Oxford Computer Consultants

Welcome to the sixth edition of the OCC eNewsletter with its insight into how emerging Information Technology will impact on your business.

Our aim is to inform business managers and technical directors in clear language about topical aspects of IT. Every quarter we'll explain how businesses are using IT to gain a competitive advantage and improve their business processes. Each article will be supported by case studies outlining how organisations have successfully deployed the technology, and how OCC has been able to help them seize the opportunities the articles outline.

In this issue, Mark de Cates explains how improvements in Business Intelligence software are helping to make this valuable tool available to more and more businesses.

Business Intelligence: from data to insight

These days, most people now realise how valuable data can be to an organisation. However, that data is only valuable if you use it: collecting and storing gigabytes of raw numbers is, in itself, no use to anyone. Making data valuable is what 'Business Intelligence' (BI) is all about – transforming it into something useful, to help you and your colleagues make better decisions.

The idea has been around for quite some time but until recently was the domain of only very large corporations, who had the resources to collect enough information and manipulate it quickly enough to be of use. Recently, the increased use of Information Technology for streamlining business processes and the emergence of new, more intuitive software, has meant that BI is increasingly accessible.

Below, I explain the most important elements of BI and how they can help your organisation, including examples of where OCC has used BI in the past to help its clients.

Collection and consolidation

Useful data can come from any number of sources. Typically, they may be relational databases within your organisation, or web services provided by other organisations; Excel spreadsheets and log files are also common. An excellent example of data which is valuable (but rarely used to greatest effect!) is the traffic log of an organisation's website. Where the data already exists (as in the example just cited), little effort is needed to make it part of a wider BI solution, or it can be supplemented with other data to increase value.

Once collected, 'Extract, transform and load' (ETL) software cleans and homogenises the disparate data sources, so that they can be combined easily and analysed to provide insight. Part of Microsoft's BI offering, SQL Server 2005 Integration Services allows users to create and manage ETL processes visually, using an intuitive interface.

Intuitive ETL data flow creation

Analysis

Business Intelligence usually begins with deciding what you want to know: what knowledge would help you to make better decisions? The answer to this question determines which data sources you are likely to need, and the resulting information you expect to see. This may take the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), OLAP cubes, or even a complete navigable business data model. However, often you won't know exactly what information will be most valuable to you, and the area of flexible analysis has traditionally been the biggest obstacle in turning BI from a 'great idea' into a practical solution.

Combining and processing the large volumes of data often needed in BI takes time, and this leads to serious inflexibility: a change in perspective can take hours or days to recalculate, especially using standard data mining techniques. However, recent software tools such as Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, or Hyperion System 9 use (among others) intelligent caching and visualisation to allow users to navigate data more intuitively, and in near-realtime. The calculation, aggregation etc, of data inevitably still requires significant processing power; but since the value in BI is providing the right decision-making information to people, a real revolution in the end-user's experience has taken effect.

Reporting

As previously mentioned, BI is all about providing information to aid the decision-making process. The final step in the BI journey is delivering that information to the decision-makers in a form which is most useful to them. Such a report can take many forms, depending on how the information is to be used.

For regular, established decision processes, template-based reports are generated and disseminated automatically or on demand. The report templates define the information to be presented (using, for example, a SQL query) with the intended layout, and at generation-time this is combined with the most up-to-date data to produce an instance of the report. Subscription and scheduling services can then feed the appropriate reports to the appropriate users. For example, OCC has used SQL Server Reporting Services to help computer-based assessment experts Cognisco (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc18645.html) provide concise and valuable reports to their customers. In this case, regular reports detailing candidates' responses to assessment allow line managers to monitor their work force's skill levels and identify areas for improvement.

So-called 'ad hoc' reporting allows users to easily design their own one-off reports using a user-friendly GUI, and without requiring detailed knowledge of any database schemas. They can drag and drop data items onto a canvas to quickly create their report. Of course, some training may be required: OCC runs training days to help users of our data-intensive SPOCC (http://www.oxfordcclg.co.uk/Products/SPOCC/tabid/58/Default.aspx) application create their own ad-hoc reports. This kind of flexibility is one of the great strengths of BI, but a compromise must be struck: widespread or 'casual' creation of ad hoc reports can be resource-intensive, so use must be limited to those of real value – when ignored, the resulting contention leads to serious performance issues.

Reports appear to be the obvious vehicle for delivering BI insight. However, when PDF reports are being emailed around an organisation on a daily basis for example, they appear less suitable. An alternative when information is needed frequently is the use of 'dashboards' to present that information directly on a user's desktop or web browser, apparently in real-time. While many might consider this a distraction, when the information really is critical to the day-to-day running of the organisation it makes perfect sense to have it constantly in plain sight.

A Business Intelligence dashboard

Conclusion

At this point, the benefits of Business Intelligence should be clear, especially when all of the elements described above are combined to form a tightly-integrated solution. However, what may not be so clear is how BI is relevant to you. Does your organisation have any data which could be made more valuable? What information would help you or your colleagues to make better decisions? These questions require some thought, and you may find that the answers lead you in the direction of Business Intelligence.

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What is OCC?

The purpose of OCC (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/) is to create original, robust and flexible IT solutions. Our aim to add value to customers' businesses by enabling them to grasp the opportunities of Information Technology and the Internet. In so doing, we aim to give our staff challenging jobs and competitive rewards. We work in the IT field because we enjoy the technology, because we're good at it and because we can see the positive impact IT has on both business and society. We aim to achieve our purpose by:

• recruiting and retaining highly skilled staff. We believe that the intelligence and skill of our developers is one of our competitive advantages,
• working closely with our customers. It is always our aim to allow any prospective client to contact any of our previous or ongoing clients for a reference,
• using our results and reputation to win repeat business and generate new business. We believe that our reputation should speak for itself; and
• undertaking leading edge R&D because this is the life blood of innovative companies. This ensures that we have expertise in emerging as well as current software technologies.

What Does OCC Do?

OCC promotes itself as having a strong ability to grasp a client’s business needs and to use technology to “add value” to client processes. Our strengths are reflected in the quality of our development staff, our high levels of repeat business (over 93% of clients buy again from OCC), and our knowledge and experience in specific sectors such as energy, engineering, local government and health.

OCC’s Services and Expertise

Software Services

A complete range of design, development and support services for:

• Custom software applications;
• Re-engineering of software in legacy applications; and
• Content Management System based web sites and web applications based on standard and emerging web services technology.

Industry Sectors

Over 16 years of experience, reference sites and testimonials from our customers in:

• Online Training and eLearning (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc18191.html)
• Electronics (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc20185.html)
• Energy and Oil (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc18197.html)
• Environment (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc18183.html)
• Financial Services (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc18174.html)
• Healthcare Software Solutions (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc18172.html)
• Manufacturing (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc20195.html)
• Telecommunications (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc18195.html)
• Public Sector (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc20351.html)

Technologies

All mainstream and emerging technologies including:

• Database applications;
• Mathematical modeling software with graphical outputs; and
• Web applications based on Content Management technologies, web services and the semantic web.

Socially Responsible Business Practice

Oxford Computer Consultants adheres to socially responsible business practice (http://www.oxfordcc.co.uk/Doc21009.html). The company has formal environment and ethics policies that are communicated to all staff.