies and methodologies and find it difficult to prioritise them.
But the fact is that each facet of BI is important, and each plays a vital role in a company’s overall information strategy.
However, few organisations truly understand how these different tools and techniques should be used together to drive
efficiency and effectiveness across the entire enterprise.
After more than 25 years in the industry, I have learned that BI is used in three distinct ways – strategically, analytically
and operationally.
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Business and its unhealthy addiction to technology: Crimson Systems
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The rapidly increasing maturity and sheer capability of technology – software suites, middleware, monitoring/control
systems and increasingly powerful hardware – should mean that IT is increasingly perceived as ‘easy’, a real business
enabler…but this isn’t happening.
Most people would agree with these statements: large companies, shackled to legacy systems and forced to invest in large-scale IT change programmes, are blinded
by options: SaaS, COTS, OTS, bespoke, .NET, Java – the permutations are seemingly endless; far too frequently IT expenditure is wasted on poorly matched or compromised solutions, based on a subjective and
thus flawed needs assessment process, with the key focus being to select a technical solution rather than to capture the
business objectives of the exercise; because of the division between IT and ‘the business’ in most boardrooms, a higher-level, joined-up view is rarely
considered, resulting in a misalignment of what IT should be doing, which is to serve and facilitate the business’s core
strategic goals.
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