Business Intelligence Options with SharePoint

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Business Intelligence Options with SharePoint

• Mauro Cardarelli
• Jornata
• mauro.cardarelli_at_jornata.com

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Agenda

• Business Intelligence Primer
• Why Business Intelligence?
• Why Now?
• How Does SharePoint Fit In?
• Native SharePoint
• Third Party Alternatives
• Making the Right Choice
• Best Practices
• Questions

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Dashboards vs. Scorecards

• Performance Dashboards by Wayne Eckerson

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Business Intelligence Adages

• You cannot manage what you do not measure.
• It is difficult to reward achievements or correct
  mistakes if you dont have a clear sense of how
  work is being measured
• What gets watched, gets done.
• When workers understand how they are being
  evaluated, they strive to perform well against
  those measurements

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Why Business Intelligence?

• CIO Insights Magazine CIO Poll
• 98 Agree - Gathering, analyzing and distributing
  business intelligence through information
  technology is critical to their business strategy
  
• 81 Agree - Their company plans to increase its
  efforts to apply IT to business intelligence
• 83 - Maintain an organized effort to gather,
  analyze and report on internal performance
  indicators
• 82 - Maintain an organized effort to gather,
  analyze and report on customer information
• 70 - Say the most commonly used BI tool in their
  companies remains the spreadsheet

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Why Now?

• Business Intelligence tools are easier to access
• More organizations have implemented intranets and
  extranets users already have a place to go
• Business Intelligence tools are easier to use
• Dashboard and scorecard construction is now being
  done by various levels of organizational staff
• The audience for Business Intelligence data has
  extended outside the board room
• Target audiences include executives, managers,
  and line-of-business staff

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Business Intelligence Toolkit
Scorecard Tool
Charting Tools
Information Dashboard
Scorecard
Chart
Reports
Documents
Reporting Tools
Spreadsheets, Docs, Etc.
Strategy Maps
Geography Graphs
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Business Intelligence Lifecycle

• Manage
• What data do we need? Where is it?
• Design
• How will we bring data from disparate sources
  together?
• Synthesize
• How do we ensure the data is clean and complete?
• Store
• Where do we put this data? How often is it
  updated?
• Deliver
• How do we show our results (scorecards, charts,
  reports)?

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Dashboard/Scorecard Benefits

• Accessibility
• Sales staff now has a single source for tracking
  performance against targets (Scorecard)
• Faster Decision Making
• Manager can shift inventory allocation from one
  product to another based on backlog (Dashboard)
• More Efficient Processes
• Staff can track historical performance of medical
  claims data and can proactively alter business
  processes (Dashboard)
• Consistency
• Entire organization, top to bottom, sees the same
  data on product performance and can communicate
  results inside and outside organization
  (Scorecard)

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Where Does SharePoint Fit In?

• SharePoint is a natural component to an
  organization's overall Business Intelligence
  initiative
• Its already there! Your medium has been defined
• It offers native BI capabilities (Enterprise)
• It can easily be extended to include third party
  BI functionality

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The Evolution of SharePoint
Corporate Intranet
Client Extranet
Business Data Integration
Collaboration
Internet Site
One Stop Shopping for Corporate Data
Team/Project Sites
Business Intelligence
Document Management
Records Management
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Quick Poll

• How many support their existing SharePoint
  environment?
• How many have implemented a BI solution in
  SharePoint?
• How many are using SQL Server 2005?
• How many are using Reporting Services?
• How many are using the MOSS 2007 Enterprise
  Edition?

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What Does SharePoint Offer?

• The Report Center
• Excel Services
• Connections to external data sources
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Reporting Services Integration
• Custom Web Parts

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What Version of SharePoint Do I Need?

• Only available with Enterprise Edition
• Integrated, flexible spreadsheet publishing
• Share, manage, and control spreadsheets
• Web-based business intelligence using Excel
  Services
• Data Connection Libraries
• Integrated business intelligence dashboards
• Report Center
• Key performance indicators

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Business Intelligence Roadmap?
Document Libraries
Document Libraries
Report Center
External
Reporting Services
Reporting Services
Excel Services
DVWP
Third Party
KPIs
Simple
Moderate
Advanced
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BI on the Cheap?

• Office Web Components (OWC) are gone
• Excel spreadsheets in document libraries force
  users to download and open files
• Alternative Data View Web Part (DVWP)
• Available through SharePoint Designer
• Can simulate reporting (i.e. KPIS) using XSL
  magic

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Report Center

• Provides a central location for
  business-intelligence-related information. It
  contains special document libraries for storing
  reports, lists, and connections to external data
  sources. It also provides access to page
  templates and Web Parts to help you create pages
  and lists that contain business information.
• By default, one Report Center site is created
  under the top-level portal site. However, with
  the appropriate permissions, anyone can create a
  Report Center site within a team, department, or
  organization site.
• Contains a special document library for browsing
  Office Excel 2007 workbooks, SQL Reporting
  Services reports, dashboards, and other reports

Source Microsoft
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Report Center
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Excel Services

• Excel Web Access
• Web Part in MOSS 2007 that renders live Excel
  workbooks on a Web page
• Excel Web Services
• You can develop applications that call Excel Web
  Services to calculate, set, and extract values
  from workbooks
• Excel Calculation Services
• Load workbooks, calculate them, call custom code
  (user-defined functions) and refresh external data

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Excel Services
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Key Performance Indicators

• Graphically means of showing a metric (data
  measure against some criteria)
• Within SharePoint, data can come from
• Using data in SharePoint lists
• Using data in Microsoft Office Excel workbooks
• Using data from Microsoft SQL Server 2005
  Analysis Services
• Using manually entered information

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Key Performance Indicators
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Reporting Services

• You can configure a report server to run within a
  deployment of a SharePoint product or technology
  and use the collaboration and centralized
  document management features of Windows
  SharePoint Services 3.0 or Office SharePoint
  Server 2007 with Reporting Services. Running a
  report server as part of a larger SharePoint
  deployment provides these levels of integration
• Shared storage.
• Shared security.
• Same site access for all business documents,
  including reports, report models, and shared data
  sources.

Source Microsoft
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Reporting Services
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Third Party Alternatives - Dundas
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The Money Slide
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Keys to a Success BI Project

• High-level executive sponsorship is a must-have
• Proper, in-depth tools evaluation (rather than
  just buying SAP because you use SAP everything
  else) is important
• Try to deliver little and often. Being too
  ambitious will backfire because users will get
  tired of waiting and then turn on you when what
  you deliver fails to meet their needs
• Talk to the business! Don't develop in a vacuum
  and don't try to guess what your users need
• Get outside help in. BI projects are pretty
  generic and small, BI specific consultancies are
  likely to know the solutions to many of the
  problems you'll face. I wouldn't recommend
  outsourcing the project completely though.
• -- Chris Webb, BI Consultant

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Summary

• SharePoint is a great PRESENTATION component of a
  Business Intelligence initiative
• Start simple by leveraging your investment in
  SharePoint and Excel based data
• Find the right piece of SharePoint to deliver
  your BI story
• Invest in data quality

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Resources

• Mauros Blog http//blogs.officezealot.com/mauro
  /
• Microsoft BI site - http//www.microsoft.com/bi/
• MSDN Webcast SharePoint Server 2007 and Business
  Intelligence - http//msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/W
  ebCastEventDetails.aspx?cultureen-USEventID1032
  342267CountryCodeUS
• Create and publish Key Performance Indicators
  (KPIs) - http//office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepo
  intserver/HA100800271033.aspx
• Reporting Services and SharePoint -
  http//msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb677365.
  aspx
• Excel Services Architecture - http//msdn2.microso
  ft.com/en-us/library/ms582023.aspx
• Dundas Dashboard Bundle for SharePoint -
  http//www.dundas.com/Technologies/Sharepoint/Dash
  Bundle.aspx

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• Thank you!