“In what seems to be a smart move by Deloitte, this Monday (9 May 2011) the consultancy company announced the acquisition of the promising software-as-a-service (SaaS) business intelligence (BI) company Oco, which will form Deloitte Analytics Tactical Advantage (DATA).  With this acquisition, Deloitte will address efforts to deliver both products and consulting services to its customers, aiming to offer high-quality BI solutions in a more timely, cost-effective, and accurate manner.

This move shines a spotlight on the attractiveness of SaaS-based offerings in the BI space, where many companies, especially small to medium businesses, are turning their eyes to SaaS when the need for BI solutions arises.

This acquisition also makes it clear that BI is becoming a basic necessity for many companies, and the combination of products and services is crucial to giving customers confidence and for being able to guarantee deployment success and acceptance.

Oco is well positioned in the SaaS BI market, delivering a reliable set of general BI functionalities as well as specific sets of preconfigured functionalities for different business areas. Oco also integrates with SAP’s BusinessObjects BI onDemand product. Now, Oco will help Deloitte to reinforce its business analytics services with a reliable SaaS BI product stack.”

Under the agreement, Deloitte will combine MicroStrategy’s advanced business intelligence (BI) technology with its broad array of consulting, advisory and implementation services to assist their mutual clients in meeting information, business intelligence and analytic needs.  The alliance includes collaboration on solution, service and market development, education, training, sales and delivery.

“The increasing emphasis on analytics has significant implications for IT and business leaders,” said Lee Dittmar, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Improving analytic capabilities is becoming recognized as an essential enabler of sustainable success throughout the enterprise in many industry sectors.  This new alliance combines Deloitte’s information management services with MicroStrategy’s software, which is likely to give our clients a significant advantage in accelerating their analytic programs.”

The use of information and analytics can be a critical driver of revenue and competitive differentiation. It can assist management in making more effective business decisions, while managing addressing and leveraging information for a strategic business advantage. The need to turn data into insight is driven by demand for performance, better risk management, tougher regulatory enforcement, and exponentially increasing amounts of data to process and analyze. As expectations continue to rise, many leaders are shifting their thinking from a tactical approach for management reporting toward a more strategic approach involving analytics.

“This new alliance brings together a powerful combination of insights, experience, and competencies where clients can better leverage technology to address analytic needs,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy’s chief operating officer. “Deloitte and MicroStrategy both recognize that business priorities are increasingly driven by the need for better and earlier insights on markets, customers, suppliers, employees, regulation and risks, and that there is a need for solutions to integrate business, industry and functional capabilities with advanced information management and analytic technologies.”

Deloitte is effectively positioned in the information management space with a demonstrated depth and breadth of competencies to help clients deliver on their analytics vision. MicroStrategy’s business intelligence software delivers advanced reporting and analysis capabilities across the enterprise.

In 2010, business users had greater influence over BI buying, often choosing data discovery vendors as an alternative to traditional BI tools. But megavendors continued to hold the majority of BI market share, despite ongoing customer dissatisfaction, by selling the stack into their installed base.

Market Overview

The demand side of the BI platform market in 2010 was defined by an intensified struggle between business users’ need for ease of use and flexibility on the one hand, and IT’s need for standards and control on the other. With “ease of use” now surpassing “functionality” for the first time as the dominant BI platform buying criterion in research conducted for this report, vocal, demanding and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchasing decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms — with or without IT’s consent. Yet, despite accelerated data discovery vendor momentum and reports of chronic post-acquisition megavendor customer dissatisfaction, megavendors continue to control the majority share of BI platform market revenue. In particular, some are succeeding at selling into their expansive installed bases by promising major new releases featuring tighter enterprise application process integration, while others are stressing vertical integration within their information infrastructure stacks. At the same time, many independent vendors continue to drive innovation and show resilience with loyal and satisfied customers and fit with heterogeneous processes despite unfounded post-consolidation market speculation of their imminent death. Given market polarization and paradoxes, it is necessary to consider a number of factors now driving the BI platform market and the buying decisions within that market:

1. Data discovery platform momentum accentuates the need for a portfolio approach. For the past two years, our research in the BI platform market has highlighted a growing bifurcation in terms of buying centers. Specifically, we noted that IT, on the one hand, favors stack centricity, whereas business users and departmental buyers, on the other, often with an enterprise BI standard in place, are increasingly turning to innovative, data discovery tool vendors. These data discovery alternatives to traditional BI platforms offer highly interactive and graphical user interfaces built on in-memory architectures to address business users’ unmet ease-of-use and rapid deployment needs.
2. Traditional BI providers slowly embrace the business user challenge. Organizations are rapidly embracing the data discovery value proposition of providing data to end users and empowering them with an ability to model, navigate and visualize data. But traditional BI platform vendors are not sitting still as data discovery platforms capture the hearts, minds and BI spend of their customers. Rather, they are attempting to imitate them with claims of easy-to-use, data discovery alternatives (for example, Microsoft with PowerPivot, SAP with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, IBM with IBM Cognos Express and Information Builders with WebFocus Visual Discovery), with Microsoft showing the most market traction and promise to date. At the same time, data discovery tool vendors are implementing capabilities to improve their enterprise readiness.
3. Acquisition transition malaise is the new normal. Customer turmoil from acquisitions typically follows a predictable life cycle. Initially, there is significant customer concern because of uncertainty about product road maps and commitment. This is followed by the actual execution of the acquisition transition in which support, contracting, pricing, sales territory alignments and products are often changed. This transition process takes time and is not easy on customers. At some point, and by definition, successful acquisitions complete the transition and reach a new “normal” for customers, with satisfaction returning to pre-acquisition levels. Unfortunately, this type of transition has not been so smooth in the BI market. Oracle’s weaker satisfaction ratings in this year’s survey results, along with ongoing dissatisfaction among IBM and SAP customers for the past three years in a row post acquisition, suggests that transition disruption for these vendors may be chronic, and dissatisfaction the new normal. These vendors have new programs in place to improve the customer experience, but they have not yet produced positive results. The varying levels of customer dissatisfaction for these vendors as revealed in the customer survey had a negative affect on their Ability to Execute positions.
4. Shift from measurement to analysis, forecasting and optimization. Based on Gartner research conducted for this report, reporting and ad hoc analysis remain the dominant styles of information delivery of BI in 2010, but the proportion of respondents reporting their extensive use is down significantly from 2009. At the same time, interactive visualization, predictive analytics, dashboards and online analytical processing (OLAP) usage is increasing, with data discovery platforms also earning the highest ease of use and highest complexity of analysis scores. The increased proliferation of interactive visualization tools, more integrated data mining and packaged analytic applications that encapsulate the complexity of using sophisticated BI analysis tools from business users, are all pushing the power of analysis into the hands of a larger number of users than ever before. Moreover, this data and Gartner inquiries suggest that there is an increasing need for more accurate forecasts and optimized business processes, and to identify leading versus lagging indicators. In response, and challenging the once stronghold lead of SAS, IBM is leveraging its SPSS acquisition, its Cognos BI platform and other IBM technologies, such as content analytics, to deliver packaged analytic applications through its Global Business Services unit. At the same time, many smaller vendors (such as Information Builders, Tibco Software [Spotfire] and MicroStrategy) and most of the megavendors (SAP, IBM and Microsoft) are maturing their capabilities to make statistics, predictive analytic models and forecasting algorithms more consumable in reports, dashboards and analytic applications. We expect this shift to continue as more advanced analysis is encapsulated in easier-to-use tools and applications and is made more accessible to a broader user base beyond the traditional statistician installed base.
5. Cost as an increasingly important purchasing and portfolio driver. While BI spending grew in 2010, the economic downturn caused an increased focus on cost — research conducted for this report showed that cost was a much higher purchasing driver in 2010 than in 2009. Organizations showed an increased willingness to consider traditional low-cost options such as Microsoft, as well as open source vendors and newer low- priced alternatives from vendors such as LogiXML, for their BI deployments. Another way organizations are managing cost is by offloading basic BI capabilities, such as static reporting, to lower-cost alternatives, or else embedding low-cost BI in purpose-built analytic applications, even when a higher-cost enterprise standard BI tool is in place. This new buying behavior is further accentuating the need for IT to manage a portfolio of tools not only to expand access to functionality not provided by the enterprise standard, but also to lower cost. Because of this increased interest in cost, we added open source vendor Jaspersoft, as well as low-cost vendor LogiXML, to the Magic Quadrant for the first time this year. We expect this buying trend to continue putting downward pressure on price, resulting in vendors being less able to charge and sustain premiums when viable low-cost alternatives exist. Moreover, buyers are showing an interest in alternative niche vendors, data discovery approaches and, to a lesser extent, in alternative deployment models, such as software as a service (SaaS), in order to lower costs or expand functionality. In response, we added niche vendors Salient Management Company, Bitam and Corda Technologies to the Magic Quadrant for the first time. This report also includes commentary on some vendors, which, while not meeting the inclusion criteria for the Magic Quadrant itself, offer a viable alternative for some organizations with specific requirements.
6. All Niche Players are not created equally. Niche Players in this year’s Magic Quadrant have very different functional, geographical or business model specializations and generally fall into three types: (1) Upwardly mobile niche vendors (such as Board International, Targit, newly added LogiXML, Bitam and Jaspersoft) — these vendors are small and may be limited either functionally or geographically, but they are focused on market buying sweet spots, such as ease of use or cost, and therefore have momentum. If they can continue to expand their vision and execute with customers, they are most likely to achieve positive movement in future Magic Quadrants; (2) Solid niche vendors (such as arcplan, newly added Salient and Corda) that have been in the BI market for some time, are focused either functionally, geographically or vertically, and continue to have happy customers in their specific niche. These vendors would need to modify their current product vision and execute on their go-to-market strategies in order to move them beyond their current customer base and make significant movements in future Magic Quadrants; and (3) Fading niche vendors (such as Panorama Software and Actuate), which have strong niche product capabilities, but their customers are progressively losing faith in them as long-term viable vendors. These vendors must make changes both to their vision and execution to remain on the Magic Quadrant in future.

Forecast

Gartner’s view is that the market for BI platforms will remain one of the fastest growing software markets despite sluggish economic growth in most regions. Organizations continue to turn to BI as a vital tool for smarter, more agile and efficient business. According to Gartner’s annual survey of CIO technology priorities, BI remained among the top five priorities in 2009 (and it was No. 1 in each of the previous four years). That said, however, slow economic growth, increasingly viable low-cost alternatives and consolidation are expected to keep BI platform growth in the single digit range in 2010 and beyond. The BI platform market’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2014 is expected to be 7.0%, while the combined BI, analytics and performance management market’s CAGR is expected to be 7.7%.

Market conditions favor offerings with low costs and rapid time to value, but buyers that see data integration as strategic also seek rich capabilities to fuel their information infrastructure. More vendors in the data integration tools market understand these needs, but execution challenges remain.

IT leaders focused on data integration competencies must be aware of key trends and developments in the data integration tools market. During 2010, organizations continued to emphasize cost-effectiveness (a balance of functionality and value relative to cost), broader usage (with increased emphasis on data migration, master data management, and operational application integration scenarios), and high-quality customer service and support. Vendors responded in various ways, including new pricing and delivery models, and greater transparency in pricing. The desire for “good enough” technology at attractive price points drove interest in lower-cost and open-source solutions. At the same time, consolidation in this and related markets caused preferences to shift toward incumbent providers of applications or other information management infrastructure. Despite these trends, several providers focused primarily on data integration (independent of applications or business intelligence offerings) and continue to fare well despite growing competitive pressure. Many providers expanded their support for styles of data integration beyond bulk/batch, tightened their links to data quality tools, and moved toward a model-driven approach leveraging common metadata across their suites. These developments indicate growing maturity in this market relative to Gartner’s vision and buyers’ desires. In addition, as convergence with the related market of data quality tools continued to progress, an emphasis on governance began to emerge and some data integration practitioners began to emphasize data quality with higher priority than the mechanics of integration. The increasing maturity of the data integration tools and data quality tools markets and the rapidly growing overlap between them (in terms of both providers and buyers) signals the pending arrival of complete market convergence. Further trends emerging or advancing in 2010 and impacting this market included attention to problems of extreme data volumes (with many vendors exploring and some delivering Hadoop-based deployment models) and cloud-based data integration services.

Market Overview

The discipline of data integration comprises the practices, architectural techniques and tools for achieving consistent access to, and delivery of, data across the spectrum of data subject areas and data structure types in the enterprise, to meet the data consumption requirements of all applications and business processes. As such, data integration capabilities are at the heart of the information-centric infrastructure and will power the frictionless sharing of data across all organizational and system boundaries. Contemporary pressures are leading to an increased investment in data integration in all industries and geographic regions. Business drivers, such as the imperative for speed to market, the agility to change business processes and models, and the desire to detect and harness patterns and capture events are forcing organizations to manage their data assets differently. Simplification of processes and the IT infrastructure is necessary to achieve transparency, and transparency requires a consistent and complete view of the data, which represents the performance and operation of the business. Data integration is a critical component of an overall enterprise information management (EIM) strategy and information infrastructure that can address these data-oriented issues.

Specifically, market demand is becoming more diversified, as buyers procure tools with intent to support multiple use-cases. The traditional focus of activity has been in support of business intelligence initiatives. While this remains the most significant use-case driving demand, many others have emerged. Data migrations in support of modernization and consolidation initiatives represent a fast-growth area of demand, with data integration capabilities (and the related technology space of data quality) providing critical infrastructure for such efforts. As master data management (MDM) programs increase in number and scope, organizations also seek to apply investments in data integration technology to those initiatives, since movement, transformation, and federation of master data is a fundamental component. Further, synchronization of data between operational applications and across enterprise boundaries (between trading partners or between on-premises and cloud-based applications) also represent areas of growth. These requirements have generally been met via point-to-point interfaces supported by data integration tools, but the architectural concept of a “data integration hub” to address these needs is gaining interest in the market. Increasingly, end-user organizations are deploying data integration services beneath and supporting wider service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives. In all ways, organizations increasingly recognize that applying their investments in data integration tools to multiple use-cases will increase their leverage and value from the tools.

With the ongoing evolution of the data integration tools market, separate and distinct submarkets continue to converge, both at the vendor level and the technology level. This is being driven by buyers’ demands. Specifically, organizations increasingly acknowledge a diversity of data integration problem types that are supported by equally diverse architectural styles and patterns for data delivery. It is also being driven by vendors’ actions — specifically, vendors in individual data integration submarkets organically expanding their capabilities into neighboring areas, and acquisition activity bringing vendors from multiple submarkets together. The result is a progressively maturing market for complete data integration tools that address a range of different data integration styles based on common design tooling, metadata and runtime architecture. This market has supplanted the former data integration tools submarkets, such as extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), and represents the competitive landscape in which Gartner evaluates vendors for placement within this Magic Quadrant. More examples exist of vendor vision and product road maps that exhibit these characteristics. While many vendors that supply multiple types of data integration technology generally exhibit an overwhelming strength in one delivery style, more examples are emerging of better balance in support of multiple styles.

2009 was a challenging year in the data integration tools market, as the economic conditions slowed growth substantially from that seen in 2008. With overall growth of 2.2%, this market was one of many impacted negatively by these conditions. Yet, specific vendors demonstrated growth well beyond the market average. Gartner estimates the size of the market for data integration tools at approximately $1.35 billion as of the end of 2009, and forecasts growth of approximately 6% in 2010. A projected five-year compound annual rate of approximately 9.4% will yield a market of approximately $2.1 billion by 2014. While the forecast growth has been substantially curtailed from estimates two years ago due to current economic conditions, this growth rate remains very healthy. Services revenue from implementations of data integration tools is also growing (notably in architectural design and implementation best practices), with the time and effort required to implement the tools varying widely depending on the scope and complexity of the deployment.

Several key trends and developments had significant impact on the market for data integration tools during 2010. These trends represent an ongoing shift in demand from buyers, as well as areas of opportunity for technology providers to provide thought leadership and innovation that extends the boundaries of this market:

• Customers are seeking low-cost, “good enough” data integration capabilities — the economic conditions continue to push organizations to scrutinize their investments and optimize costs. In this market, this manifests as aggressive behavior on the part of buyers when negotiating price with vendors, as well as a growing number of organizations that are seeking solutions with solid basic capabilities (“good enough”) offered at attractive price points. As such, Gartner continued to note growing adoption of solutions such as those from Pervasive Software, Microsoft, and Syncsort, and others with offerings priced far below the levels of the market leaders. In addition, the level of activity around open-source solutions continues to grow, since these are viewed by buyers as providing a more attractive cost model. Talend, Pentaho, and other open-source providers in this market see increasing benefit from this trend.
• Customers place a premium on support and service — with reduced staff and budget, and amid mounting pressure for faster and higher quality delivery of solutions, buyers in the market demand a superior customer service and support experience from their technology providers. In addition to highly responsive and high quality-product technical support, customers desire direct and frequent interactions with sales teams and executives. An extension of this interest in higher-quality service and support is a strong focus by buyer on the availability of skills (within a provider’s installed base as well as via system integrator partners) and forums where they can share experiences, lessons, and solutions with their peers.
• Convergence of data integration tools and data quality tools markets accelerates — during 2010, buyer demand showed a clear preference for solutions which offer both data integration and data quality functionality. Many purchases of data integration tools executed during the year also included data quality functionality from the same provider. Many organizations not purchasing data quality functionality at minimum had made it a point of consideration during their evaluations of providers, with intent of possible future adoption. Organizations increasingly recognize that both are required in order to support critical initiatives in business intelligence, master data management, and application modernization. Those providers with complementary technology in these two (and other related) markets — such as IBM, Informatica, Oracle, Pitney Bowes, SAS/DataFlux, SAP, iWay Software, Talend and others — continue to enjoy the benefits of this trend, in the form of greater market mind-share and traction. However, a critical differentiating factor across vendors will be the ability to address new users with less technical skills such as data steward and business analyst roles outside of IT. Acquisitions of data quality technology (for example, Oracle buying Silver Creek Systems) and creation of new partnerships continued. Many of these developments were designed to support the growing demand for data quality and governance capability in the data integration discipline. Gartner believes that while the vendor trend is for data integration tools to be the dominant branding strategy, it is the leveraging of data quality management which is becoming the true value of a converged market.
• Data management operations deployed as data services — organizations continue to find themselves unable to consistently and flexibly deliver data for all applications and business processes across the enterprise. Because they have embedded business rules for transforming and quality-assuring data into individual applications and databases, they struggle with effecting change in and governing these rules for consistency and accuracy. Forward-thinking organizations are leveraging principles of service-orientation to address these challenges. Data integration tools will play a critical role, providing a layer of abstraction and control over how data is accessed, transformed, and delivered to all types of consuming applications, tools, and people. Buyers of these tools are increasingly seeking service-enablement properties, where combinations of data access, transformation, and delivery operations can be deployed as discoverable, callable, and reusable data services.
• Early-stage interest in the intersection of cloud computing and data integration — with the hype around cloud computing across the IT landscape, it is not surprising that data integration practitioners (and technology providers) are seeking to identify points of value and opportunity in this market. Several providers have delivered cloud-based offerings of various types (for example, Informatica and Pervasive), with the major emphasis on simple cloud-based services addressing common integration tasks for organizations with limited resources. Midsize enterprises and business analysts outside of IT in larger organizations are beginning to adopt these capabilities to move data between popular cloud-based applications such as salesforce.com and on-premises databases. Likewise, providers of software as a service (SaaS)-based applications are beginning to look toward simple cloud-based data integration services as a way to ease the challenge of onboarding new customers. IT groups in larger organizations are also beginning to look at public and private cloud-based infrastructure as a way to provision non-production (development, test, and quality assurance) environments for their chosen data integration tools. However, large-scale production deployments on cloud-based infrastructure remain scarce.
• Increasing focus on problems and opportunities created by massive data volumes — with growing pressure created by escalating data volumes, as well as the potential opportunities to identify meaningful patterns given the massive volumes of data at the disposal of most organizations, both data integration practitioners and technology providers are beginning to explore alternative approaches to performing the required computational workloads (performing complex transformations in a data integration context, mining events for hidden patterns, or calculating various types of metrics to support analytic requirements) over large data volumes. Leading-edge end-user organizations and various technology providers in the data integration tools market are experimenting with algorithms such as MapReduce, Hadoop-based runtime environments for data transformation workload, and leverage of in-memory database technology. This trend is also related to cloud computing interest, as the elastically scalable properties of cloud-based infrastructure are increasingly delivered via these types of techniques.
• The increasing gap between organizations “leading” versus “lagging” in data management competency — the gap between those organizations treating data management (and specifically, data integration) as a strategic competency and those approaching it in a reactive, tactical fashion is growing. Those that focus solely on running the business and growing the business — business as usual, with a focus only on implementing data integration architectures as cheaply as possible and optimized for narrow needs — will continue to fall farther behind their competition. In contrast, those organizations that focus on effective data integration capabilities as a way to transform the business are beginning to reap substantial benefits. Technology providers need to recognize this dichotomy in the market and make wise choices about which segment they wish to serve. Both segments represent opportunity, but will require very different approaches to packaging and selling data integration tools.

New mobile BI apps with native iPad support were introduced by both MeLLmo and QlikTech at  Gartner’s Business Intelligence Summit in Las Vegas. MicroStrategy previously announced iPad support on April 2.

MeLLmo released Roambi Enterprise Server 3 (ES3), an upgrade of the iPhone-based mobile BI platform that the company introduced last May. Exploiting the larger screen of the iPad, Roambi now supports a dashboard-style Trends view and a cross-comparison view that displays up to four data visualisations on a single screen.

Conversely, by leveraging the user-friendly features of the iPhone and iPad, MicroStrategy Mobile provides intuitive business intelligence that is optimised for the mobile user:

• Integrated Mapping: MicroStrategy Mobile offers out-of-the-box integration with Google maps for easy visualisation of geospatial data and rapid location identification.
• Multi-touch: MicroStrategy Mobile leverages the new Apple multi-touch gestures, such as swipe, tap, flick, and rotate, to ease data navigation for users.
• BI-specific Gestures: MicroStrategy Mobile includes specialized data gestures such as drilling and paging that extend native iPhone functionality to enhance data exploration.
• App Integration: App functionality can be extended by directly integrating with other on-device apps, including e-mail, browser, and text messaging; third-party apps such as social networks or payment solutions; and existing enterprise systems or data sources.
• Sensor-based Query: MicroStrategy Mobile is integrated with on-device sensors, such as the GPS receiver, accelerometer, and bar code reader, to accelerate query speed and relevance. For example, since the device already knows the user’s location, there is no need to manually enter the address.
• Mobile Information Capture: Users can quickly capture information with on-device sensors, such as a camera or bar code reader, reducing the need for manual data entry.

Case study:

Alloso Technologies, which makes specialized software for the hospitality industry, is using Microstrategy’s mobile technology in an iPhone application aimed at hotel general managers, said CTO Jon Gorman. ”General managers at hotels are typically not spending their time in front of computers,” he said. “We wanted to come out with something more portable.”

The application will provide managers with financial information, such as how the business is performing against its budget, or to break down room rates to see which sources customers are coming from, he said.

He praised Apple’s approach to iPhone development, saying the substantial periods between OS releases has allowed time for the APIs (application programming interfaces) to stabilize.

In the future, Alloso is looking to develop an iPad application for users “who aren’t so mobile,” Gorman said.

Geojan is currently helping biotechnology clients and medical device manufacturers making mobile BI works for them. For more information about how mobile BI could bring sustainable competitive advantage to your organisation, please contact us on www.geojan.com or info@geojan.com.

Gartner this year published its Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management suites. While the read was quite informative, I nevertheless decided to further investigate the alternative offerings available.  Today, I’ll set out to demystify the latest release of SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI – SAP’s flagship BI suite.

As most of us know, in recent years we’ve seen a polarisation of BI capabilities. On the one side, there are the ‘big players’ such as SAP, Oracle and IBM – all having acquired their own BI suites.  On the opposing side there are the ‘other players’ – who tend to differentiate themselves by offering free reporting suites, making their solution more industry-specific, or simply selling it for less.

The entry point: Crystal Reports 2008

SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI has an interesting go-to-market strategy. Many people will be familiar with Crystal Reports 2008, which can be purchased online from about £300. It offers a good starting point for any small business wanting to exploit information, but that does not rely on sophisticated distribution channels. As soon as the number of users grows and access becomes an issue, it is possible to upgrade to Crystal Reports Server Edition, for around £5,000.

Crystal Reports works directly with data, without relying on what SAP calls “Universes” – or what I call “Lenses”.  However, for smaller businesses, it is essential that Server Edition users know what they are doing, or they’ll find themselves having to hire a Crystal Reports specialist to do it for them – together with the costs this would involve.

So what else?

Many small and medium businesses will realise that the costs of ‘unlocking insights’ might be too much of an act of faith, especially if they have to hire Crystal Reports consultants at £400 – £600 a day.

This is where SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI comes into its own.  The cost is around £15,000 pounds, plus training and configuration, etc of about £10,000.  This means that for a total of £25,000 you could be up and running with a scalable business intelligence suite that provides all your needs for your business, i.e. the following user groups would be well served:

• “The Execs”: who want real-time information as well as tactical and strategy insights in a form of interactive dashboards that operate offline as well as online
• “The Knowledge Workers”: who want to perform sophisticated analysis on data, without needing to know anything about programming or Crystal Reports
• “The information consumers”: who need to take decisions on information “pulled” by them or “pushed” to them

So how does SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI work?

Provided you have the desire to eliminate analysis spreadsheets and address distribution issues – as well as having a budget of at least £25,000 – £30,000 – you are able to benefit from a set of seven components that collectively form the SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI.

1. InfoView

All users who access the Business Objects application need InfoView to:

• Read reports
• Refresh reports (i.e. run them to get the latest information)
• Respond to prompts (by selecting from lists of values or by direct entry of parameters); multiple prompts are supported and may be cascaded (i.e. content of a selection list is dependent on the result of a previous prompt)
• Print reports
• Schedule reports for refresh and distribution to other users, including email
• Save reports to Excel and PDF
• Copy and paste to Excel
• Manage third party documents such as Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint within the portal
• Take part in threaded discussions with other users within the business intelligence portal (share comments on reports with other users)
• Send reports to email, file server, or to other users within the system

2. Web Intelligence

Web intelligence provides an intuitive interface that allows business analysts and non-technical users to ask spontaneous and iterative business questions of their data using their everyday business terms, drilling and slicing the data as desired. Web intelligence includes Voyager functionality for analysing SQL Server Analysis Service cubes.

3. Explorer

This new module delivers powerful data exploration and visualisation capabilities that guide users with no prior BI experience through the process of accessing, exploring, visualising and sharing data.

4. Live Office

Live Office integrates with Microsoft Office, embedding up-to-the-minute corporate data in PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents. “Live” MS Office documents can be published to Business Objects Enterprise for sharing with co-workers.

5. Xcelcius

Xcelcius allows users to produce off-line interactive or ‘live’ dashboards using SWF file format (or Flash format). For instance, you can have embedded dials in your dashboard to allow users to explore the sensitivities of data, e.g. “If I increase the number of sales people, what is likely to be the increase in revenues and profit?”

6. Crystal Reports

Connect to virtually any source, design and format interactive reports, and share them internally and externally. Securely deliver and explore reports via SAP Business Objects, Crystal Reports Viewer and Microsoft Office documents.

7. Mobile

SAP Business Objects Mobile enables users to access BI reports, metrics and right-time data from a wireless device. The same content that users access on their desktops can be delivered to the mobile device, optimised for the smaller display format.

In summary…

Xcelcius is the starting point for executive users wanting an overview of performance. It sources the data from Web Intelligence or Live Office and is accessed through InfoView. If the user wants to embed dynamic data in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, they would normally do so using Live Office. Live Office is able to source information from Web Intelligence or a corresponding ‘universe’ created for that particular user group.

As mentioned earlier, universes are simply pre-set dimensions or lenses in which a user group will see the data (for example, it could be a geographical dimension, i.e. a user may only want to see the data for London or the South-East).

Web Intelligence feeds to both Live Office and Xcelsius, but can also allow more sophisticated users to perform advance querying, data mining and a range of analytics. Again, because the data is sourced from one or many ‘universes’, there is no need to be a DB expert or a specialised user, as is necessary with Crystal Reports.

Crystal Reports remains part of the SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI suite, as there are occasions when it is necessary to analyse data beyond the scope of the universes created. However, the majority of businesses investing in SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI will realise very quickly that they are able to perform virtually all tasks without having to rely on Crystal Reports, thus making considerable savings on consulting fees.

Finally, Explorer allows users to search the entire Business Objects suite. It allows users to take a serendipitous approach to finding what they need, simply by using keywords and ‘point and click’. The best example can be seen in the video produced by SAP below:

SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI – Explorer

I’m conscious for my readers that there’s a lot to take in here. Therefore, if you would like to learn more about SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI, please do not hesitate to contact us. We’ll be more than happy to help you decide whether this is the right solution for your organisation.

GEOJAN – performance management and business intelligence

Aligning people with performance

Tel: 020 3287 7620

www.geojan.com

info@geojan.com

So what are the issues?

Faced with ever-mounting levels of data from an increasing number of sources, many businesses struggle to keep up with the daunting task of interpreting its meaning. As a result, there are some inherent challenges associated with managing information as a strategic manufactured asset:

• Information has an increasingly limited shelf life: In a fast moving environment, timely access to well organised data has become even more important.
• Data and information are managed in silos: Data is characterised differently by different parts of the organisation. Complications with interpretation arise when no common definitions are agreed.
• Digital data is doubling at an unprecedented rate: The escalated demand for information and the exponential growth in data volumes are challenged by the increase in types and complexity of disparate data that need to be managed.
• Your people need insights more than ever before: The increase in the number of knowledge workers throughout organisations means that more people are seeking access to more data than ever before. The need to present that data in intelligible forms to workers lacking specialised data extraction skills has never been greater.

A significant proportion of this data has financial repercussions and will inevitably end up in the hands of Finance. The problem is that in many cases the need for business insight has risen much faster than Finance’s ability to process it, and that’s assuming they even know where to begin.

Finance now has a valuable opportunity to take a more proactive role in the performance of the organisation. More data is available than ever before, allowing greater breadth, depth and speed of insight.  Despite this, many finance departments still fall short in providing genuinely strategic insight for the business.  Although many do a good job when providing conventional metrics, they lack the ability to drill deeper to deliver the substantive business analytics required to compete at a world level.

Our perspective – BI as a Core Competency to any organisation

Although they are faced with demands for greater competitiveness, there are glaring gaps in the insight capabilities of many organisations. If they are to make the best use of the wealth of business intelligence that is available to them, they need more advanced data analyses, scenario planning and predictive capabilities. There needs to be a fundamental recognition of enterprise information as a strategic manufactured asset, and needs to be managed accordingly.

Once the right sponsorship is acquired, Finance and the broader management needs to address three considerations when building a Business Intelligence capability:

So what are the issues?

Given the overwhelming evidence in support of integrated financial processes, it is verging on scandalous that just 20% of companies have properly integrated systems in place. But it’s hardly surprising when we consider that, across the board, it is estimated that Finance still spends 50% of its time on transaction processing (Source: IBM 2010):

This is not to argue that transaction processing is an inessential activity.  The CFO’s core role after all is to ensure that efficient processes are in place – including everything from cash management to regulatory compliance.  But all too often Finance can find itself mired in the ad hoc needs of other departments and day-to-day tactical demands.

Our perspective

The new challenge for the CFO is to move Finance on to a strategic level to provide enterprise-wide advice, insight and analysis.  With the right tools and input, it is possible for Finance to make a significant contribution to generating profitable growth.  The CFO survey for IBM identified the following areas as key to providing greater value for the business:

• Supporting the CEO to create shareholder value (68%)
• Measuring and monitoring business performance (65%)
• Managing governance/controls/risks (54%)

Today’s top performing CFOs are all involved to a greater or lesser degree in activities based on streamlined business intelligence, risk mitigation, planning, forecasting and improved performance management.  In the process they have developed the integrated financial systems (and, vitally, have freed-up the time and resources) necessary to elevate their role to an increasingly strategic level.

A problem for many financial departments is that they struggle to consolidate data.  But with specialist input and guidance it is possible to integrate financial planning and operational data to provide consistent and accurate reporting across the business, together with tailored structures to analyse customers, suppliers, partners, products and internal departments.

Results

In a single integrated environment, transactions can be posted just once instead of being duplicated in multiple systems. Reporting is only as accurate as underlying data in the system; streamlining data distribution in this way can result in a dramatic reduction in the incidence of errors.

Financial streamlining also enables companies to cut costs and enhance efficiency by enabling departments and individual employees to manage numerous transactions independently.  For example, with the right processes in place, employees are able to manage their own expenses while vendors can track their own payables online.

As well as liberating vital resources to enhance productivity, a single integrated system provides a consistent and auditable environment for the purposes of regulatory compliance, as well as providing stronger financial controls and advanced insights into underlying processes, patterns and data. The right system will also provide the inbuilt flexibility to change as the business changes, such as when accommodating new acquisitions and divestitures.

GEOJAN – performance management and business intelligence

Aligning people with performance

Tel: 020 3287 7620

www.geojan.com

info@geojan.com

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the problem is I do not know which half.”

Lord Leverhulme, 1851-1925, founder of Unilever and philanthropist

It is estimated that the world spends an eye-watering 1.2 trillion dollars a year on advertising and marketing.  With marketing budgets absorbing as much as 20 percent of all revenues – and with much of this technically unaccounted for – it might explain why they’re among the first to be slashed in times of recession.

In the new climate of austerity and accountability, CEOs, CFOs and shareholders are demanding greater transparency and proven ROI from their marketing investments.  Therefore marketers must be able quantifiably to justify their budgets rather than relying on traditional smoke and mirrors.

To achieve this effectively they must be able to gather, analyse and exploit information from their company’s customer base. This would include data on customers’ existing and future needs, their decision making processes, behaviour and trends.  This information is then balanced against data based on market competition, the state of the industry, and general economic, technological and cultural trends.

So what are the issues?

In a recent Business Week Research Services study, 55 percent of C-level executives surveyed said marketing plays a vital role in achieving their strategic goals, yet fewer than half were happy with their company’s ability to increase revenue from new and existing customers. And just 43 percent said they were satisfied with customer loyalty and retention. It all points to the fact that businesses must be less product-centric and depend more on customer insight, because customer knowledge enhances the value of product knowledge.

Our perspective

The emergence of digital media has given businesses access to a rich source of previously unavailable customer data, and with it the potential for deeper customer insights and smarter decision making.  Forward thinking marketers are seizing on digital media to have interactive dialogues with their customers.

Such collaboration can give us an accurate measurement of marketing performance and lead to keener insights about sources of customer value, future customer behaviour and the real impact of marketing costs.

Results

The ability to analyse and predict customer behaviour allows managers at all levels to make smarter decisions. With the right expertise, marketers are now able to more accurately:

• Manage customer data
• Predict customer behaviour
• Profile and segment customers
• Quantify the lifetime value of a customer
• Manage and optimise marketing strategy
• Engage high-potential customers
• Continuously improve marketing performance
• Measure and report results
• Optimise marketing investment

Data integration created at the customer level from diverse sources provides insights that result in consistently better performance.  Predictive analytics also allow businesses to become more customer-centric by understanding and responding to customer needs on an individual basis.

Data is processed based on descriptive and predictive analytics – descriptive to clarify performance results and understand the present value of the customer base; predictive to understand preferences, tendencies and potential.

Customer-centric businesses use analytics to predict customers’ needs and respond proactively. This allows them to identify previously unseen trends in customer data and enables greatly improved forecasting.

How Geojan can help

Improve the accuracy and relevance of your financial forecasting process

Failure to respond to changes which affect the accuracy of your financial forecasting can result in erratic and unpredictable performance. Geojan’s AccuForecast forecasting system enhances profitability by significantly increasing the accuracy of your financial forecasting process:

http://www.geojan.com/performance-management/accuforecast

For concrete examples on how we can help, please read the following case studies:

• Pharmaceuticals: http://www.geojan.com/pharmaceutical-2
• Oil & Gas: http://www.geojan.com/global-oil-gas

How can Geojan make a difference to the profitability of your organisation?  Allow us to demonstrate. Simply call or email Geojan to arrange a free consultation at your convenience.

Tel: 020 3287 7620

info@geojan.com

From dwelling in the metaphorical shadows of the back office, the CFO has been propelled centre stage to take on a much wider role.  And it’s not a moment too soon. With the economic turmoil predicted to continue, it is critical that finance has the broadest possible view of what is happening across all levels of the organisation.  CFOs are now occupied with making enterprise-wide decisions, and their influence extends way beyond traditional financial control and supervision.

So what are the issues?

The world of the CFO is changing, and pure accounting skills alone are no longer enough.  To achieve strategic objectives, the modern CFO must become intimately involved with all functions within the business. Importantly, he or she must also be equipped with the knowledge and authority to challenge the decision-making process.

IBM recently published a study based on conversations with more than 1,900 Chief Financial Officers worldwide. It revealed that more than 70 percent of CFOs feel they are playing a greatly expanded role in the running of the business. An equal proportion of respondents also said they were under pressure to reduce the enterprise cost base of their organisations, make faster decisions and provide more transparency to external stakeholders.

Cost reduction management, information management, strategic revenue planning, business model innovation, resource allocation, capital asset management and selection of key performance indicators all feature prominently in the typical CFO’s extended skills base.

The survey also reveals that information integration and risk mitigation have more than doubled in perceived significance among CFOs during the last five years.

Our perspective

To achieve a deeper level of understanding of the business, finance departments must have integrated access to both financial and operational information. CFOs clearly accept there is an urgent need to address the problems of information management. But to be effective in mitigating risks, they need the right tools for the job.

The business case for risk mitigation is increasingly supporting the need to invest. Key value drivers are often supported by the need for:

1. A systematic, well-informed and thorough method of decision making
2. Fewer financial surprises with unforeseen costs
3. Faster decision making
4. A greater likelihood of a more predictable, secure income stream
5. Stakeholders of the organisation are likely to be reassured
6. A reduced likelihood of reputation damage
7. Access to opportunities that an organisation may have otherwise not been aware of, and enables a faster grasp of such opportunities
8. Protects the organisation’s image and reputation
9. A better basis for the allocation of resources
10. Greater likelihood of achieving the organisation’s objectives

To mitigate risk in an efficient and effective manner, integrated information has to be a top priority.  The CFO’s focus must now be on proactive data governance, which involves managing important information and establishing accountability for its accuracy. This demands that CFOs have an understanding of which key metrics and indicators signal which outcomes, and how they link to performance and to strategy execution. And all of this needs to take place in real time. Shown below is the format typically used to prioritise risks – real time prioritisation should be made available to the CFO (as oppose to what is typically a slow, ad hoc and manually intensive process) and form part of the CFO’s dashboard:

Results

We appear to be looking at a trend. A similar study in 2008 also revealed widespread concern about risk management. Two thirds of businesses with revenues over US$5 billion had experienced material risk events during the preceding three years. And of these almost half admitted they were not adequately prepared.

This dramatic rise in the perceived significance of risk management is further evidence of the CFO’s expanding role. Finance is no longer occupied exclusively with monetary risk but is becoming more involved in mitigating corporate risk in its many forms – whether strategic, operational, geopolitical, legal or environmental.  All types of risk, of course, have a financial outcome, which is why it is so important for CFOs to have access to integrated information.

How Geojan can help

We work with CFOs, FDs, CEOs and CIOs to restructure their planning cycles to consume fewer resources by optimising the way information is used and significantly improving the ability for an organisation to mitigate risks: http://www.geojan.com/business-intelligence

How can Geojan make a difference to secure the value of your organisation by embedding a gold standard risk mitigation approach?  Allow us to demonstrate. Simply call or email Geojan to arrange a free consultation at your convenience.

Tel: 020 3287 7620

info@geojan.com