What is a BI Solution?

Business intelligence (BI) solutions can range from simple reporting, to advanced analysis of trends. On the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 platform, we have several tools that, together with Cizer.Net, provide this range of capability to the BI consumer. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) provides an extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) toolset, SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) provides a multi-dimensional analysis toolset, and Cizer.Net Reporting provides ad-hoc and production reporting.

Why do you want one?

When you run a business, large or small, you want to be able to say, “My people know what they need to know to do a good job. I can see the big picture, so I know that I too am doing a good job.”

Business Intelligence is a way of turning huge amounts of information into bite sized pieces which are both accessible, and easy to understand. You want a BI solution at your company if you are running into any problems where people are:

• looking at different sets of data
• waiting for information for days or weeks
• etc…

70,000 foot view of BI

It’s important to note that ETL is a foundational part of any enterprise BI solution, since it can be used to pipe data from transaction databases to a “data-mart” designed to support reporting and analysis. The data-mart is typically smaller in scope, and focused on a single subject matter (call center data, for example) than the traditional data warehouses used to be. Multiple data-marts can be connected, if properly designed, to bring together disparate data from across the organization (call center data and help desk data, for example) and achieve a data warehouse scale of data content.

If we look at BI as being “3 pillars” –on top of the ETL data-mart foundation –, we’re typically talking about reporting, analysis, and measurement (RAM). So although reporting is often used in its own right, it can also be integrated with analysis and measurement with a good user interface.

5 Ws (Who, What, Where, When, & Why)

Who – From the CEO to individual employees, each job requires the employee to know a certain set of information. Every job has it’s facts. How are you supplying everyone with their information today?:

What – While management might be looking at hiring trends across divisions, the HR secretary might have to pull a detailed report from a few employee records. The data you need to access depends on the need that generates it.

Where – Which would you rather do (a) maintain a client application and data connectivity on every employee’s PC, or (b) send your customers to a secured URL and let them all access everything they need thru the browser, from a BI Server.

When – Does the report request turnaround time leave you enough time to literally go on vacation and be back before the dataset you asked for? Time is of the essence when it comes to reporting. Data needs to be up to the minute and accurate every time you have the chance to check in.

Why – They don’t call this the Information Age for nothing! The faster each person in your organization can access the specific information they need, the less time people spend waiting around on each other.