Business intelligence can be defined as having the right access to the right data or information needed to make the right business decisions at the right time. The data might be raw or might have been analyzed in some way. Having access to such information enables management of the business by fact instead of by primarily relying on intuition. This is a broad definition of business intelligence and is not limited to data warehousing alone. Although a data warehouse is often used to provide such a solution and is the primary focus of most of this book, we’ll broaden the discussion to also include business intelligence gained from on-line transaction processing solutions. Business analysts and users of business intelligence don’t really care about — or want to understand where their information comes from. They simply want access to such sources. So the solution you choose to deploy will depend on the kind of information that is needed. This chapter provides a broad discussion of Oracle’s business intelligence offerings and should help you better understand all of the solution types available for deployment. We conclude this chapter by discussing some of the emerging business needs that will lead to a further blending of data warehousing and transactional systems. In subsequent chapters in this section of the book, we provide more details as to how and why you’d deploy transactional business intelligence and data warehousing solutions. We also discuss some of the platform strategies for deployment. After the introductory first section of this book, we describe in much greater detail the area of business intelligence that you are probably most interested in: custom-built data warehousing solutions using Oracle databases. We provide examples of how you can design, use, and manage various capabilities of the Oracle database and Oracle business intelligence tools. In the final section of this book, we discuss best practices and strategies for deployment of such solutions. Although the primary audience of the book is information technology (IT) professionals, we begin this book with the following warning: building a business intelligence solution as an IT project without sponsorship of or buy-in by the lines of business is likely to end in very limited success or career-limiting failure. For many of you, the non-technical portions of this book in the best practices section might initially be of the least interest, because your interest is centered in IT and implementing technology platform solutions. However, applying techniques described in that section could determine whether your project is viewed as successful.
Business Intelligence and Transactional Applications Transactional applications generally provide business intelligence to business users through reports that reveal current data in transactional tables. Oracle’s E-Business Suite of applications, PeopleSoft applications, JD Edwards applications, and Siebel Customer Relationship Management applications all provide this level of business intelligence. Reporting is selected and deployed based on key business requirements (KBRs) and most commonly displayed as key performance indicators (KPIs) in a dashboard using portal technology. Most companies also deploy business intelligence solutions that rely on a complementary data warehousing strategy when reporting and analysis becomes more complex and summary level information is appropriate. Oracle’s PeopleSoft and JD Edwards’ EnterpriseOne applications are often surrounded by the PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) data warehouse to enable such reporting through analytical applications. Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications are similarly often surrounded by Business Analytics Applications built upon a relationship management warehouse model. Other application vendors (such as SAP with their Business Warehouse) have such data warehouse models that often are deployed on Oracle databases. The Oracle E-Business Suite leverages more of a blended approach to delivering business intelligence applications as many of these applications rely on data in summary levels of transactional tables. The Enterprise Planning and Budgeting application, a more complex analytical application, leverages Oracle OLAP technology in a separate multi-dimensional cube. At the time of publication of this book, Oracle has described many aspects of Project Fusion, Oracle’s future single set of transactional applications that provide a migration path for current deployments of the E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel CRM applications. The business intelligence solutions provided for this next generation of applications will continue to provide a blending of transactional business intelligence and incorporate data warehousing concepts. Among Oracle E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft EPM offerings, a number of common business intelligence applications are provided including a balanced scorecard, activity-based management, and enterprise planning and budgeting applications. In addition, the Oracle E-Business Suite has Daily Business Intelligence. We’ll briefly describe what these applications do in this chapter, and describe them in more detail in Chapter 2. Where multiple transaction processing vendors’ data models are present, a variety of integration approaches are also possible. We include a discussion of some of those in this chapter.
Daily Business Intelligence To speed deployment of management reporting showing real-time transaction-level data, the Oracle E-Business Suite features Daily Business Intelligence. Many key management roles are pre-defined, including roles of Chief Executive Officer, vice president of operations, vice president of procurement, vice president of service contracts, project executive, marketing manager, sales manager, manager of e-mail, profit center manager, and cost center manager. A performance management framework is provided to define KPIs (or measures) and dimensions, set targets, and subscribe to alerts. Out-of-thebox, over 250 key measures are predefined, including revenue, expenses, costs of revenue, contribution margin, gross margin, percentage margin, total headcount and average salary per employee, lead activity, lead conversion, purchase order purchases, contract leakage, inventory turns, and project revenue. Common dimensions are supported across the E-Business Suite modules, including time, geography, customer, supplier, item, warehouse, currency, manager, organization, project organization, sales group, and operating group. Reports are typically at the day level with period-to-date calculations available for any day. Data is aggregated at multiple levels of the time dimension, including day, week, month, quarter, and year. Report pages are provided out-of-the-box for profit and loss, expense management, compliance management, HR management, operations management, order management, fulfillment management, project profitability management, product lifecycle management, profit operations management, quote management, marketing management, leads management, sales management, sales comparative performance, opportunity management, procurement management, procure-to-pay management, and service contracts management. Figure 1-1 shows a dashboard view provided by Daily Business Intelligence for sales management of forecasts with KPIs available for sales group and direct reports forecasts, pipeline and weighted pipeline, and won to period.
Balanced Scorecard Executives have long sought a strategic management tool based on measurements of financial status, customer feedback and other outcomes, and internal process flows that illustrate the state of the business and expose areas where improvement might be desirable. In 1992, Drs. David Norton and Robert Kaplan developed such a tool and named it the Balanced Scorecard. This tool is often used at companies focused on Total Quality Management (TQM), where the goals are measurement-based management and feedback, employee empowerment, continuous improvement, and customer-defined quality. A Balanced Scorecard incorporates a feedback loop around business process outputs and the outcome of the business strategies. This doubleloop feedback provides a comparison to financials that results in a more balanced approach to business management. Typical metrics viewed show present status of an organization, provide diagnostic feedback and trends in performance over time, indicate which metrics are critical, and provide input for forecasting. Oracle’s E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft brands offer Balanced Scorecard products that will be merged into a single product in Oracle’s next generation Fusion applications. KPIs are viewed through a desktop interface enabling achievement of business goals to be monitored and strategic actions to be taken and recorded. The E-Business Suite Balanced Scorecard can leverage KPIs present in Daily Business Intelligence. Scorecards and associated reports are created with design tools present in the products. Figure 1-2 shows a typical balanced scorecard strategy map showing the status of various processes.
Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and their staffs plan budgets, forecast financial achievements, and monitor and analyze the results. Oracle’s E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft brands each offer Enterprise Planning and Budgeting (EPB) tools (see Figure 1-3) that will be merged into a single offering when Oracle releases the next generation Fusion applications. Since EPB solutions provide updates to the transactions systems, each branded version of EPB today features seamless integration with corresponding general ledger products. The E-Business Suite tool leverages Oracle’s database OLAP Option for analysis and leverages the Enterprise Performance Foundation (EPF) that includes predefined schema, open interface tables, and loader engines. The PeopleSoft version leverages the EPM schema and loading capabilities. By deploying an EPB solution, what-if budgeting analyses can be compared. EPB can enable consistent and repeatable methodologies to be put into place for planning budgets and agreeing upon forecasts. Models can be shared. The analyses results can be viewed through a portal or shared through e-mail, worksheets, briefing books, or spreadsheets. EPB reports and budgets can include multiple currencies. Historic results can use the actual exchange rates while planned projects can incorporate budgeted exchange rates.
Activity-Based Management Although transactional applications typically show costs of components, gaining an understanding of total costs of product, services, or customers can require a more targeted application. Activity-Based Management (ABM) solutions provide a means to map these individual costs including activities, materials, resources, and products or services. As a result, it becomes possible to understand the profitability of customers, products, channels, and markets. Oracle’s E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft brands each offer ABM tools. These will be merged into a single offering in Oracle’s next generation Fusion applications. Today, each is integrated with the brand’s corresponding general ledger offering. Using an ABM solution, activity costs can be analyzed for setting appropriate charge-back rates, establishing performance benchmarks, and target costing of new product development. Activities, materials, and other costs can be mixed and matched in preparation for bids or based on sales volume projections. Unused capacity costs can be tracked.
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