Business Intelligence With Sharepoint 2010

Best Practice

Simplified Business Intelligence with SharePoint 2010 Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Self-service and personal business intelligence (Personal) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Business intelligence for the community (Team) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Organizational business intelligence (Organization) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Self-Service Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Business Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Parameterized and Operational Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Performance Monitoring (Dashboards) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Scorecarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

®

®

About Ziff Davis B2BZiff Davis B2B is a leading provider of research to technology buyers and high-quality leads to IT vendors. As part of the Ziff Davis family, Ziff Davis B2B has access to over 50 million in-market technology buyers every month and supports the company’s core mission of enabling technology buyers to make more informed business decisions.

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Introduction

Business intelligence (BI) is the delivery of accurate, useful information to the appropriate decision makers within the necessary timeframe to support effective decision making . There are many new BI reporting technologies designed to improve the productivity of business analysts and preserve information consistency throughout an organization . These analytical tools – and the types of users they are geared toward – are the focus of this report . Additionally, this report provides an overview of BI in SharePoint Server including an overview of services, architecture, and sources .

Challenges

The business environment today is more dynamic than ever, with mergers and acquisitions, consolidation, and regulatory changes . To succeed, decision makers need to develop an ability to sense these changes, and thus respond to them quickly and smartly . These ever growing changes pose the following challenges, to name just a few:

• Growing volumes of organizational data and the ability to leverage it effectively in less time and with more certainty

• Absence of consistent master data, enterprise information and systems to manage the same

• Ineffective business process/performance/predictability management

• Inefficient utilization of technology models/architectures and coupling

• Lack of optimization in resource utilization

• Uncertainty and hence, degradation

• Non-compliance issues

Solution

Business Intelligence is a buzzword in the business and information technology community but it isn’t without good reason . In order for an organization to be efficient, it must consolidate data from all its divisions, organize it effectively, and produce actionable information . Business Intelligence is the discipline which addresses this process .

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail . Those words are more true than ever as an increasingly complex and interconnected world makes it crucial to select the right BI solution . Most often in an effort to stay one step ahead of the competition, businesses collect large amounts of data ranging from demographics, buyer behavior, and customer loyalty to financial and operational data . Unfortunately the data is useless for decision making, its intended purpose, without a way of organizing and displaying it as meaningful information . To digest and make sense of their data, companies need to select the proper tools that can collect, process, and present data in a relevant and timely manner . With the wide variety of

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tools available in the marketplace, it is definitely a herculean task to determine the right tool . No single BI tool is appropriate for every user’s needs . Companies need a way to determine which tools provide the most benefits to meet the varied needs of their users .

Earlier, one of the unknown aspects of SharePoint was its BI capabilities . We spend most of our time discussing information involving unstructured content as opposed to data . And the BI world involves databases and data warehouses and OLAP cubes and other related buzzwords like EPM or business analytics . BI is really its own unique niche . The hidden value of SharePoint is its ability to manage data and content together .

Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2 provide storage and management foundations for business data, and a set of reporting and analysis tools . Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 provides controlled access to and analysis of business data, and the ability to leverage data to make better business decisions . The BI tools you use depend on the specific problems you are trying to solve . Your daily business activities have associated information and insights that emerge in three main areas of business intelligence:

Self-service and personal business intelligence (Personal) - Personal and self-service BI is information available or delivered to people when they need it and in the desired format . IT may integrate a self-service BI platform to reduce the backlog of requests . Typically there is little or no IT involvement .

Business intelligence for the community (Team) - People don’t work just as individuals but in groups and teams to complete projects . Business intelligence for the community delivers information that reflects this providing BI that focuses on the ability to promote collaboration, and rapid sharing of information to drive to a common decision .

Organizational business intelligence (Organization) - Organizational BI describes a set of tools that help people align their objectives and activities with overall company goals, objectives, and metrics . It is BI that helps synchronize individual efforts by using scorecards, strategy maps, and other tools that connect to corporate data .


http://www.aplicor.com


One typical example of a SharePoint solution involving BI and data is a performance reporting portal . In generic terms, this is what a Performance Reporting Portal might include:


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Report Distribution

• Standard report repository

• Financial Reporting

• Non-financial reporting

Source System Access

• Links to source systems for data mining / queries

Scorecards

• Improved navigation

• Improved print functionality

• Linkage to supporting standard reports

Interactive Drill-Down

• For key metrics utiliizing scorecard data

• Include graphical visualizations

Self-ServicePerformance Reporting Portal



More business users are now beginning to realize that SharePoint can be used for more than just intranet pages, team-sites and document libraries . Additionally, there is real business value that executives recognize in this type of solution and may therefore be more willing to approve funding for this type of project .

A BI style describes how users want to interact with, present, and share information . These styles are defined in part by a user’s or group of users’ unique information needs, along with the organization’s existing reporting capabilities, infrastructure, and skill sets of both business users and IT . The following five styles of business intelligence reporting map to Microsoft BI tools:

Self-Service Analysis – Self-Service Analysis describes free-form reporting and analysis by users so that they can integrate data from disparate sources and drill-down and understand the root cause for data anomalies . These non-technical users value the ability to perform their own reporting and analysis without relying on IT or others . Typically, the users are very familiar with the business data and have strong Excel skills and are usually working with small-to-medium sized data sets

Business Reporting – This style describes formatted reports that are created by advanced business users or analysts . Reports are typically based upon approved corporate data, and then shared more broadly with managers, teams, or depart-ments . In this style, IT involvement is moderate, usually overseeing the distribution and monitoring of the reporting environment and building of the structured data layer upon which the reports are built . Report consumers use only a browser to view and interact with the reports and they may be delivered in multiple formats such as PDF, Excel, HTML, and so on .

Parameterized and Operational Reporting – Similar to the Business Reporting style, Parameterized and Operational Reporting is also characterized by fixed-format reports . The reports, however, are authored and managed by IT instead of business users and usually follow a pixel perfect format and rendering style . Consistency, scalability, manageability, and automated distribution are some of the key character-istics of this style . Here the complexity of the reports exceeds the capabilities of the user base for self-service reporting . Reports are often created with one or more user selectable parameters, but are not capable of extensive interactivity .

Performance Monitoring (Dashboards) – This style describes dashboard-style reports that allow users to quickly and easily monitor the performance of their business . This style caters to executive level or department leadership who require at-a-glance visibility on the health of the business, but it often also permits further investigation via interactivity . Data in multiple formats are combined on one page and they can drill down to perform root cause analysis for data anomalies .


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Scorecarding – Scorecarding is a style that describes highly summarized views with Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs) measured and scored against predefined targets such as a balanced scorecard . This style is generally a part of a performance management program, though it can also be used to measure operational perfor-mance . Scorecarding is the most mature of all BI styles, enabling organizations to track trends and key performance indicators over a period of time and against company-defined targets .

Conclusion

In today’s fast paced and ever changing world, organizations have a need to provide the right information to the right person at the right time . Doing exactly that is a fundamental promise of a BI program; however, if the delivery mechanism is not properly aligned to the information consumption and analysis needs, any solution is in danger of missing the mark entirely and failing to provide the anticipated value .

References

Insights on Collaboration, ECM, IT Strategy & SharePoint from pmpinsights .com

http://technet .microsoft .com/en-us/library/gg537617

http://technet .microsoft .com/en-us/library/ff475895

About the Author

The Author RK is a Project Manager in a leading multinational organization . In his current role, he leads software projects aimed at driving defined business value . A multi-skilled professional with over 12+ years of total experience and an excellent track record of managing complex projects across various technologies(SAP BI, Abinitio, MSTR, SharePoint and .NET) and domain . Able to manage stakeholder expectations and willing to take full responsibility for the delivery of projects objectives . Has an excellent track record of determining goals, time frames, constraints, risks, staffing requirements and procedures for accomplishing projects . Has played diverse roles and has a passion in teaching, trekking and reading books .


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About Ziff Davis

Ziff Davis, Inc . is a leading digital media company specializing in the technology market, reaching over 40 million highly engaged in-market

buyers and influencers every month . Ziff Davis sites, which feature trusted and comprehensive evaluations of the newest, hottest products,

and the most advanced ad targeting platform . Ziff Davis B2B is a leading provider of online research to enterprise buyers and high-quality

leads to IT vendors . More information on Ziff Davis can be found at ziffdavis .com .


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Business Intelligence With Sharepoint 2010