Business intelligence (BI) projects are receiving board-level attention as companies seek to achieve higher business value by analyzing information. This higher-level focus is requiring companies to expand the breadth of their BI portfolio to encompass a range of performance management applications, both at the corporate and division levels. At the same time, service providers are diversifying their platforms to deliver services on a global basis, providing a diverse set of options for users.
For example, Satyam Computer Services and Microsoft in September 2006 opened two state-of-the-art BI facilities in Singapore and Shanghai, respectively. Researchers at the two sites use real-life scenarios and data to test, develop, and implement solutions for the financial services industry. The companies also launched Satyam’s iDecisions BI platform, deployed on Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005. By optimizing Microsoft and Satyam’s BI solutions and services, a range of financial services companies can realize enhanced customer benefits, and reduced ownership and integration costs.
“Traditional BI solutions tend to be complex, expensive applications that limit their usage in organizations,” says Virender Aggarwal, SVP at Satyam. By porting iDecisions to the Microsoft platform, Satyam can make use of advanced data warehousing and make BI more accessible across enterprises.
The labs use SQL Server as the database engine, utilizing its analytical, integration and data migration capabilities. iDecisions enables customers to better manage critical, timely information, and to benefit from the close integration of SQL Server with Microsoft's Visual Studio, Office, and a suite of new development tools, including the BI Development Studio.
Satyam and Microsoft developers will perform a wide variety of standard and non-standard demonstrations at the new sites, both on-site and online. Test scenarios include simulating fluctuating user volumes (stress testing) and performing advanced analytics using data mining to predict credit card attrition.
Analytical features also address industry standards such as the Basel II framework, including highly specific customer intelligence for increasing customer value and credit risk management. The labs enable Microsoft and Satyam to study customer requirements more quickly to ensure faster and more cost-effective implementation of BI capabilities. The Shanghai lab will also focus on creating local language versions for the business requirements of China.
Leveraging Information
Companies have become more adept at capturing large volumes of data, with the capability of holding information about every customer that has ever transacted business. However, while they've worked diligently at taking information and building up terabytes of stored data across a variety of operational systems and databases, they lack a way to make efficient use of that data. "Organizations need to become more efficient in the way that they exploit their data assets," said a March 2006 report by Butler Group. "The data control and management issues will not be resolved by simply attacking them with technology solutions that slice and dice data into chunks before delivering it to sales and marketing functions as BI."
The problems with the way companies’ use their data is more deep-seated, and can't be addressed by simply throwing in more BI technology. While there are a number of strong BI software products available, they continue to be deployed at a tactical level and limiting their value proposition.
Businesses are seeking a better, more efficient, and cost-effective approaching to realizing the value of their underlying data. According to Butler Group, the key capabilities required to deliver end-to-end information management from a single platform at an enterprise level include: Extract, transform & load (ETL) services, data storage and management, metadata management, performance management (forecasting, budgeting, and planning), query and analysis, and enterprise-level reporting. As companies deploy enterprise BI servers from different vendors, the need arises for centralized management, security, and customer-facing performance.
The availability of enterprise reporting facilities is a cornerstone of the extended enterprise BI model. Web-based technology provides the means to address the needs of all classes of users, from power users to information consumers. At a more granular level, BI reporting services should enable local power users and developers to create flexible report libraries for mass, and targeted distribution. It should support self-service browsing, providing executive reports on a server via a web interface with user being able to filter, drill, change graphical options and data sources, and save content for future use and ongoing distribution.
Enterprise Deployments
Service providers are leveraging their expertise in BI and data warehousing to build intuitive, scalable, and cost-effective systems that connect data across multiple geographies and reduce decision-making cycles. Wipro Technologies designed a web-enabled BI platform for project budgeting and analysis for a U.S.-based management, and insurance services company. The platform is a web-based data analysis tool, which minimizes redundancy in the processes for budget analysis and reporting. It also provides an accurate and timely source of information with the ability to track data changes. Decreasing the dependence on IT and enabling users to generate their own reports reduces the cycle time required to produce reports.
Wipro has identified the company as one of the world's leading risk and insurance firms, with 400 offices in over 100 countries. The company's primary businesses include risk management, insurance brokerage and program-management services, reinsurance brokering, risk and financial modeling, and advisory services.
The company had been using excel spreadsheets to manage its budgeting activities. The process lacked integrity, and was error-prone and time-consuming. The company wanted a robust application to support these processes. The requirements included a business-oriented, integrated view of data functioning as a central repository of all budget-related information, the elimination of error-prone manual procedures such as consolidation of data on spreadsheets from subsidiaries in multiple locations, the ability to track changes in data and generate data such as actual versus budget reports and variance reports for a project or cost center. Finally, it had to be web-based to meet various data entry reporting and analysis requirements.
| Next Steps |
| Seek service providers that can provide BI solutions to empower information users at all levels |
| Investigate the use of web-based BI tools to encourage business users to take control of their information needs |
| Consolidate disparate BI deployments onto a single platform. |
The Wipro-designed solution features a central repository that acts as a data preparation layer, resolving differing business rules for various countries to be applied to the data. The system provides the ability to enter data directly to the database in different local currencies via the web, and a consistent view of data from around the world. It provides seamless integration between the general ledger and financial analysis systems, enabling the "actual" data to be flowed in by means of a configured link, and also provides a monthly extract to create reports to feed downstream applications.
Wipro had to overcome significant technical challenges on the way to building the system, such as implementing a central repository that would act as the central preparation layer while simultaneously incorporating varying business rules from different countries.
As companies demand more cost-effective BI solutions that scale across an enterprise, the number of service providers will shrink, with power shifting toward leading providers such as Actuate, Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, Information Builders, SAS, and SPSS, as well as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP. Savvy technology buyers will look to these providers to meet their enterprise BI objectives.
