Business intelligence

Business intelligence delivers the means to analyse performance of an organisation, it's customers and products. If you are familiar with spreadsheets, you may have used a pivot-table to analyse figures. Business intelligence provides a similar form of analysis.

Spreadsheets can be difficult to maintain and are prone to error. Business intelligence provides a robust and reliable method to provide summarised and detailed data.

Business intelligence can also be applied to other areas of a business such as stock control, logistics, financial management. It is increasingly being used to manage the performance of websites and on-line communities.

Analysis differs from conventional reporting. Rather than just providing a list of top customers or products by revenue. It allows users to explore and discover performance trends and patterns:

Which region produced the most sales?
In that region, which product category accounted for the greatest sales?
For that category, which product was the most profitable?
Which customers purchased this product?
How frequently to they buy it?

A well designed business intelligence deployment will deliver the answers.

The data is packaged into cubes to provide the user with intuitive navigation. Requirements are expressed in terms of measures e.g. sales, quantity, margin and dimensions e.g. customers, products etc. The dimensions provide summarisations e.g. all products, categories and product item.

A cubes may comprise many dimensions and measures.

Users can easily navigate discrete areas of data. They can re-arrange the orientation and drill-down to lower levels of detail. As a result they gain insight into the dynamics of their business.

The OLAP Cube

Slice and dice the data to achive the required view

The data cube is just like a Rubik's cube, remember them?

User can review Customer sales and then re-orientate the puzzle. The result providing a new perspective.

One of the benefits of this technology is that the cube can be defined in business terms. This aligns IT with the business and reduces potential misunderstanding of errors.

A new perspective provides insight

Business Intelligence is sometimes referred to as OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) or Cubes the term used here.

Free guide to delivering business intelligence

Most businesses have customer data stored in sales systems, CRM and websites. These systems provide a fantastic resource for managing business performance.

Are you seeking ways to deliver management information?
Would you like guidance on how to deliver business intelligence?

This guide provides a step-by-step guide to delivering business intelligence.

View our free guide to delivering business intelligence

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Client Feedback

"The fusion of our customer data with targeted market research has provided real insight. Confirmation of long-held beliefs has been just as useful as the truly new understanding.

The MarketGEM project laid a few ghosts to rest. It enabled us to focus on innovative strategies for business growth and membership satisfaction." ~ Brian Ford, Director of Marketing and Communications, The Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply

CIPS case study

Client Project

Yell had invested in SAP to support its international business. As part of the implementation SAP Business Warehouse was used to deliver operational reporting.

Despite the extensive reach of SAP/BW, Yell needed to broaden the use of its data for sales and marketing. SAP/BW didn't address these needs in the form Yell required.

We implemented a data warehouse to support Yell's sales and marketing.

Yell case study

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