Business Intelligence Overview

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Business Intelligence Overview

• Peter Bull
• Group Program Manager
• Microsoft Corporation

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What is Business Intelligence?

• Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term
  that encompasses and defines a continuum of
  applications, technologies and methodologies to
  support a user's access and analysis of
  information and improve insight, decision making
  and performance management (of an organization).
  Source Gartner 2007
• Processes and methodology to support
  understanding, knowledge and behavior of an
  organization
• Collection of technology and software to support
• Access, collection, governance of organizational
  data
• Developing rules to understand and interpret the
  data
• People interacting with the data

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History of Business Intelligence

• Its as old as commerce!
• Middle Ages
• Trade dramatically increased between Europe and
  Middle East
• Business owners needed to know how well their
  stewards were managing. They had to rely on
  written records
• Great need for better recording of transactions
• Businesses expanded in size and distance
• Owner could no longer do everything himself
• The successful business needs three things
• Sufficient cash or credit
• Good bookkeepers
• A system which allows the finances of the
  business to be understood at a glance Luca
  Pacioli 1494

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The Historic Impact of BI

• Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) is well known as a
  potter and as grandfather of Charles Darwin - a
  leader of the Industrial Revolution and a pioneer
  in production
• Established his first pottery works in 1759 and
  in 1782 first factory in the industry to install
  a steam engine
• High prices were charged resulting in substantial
  profits even though costs were poorly tracked
• Depression of 1772 - demand dropped, inventories
  rose, and prices were cut how to maintain the
  business?
• His answer involved understanding his business in
  enough detail to make informed decisions
• Through analysis of the business he learned that
• Showed certain products cost more than others to
  manufacture
• Became aware of both the concepts of economies of
  scale and costs
• High price policy for pottery was changed
  market could be divided between
• High-price high-quality products for richer
  customers
• Mass market with lower-cost lower-price products.
  
• Because of his pioneering (BI) system Wedgwood
  survived, unlike hundreds of his contemporaries -
  estimated that only 10 of Industrial Revolution
  firms survived through the 1840s

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BI State of Affairs

• So its been around a long time and been called
  many different things.MIS, EIS, DSS
• Its been the preserve of a relatively few,
  senior roles / people in organizations
• Its not (currently) an easy undertaking
• Its thought of tactically not strategically
• Its thought of as technical challenge
• Its not thought of as an organizational
  challenge

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But BI is changing

• Now and in the future, BI will expand to become a
  core element in both strategic and process
  performance management. It will be pervasive,
  employed by a wide range of users, embedded in
  processes and will consist of a continuum of
  applications, technologies and competencies
  driving business transformations from the
  strategic to the process level. Source Gartner
  2007
• It focuses on people not just technology

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People Organization
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Business Intelligence today
Performance Management Applications Corporate
Decisions Support decision making and action
within corporate processes
End-user Tools Personal and team Insights
Support individuals gaining and sharing insight
throughout the organization
Platform Sound Data Manage consistent and
quality data once for all BI and Performance
Management needs
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Business Intelligence Activities
What do I want to happen?
What will happen?
Why?
What is happening?
What happened?
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Who uses Business Intelligence?
Analysts
Operations
Execs
Middle Managers
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BI For The Entire Enterprise
Operational
Strategic
Tactical
Execs
Strategic Value
Analysts/ Middle Mgrs
Ops
Number of decisions
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Evolving BI for the organization
Strategic Value
Aligned
Accountable
Productive
Familiar
Agile
Integrated
Sharable
Consistent
Scalable
Corporate Decisions
Sound Data
Personal and Team Insight
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BI components
Strategic Value
Scorecards
Planning
Authoring
Dashboards
Ad hoc Query
Consolidation
Data Integration
Analysis
Analytics
Storage
Reports
Data Management
Corporate Decisions
Sound Data
Personal and Team Insight
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Example ScenarioSales Forecast Update

• Monitor
• Mary (VP of Sales Marketing) reviews her Sales
  Dashboard
• Humber product line appear to be the main revenue
  growth areas
• Mary needs to better understand the increase in
  sales
• She contacts Alice (a senior Sales Analyst) to
  investigate the current sales results
• Analyze
• Alice selects the option to analyze current sales
  results from the Sales Dashboard
• Launches her in to Excel keeping the dashboard
  context of the data
• Alice changes the perspective from revenue
  numbers to sales volumes and uses Excel Analytics
  to analyze the sales volumes
• She detects an upward sales volume trend for
  Humber products being sold thru direct channels
  in Asia Pacific
• She uses the Predictive Trend Analysis to run a
  pre-defined statistical forecast on the sales
  data to project out the full quarter/year sales
• Predictive forecast shows significant potential
  revenue upside compared to the current sales plan
  and forecast
• Alice determines that this predicted sales
  forecast needs calibrating by the sales team for
  a revised forecast

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Example ScenarioSales Forecast Update

• Plan
• Alice initializes a quarterly sales forecast
  business cycle in Process Management that assigns
  data entry forms with due submission dates to
  specific sales people
• She seeds the assignments with the predicted
  forecast values giving sales people a starting
  point they can edit / update.
• Alice monitors the submissions and approvals.in
  just a few days she has updated sales forecast
• Model
• Alice uses the assumptions from the direct sales
  of Humber product line to perform a what-if
  scenario switching Bentley product line to direct
  sales approach
• Completes final review and annotates key data
  points for management
• Mary receives notification that new updated Sales
  Forecast is ready for review and final approval
• Reviews new forecast in the Sales Dashboard and
  sees the annotation highlighting the growth thru
  direct sales and what if impact for Bentley
  product line
• Mary approves new forecast and generates a new
  workflow initiative to extend the direct sales
  initiative in Asia Pacific to the Bentley product
  line

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Conclusions

• BI about ALL people within an organization
• Their activities
• Better insights and decisions
• Their needs
• Sound data, personal and team insights, corporate
  decisions

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• QA