We have discussed OBIEE and its analytics capabilities in detail in previous blog posts here on Unfiltered.  So it follows that we’d call out that Oracle announced the availability of a new Oracle BI Mobile option, which allows any OBI 11g customer to deploy all their existing dashboards to mobile devices (iPad, iPhone) without any re-programming or manual porting efforts.  In today’s remote-but-connected work environments, the ability to have analytics always available is key.  As we have emphasized in the past, BI is much more than reporting, and having mobile capabilities allows you to make business decisions while traveling and away from the office. We’re not talking second-rate representations of your dashboards and analytics, either — we’re talking about the real thing. In mission critical environments, no longer do you have to wait days to take action if  you’re away from the office.  In many instances hours (let alone days) can be critical, so extending BI analytics to mobile devices can have a very broad positive impact.

Below are links to two short but very good demos on Mobile BI applications. You should check them out.

1. Here’s an intro to Oracle Mobile BI.
2. Here’s a brief rundown on Oracle Financial Analytics Application for mobile.

After reviewing the demos, if you have any questions, please let me know. As always, I’m happy to chat.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Oracle has released a brand new white paper discussing how Oracle EPM is the bridge to Fusion applications.  While the white paper does not contain a lot of specific details, it does provide a nice foundation to begin to outline a strategy if an organization is considering moving to Fusion and either has Oracle EPM or is considering EPM as a method to help move to Fusion.  The white paper can be found here, but I’ll take a moment and highlight some of the specifics I found most interesting.

(Below, white paper excerpts are in standard text; my comments in bold italic.)

• Oracle Fusion Applications were built on a foundation of middleware using a service-oriented approach and a common data model. Simplified configuration and a common data model enable a change-once, change-everywhere approach to business.   Comment:  I can imagine the common data model and a change one change everywhere approach will be very beneficial for changes to reports and dashboards, simplifying that change process as well.
• Oracle Fusion Applications provide a complete set of applications — from human resources and finance organizations to field sales and supply chains. They are based upon a modular approach which allows organizations to adopt what they need when they need it.  Comment:  This approach has a BI benefit allowing any report, dashboard changes to be integrated in as modules are deployed as opposed to reworking BI across an entire ERP solution.  BI can be migrated along with the Fusion apps strategically.
• Oracle EPM solutions can be leveraged as a key enabler or bridge to Fusion applications.
  • Oracle Fusion Applications leverage key components and technologies from Oracle EPM solutions – for analytics and reporting.
  • Oracle Fusion and EPM applications leverage the same Fusion Middleware technologies
  • When the Oracle Fusion Applications become generally available, Oracle will have an FDM/ERPI adapter and the same integration capabilities that exist for Oracle E-Business Suite Financials, PeopleSoft Enterprise Financials and HCM, and SAP R/3 for the Fusion suite as well. This integration capability enables organizations to automate and integrate their management processes using Oracle’s EPM solutions, while integrating financial and operational information from any combination of Oracle Applications Unlimited, Fusion Applications and non-Oracle systems.  Comment: Organizations should be able to migrate to Fusion and keep the same level of integration and drill back capabilities.
  • Throughout the Fusion Applications suite, analytics and business intelligence are embedded into key business processes through integrated dashboards, analytics on transactional pages, multi-dimensional calculations, decision support and optimization. Oracle’s BI technology is leveraged across the Fusion Applications suite to provide real-time, self-service reporting and analysis directly from the transactional data or against a data warehouse. With Oracle BI embedded in Fusion Applications, users will enjoy seamless navigation between analytics and transaction processing, with role-based dashboards and reports, single-sign on and integration with the underlying meta data.  Comment: This will go along way to achieve BI nirvana of BI embedded directly into and as part of the business process.
  • Oracle EPM technology is also embedded throughout Fusion Applications including Essbase.  Oracle Essbase is seamlessly embedded within Fusion General Ledger to support multidimensional reporting and analysis of GL account balances. Every time a transaction or journal is posted in Fusion General Ledger, the embedded multi-dimensional balances are also updated at the same time to ensure that balances are always in sync and up-to-the-minute accurate. End users can then report and perform multidimensional analysis on this information via Hyperion Financial Reporting and the Smart View Excel interface.  Comment:  Real-time reporting and reporting of financials utilizing Hyperion tools will have numerous benefits related to data consistency, the ability to trust the data, data quality and overall improved financials reporting.
  • Oracle EPM and Fusion Applications leverage the same Fusion Middleware (FMW) Technology Stack such as common security and access management, system monitoring and diagnostics, application server and clustering infrastructure, and application development tools and technologies.  Comment: if your organization is already utilizing Oracle EPM, then the move to Fusion from a technology standpoint should have less challenges as common technologies will be utilized.
  • In summary, because of many of the items noted above, Oracle EPM solutions can play a role in any of the deployment scenarios Oracle customers are considering.
    • If your organization is planning to continue with your current investments in Oracle Applications – then Oracle EPM provides best in class EPM capabilities for your Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards environments.
    • If your organization is planning to incrementally add Fusion applications, Oracle EPM can integrate with and support the management processes across Fusion and Applications Unlimited applications.
    • If your organization is planning to migrate to Fusion Applications, Oracle EPM can play a key role in the migration process by providing a consistent financial planning, close and reporting environment before, during and after the migration to Fusion Applications.  Comment:  I believe the common technology stack will also aid in the migration process.

Questions or comments about this?  Still thinking about how Fusion is going to fit into your organization’s plans, regardless of EPM?  Drop me an email and I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.  Lots of clients are starting to navigate this landscape, and everyone’s learning as they go.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

A quick reminder about something useful that many people don’t realize even exists.

There is a nice reporting tool in PeopleSoft which is seldom used, or at very least certainly not used enough.  That tool is PeopleSoft XML Publisher.

This is a user-friendly tool that can generate reports quickly and efficiently with very nice graphic output.  If you typically use Crystal, you can learn XML Publisher in a matter of hours.  I was able to teach myself the basics in just a couple hours with only a little help from PeopleBooks.  It’s a great supplement to your PeopleSoft systems for business intelligence efforts.

XML publisher, like Crystal, utilizes PeopleSoft Query as the data source. Once the query is generated, you can save the data structure as XML. Once you have the XML data source, you then use Microsoft Word as the reporting template and simply pull in the correct data fields and organize the contents, summarize data and add appropriate charts and graphs. Much of the formatting uses native Microsoft Word tools that most people are familiar with. Once this template is complete, you have some minimal setup in PeopleSoft in order to generate the XML reports and provide the ability to schedule and distribute them.

So.

Keeping in mind I was able to generate these XML reports in a couple hours with having never used the tool, here is a sample XML Publisher-generated Maintenance Management report and a sample Crystal report. Both of these reports use the same query in PeopleSoft with the same set of sample data.

Crystal Reports

XML Publisher

Not bad, huh?  Most people don’t know they have a tool like this on hand, and that’s a shame, because it’s more powerful (and simple) than you  might expect.

Want more information about XML Publisher?  Here’s all you need and more in the form of a tutorial.

Questions?  E-mail me and I’ll be happy to help clear up any concerns you may have.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More Business Intelligence posts.

Last summer, we debuted a series of free Business Intelligence (BI) lunch & learn sessions for interested clients.  We were tremendously impressed by the amount of interest this generated, so we’re doing it again, starting now.

Please note: spaces are limited.  All requests will be handled on a first-come, first-serve basis.

These lunch & learns are entirely free and last roughly an hour.  Here’s how they work:

• You invite anyone who may be interested in the topic you choose
• We bring the expertise to lead the discussion
• You set aside an hour and a meeting room
• We provide a free lunch for all and an insightful dialogue
• No pressure, no pitches, no sales jobs

Recommended topics (based on client feedback and what organizations are investigating right now in the BI space):

• Top 6 things to consider when creating a world-class BI deployment
• Pre-built Oracle BI solutions for your PeopleSoft applications
• How best to get started implementing your BI solution
• The massive importance of Data Quality as it relates to BI
• Methods to improve your BI requirements gathering
• Making BI pervasive – deploying to the masses
• Interactive discussion regarding how BI, as a decision-making platform, can enable your organization to meet its goals and initiatives

It’s simple as that.

For additional information, to inquire about another BI topic, or to reserve your lunch & learn session, please contact Larry Zagata as soon as possible.  Again, spaces are limited, so move quickly if interested.

If you’d like a summary of this offer for internal promotion, here’s a high-level graphic overview (after the break).

Have other questions?  Ask away in the comments.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More Business Intelligence posts.

MIPRO is a nationally-recognized leader when it comes to the successful implementation of the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management (MM)/ALM suite. We have performed more implementations of this product than any other services firm out there. This is a bit of a bragging right, of course, but also an important fact to support our knowledge and expertise in the MM space. We have blogged about both ERP and Business Intelligence and the takeaways from those post is simply that ERP allows your organization to run your business and BI allows you to manage it. In this post we bring the world of BI to the world of PeopleSoft MM/ERP together in complete harmony.

At a high level, MM enables service requests, work orders, crews to be assigned to work, work to be executed and equipment maintained.  Put simply, MM allows organizations to ensure their assets are kept functional and operational with as limited down time as possible.

As you might expect, there are some key operational reports required in order to ensure that all of the standard work activities are completed as efficiently and as effectively as possible. In addition, there are many management and true BI reports which can help answer those key questions around work orders, service requests, crews and assets.

Utilizing our BI requirements gathering process with our MM experience, we have put together effective BI for PeopleSoft MM. How?  We look at the key business questions which must be answered and understand the different dimensions to the business question being asked in order to establish a clear picture of MM BI. It is important to understand that MM BI also has interdependencies with HR, finance and supply chain.

That said, let’s go graphical!  A sample of our MM BI is outlined below. This example illustrates one sample BI question per subject area which may be turned into one or multiple reports or dashboards across functional business areas:

(Legend follows the chart.)

(Click to enlarge)

LEGEND: Maintenance Management Business Intelligence Chart

Business Process? This is the specific area of maintenance management impacted.

Business Question? This is the specific business question being posed which requires an BI answer. Remember, without answering a specific question, it is just a report.

Who is asking? Who are the resources who need to know the answer to this question?

What is the importance? What is the business value of having an answer to this question?

Who/What benefits from the answer? Are there others who may benefit from knowing this information? These may not be directly involved but can benefit from the information such as HR and crew information.

What is the metric/measure? Is there a specific tolerance or target? Top 10, bottom 10, etc.

Does this measure drive/answer additional questions? Other areas not directly involved in this business question may also find value. The answer may also lead to additional investigation and answers to other related questions.

Of course, this chart represents samples.  In the real world, there will be much more detail behind each subject area.

If you would like to learn more about our maintenance management, BI or BI for MM capabilities, please contact us.  We take questions from this blog all the time, and we’re happy to have even the quickest conversation with you.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More Business Intelligence posts.

In our BI manifesto whitepaper, we discuss and outline how to effectively build a dashboard and avoid common mistakes.  Dashboards have a very specific use and should not be confused with reports; this in itself is a common conceptual mistake.

The following are key elements of a well-designed dashboard:

• Dashboards should be designed to answer or provide insight into specific business questions or issues.
• Typically dashboards contain 5 to 7 key metrics.  Too many metrics clutter the effectiveness and focus of the dashboard.  Conciseness is important.
• Dashboards should allow you to drill back to the source data for further analysis.
• Dashboards are not simply another way to graphically represent a report.
• Dashboards are designed for a specific audience level.  Examples include Supply Chain VP, Inventory Manager, Plant Manager.
• Each dashboard at the audience level should support the next level up.  For example: the plant manager will likely be interested in metrics and analysis which support the metrics and analysis of the supply chain VP.  Likewise, the inventory manager will be interested the inventory metrics which support the metrics of the plant manager. Certain metrics may be more granular, but if done properly, all metrics are in direct alignment.
• Dashboards should contain metrics with thresholds so users can instantly see if there are issues which require further investigation.  These include the red, yellow, green dials and meters which show metrics in or out of tolerance.  Immediate understanding of a metric’s disposition is critical.
• Alerts are typically used to proactively message to key users when metrics are out of tolerance allowing the proactive investigation and resolution of issues.

Putting these elements into practice, we can look at a sample supply chain dashboard below.

Imagine the supply chain VP logging in each morning to their supply chain dashboard.  At a glance, using dials and alerts, they can immediately identify those elements which are not within tolerances.  These may be at a specific plant or facility level, or even a consolidated view of the facilities across the country that at a summary level are out of tolerance.  The VP can drill down for investigation or simply contact the facility manager for explanation or action.  This allows action to be taken prior to significant impact to the business.

In a future post, I will illustrate the power of “what-if” analysis and dashboards that allow for business benefit decisions to be more intelligently made.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More Business Intelligence posts.

In a former life I led a national CPG (consumer packaged goods)/Retail practice focused on assisting clients with implementing their business intelligence (BI) solutions and helping them understand how to get the most value to their organizations from these systems.

As with every industry vertical, there is some uniqueness to CPG/Retail market.  I am very confident and feel strongly that BI can have a very positive impact on these organizations.

To that end, what are some of the questions CPG/Retail companies are asking or should be asking? Among them:

• Who are my most profitable customers?
• How can I use predictive analytics to increase the number of items purchased per transaction (attach rate)?
• How can I optimize my pricing structure?
• How can I analyze inventory turns to improve sales?
• How can I predict customer buying patterns?
• How can I improve the data quality of my customer information and therefore reduce costs and improve customer value?
• How can I analyze the effectiveness of my promotions?
• How can I improve the efficiency of my supply chain?

BI can provide deep analysis and answers to these questions and more.  This allows for organizations to make informed decisions about the business in order to improve operations and effectively improve the top and bottom lines.

One of the mantras we always preach here on this blog is the importance of aligning metrics across the organization to ensure you understand everyone who is impacted by business intelligence.  Let’s look at the various roles within CPG/Retail and what those roles are truly interested in, information-wise:

• Marketing and Sales VP:  Interested in cross-selling, up-selling, improving customer intelligence and sale, campaign and promotion performance.
• Category Manager/Brand Manager:  Interested in the specific details about brands and categories of products.  Responsible for increasing the sales around a category/brand of product.  Also seek information about shelf placement/optimization and promotions.
• CIO:  Interested in integration, total cost of ownership, ability to execute, ease of use, ability to meet the demands of the business.  Should be interested in how to achieve the results the other business leaders are interested in.
• CFO:  Interested in accurate analysis of profitability.  Profitability by brand, category, customer, product.   Interested in time to value and increasing margins.
• VP of Supply Chain:  Interested in the deep analysis of inventory turns, supply chain effectiveness, vendor quality and performance, overall decreasing every penny from the supply chain.

It is critical to understand what interests these various organizational leaders, because they are the chief information consumers when it comes to strategic decision-making.  Further, when designing a BI solution, it must be understood how these metrics must align and interrelate, how dimensions must be built, and how BI promotes the solutions for all involved.  If BI isn’t a decision-enabling platform for multiple stakeholders who have differing views of the business, then it’s not done right.

Incidentally, an excellent example of business intelligence and predictive analytics for CPG/Retail is this one for Cabela’s.  This is well-done and easily understood.

Questions?  Comments?  Kvetches?  I’m always available via email.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More Business Intelligence posts.

UPDATE: It seems Microsoft is trying to patent sparklines, so says Edward Tufte himself.  See here for further legal discussion.  Not as tidy as once thought.

Microsoft’s Sam Radakovitz on Excel 2010’s sparkline feature:

For Excel 2010 we’ve implemented sparklines, “intense, simple, word-sized graphics”, as their inventor Edward Tufte describes them in his book Beautiful Evidence.  Sparklines help bring meaning and context to numbers being reported and, unlike a chart, are meant to be embedded into what they are describing.

Any self-respecting data/information nerd knows how valuable sparklines are.  In my former life where displaying application performance data at dashboard and report levels was the Next Big Thing, the addition of sparklines to those dashboards and key reports were huge.

(By the way, if you’re not familiar with Edward Tufte, you should be. He’s an information design icon.)

Here’s what sparklines look like:

Incredibly information-dense graphics that tell a story otherwise impossible given the practical limits of space and reader comprehension.  I personally know a few people who will love these as much as their own children.  (Readers Chris and Larry know who they are.)

(Via Michael Tsai)

Previously, we have discussed the value of Oracle BI apps for PeopleSoft, and we have examined some key implementation considerations.  Today, in this  final post on the topic, I would like to chat about the biggest buzzword of them all: ROI.

The key question for many customers is this: does it really make sense to buy the BI apps versus build something from scratch? In order to discuss ROI, we first must clear the air about build vs. buy and ROI calculations. In this scenario, remember we are talking not only about the reports, dashboards, metrics and source PeopleSoft system analysis, but also about the data warehouse structure and all of the associated ETL scripts.

When we talk about ROI, we are really talking about two types: “hard” ROI which translates to real, measureable cost savings and soft ROI which is less measurable but still benefits the organization. Hard ROI is a challenging one to pinpoint in a blog post, as it really is very much dependent upon each organization’s specific circumstances. To accommodate this for the purposes of this post, we will generalize some hard ROI statements and focus more on the soft ROI of the BI apps.

HARD ROI

No one deploys technology for the fun of it; in the enterprise, it is deployed to solve problems and drive to a business objective. The task at hand is to understand these problems and validate them.  For evaluating hard ROI, I suggest you start with these two important questions:

• What will your organization be able to do with the BI apps that you could not do prior to implementing them?
• What problems will be resolved through the use of the BI apps that were unsolvable before the project was started?

By asking these two key questions, it should unlock some real information for hard ROI calculations. Let’s look at a couple of quick examples:

• Based upon better business intelligence as a result of deploying the BI apps, it is estimated inventory can be better controlled and inventory values can be reduced by 10% or $1,000,000, resulting in a better control of cash.
• Based upon better business intelligence as a result of deploying the BI apps, it is estimated to reduce purchasing costs by 5% or $200,000.

Again, these will be very specific for each organization and will take some time to calculate.  Regardless of what any vendor will try to sell you, there is no magic hard ROI calculator that’s accurate for every business.  I haven’t seen one yet.

Next, let’s look at a small part of the BI apps — the reports. If we look at how many reports and dashboards there are in the Procurement and Spend Analytics app and make some assumptions based upon experience, we can start building out some ROI.  Here’s a basic example case.

The Procurement and Spend Analytics app contains: 2 dashboards, 14 dashboard pages, 103 reports, 161 metrics.  Let’s run some basic numbers.

• Assume that each report is of simple complexity. Simple is defined as simple formatting and groupings, standard calculations such as totals, sums, averages etc.  Standard graphs and charts. 8 hours to design, develop and unit test. (Note: Most likely there will be a mix of low, medium and high complex reports. 8 hours is low if you consider requirements gathering and the source system analysis is included in this time. 8 hours is conservative to get buy in; choose a realistic effort for your organization.)
• If each report is 8 hours then 103 * 8 = 824 hours of work, or 20.6 weeks of effort. This does not include dashboards and dashboard pages.  This also does not include any data structure or ETL work or metrics analysis

Make sure you agree upon any “estimates” you utilize with others in the organization so the ROI calculation is accepted internally.

SOFT ROI

Soft ROI is much more fun to talk about. It can cover so many intangibles that are valuable to the organization. Identify enough of those intangibles, even if you can’t quantify them with dollars, and the ROI discussion becomes pretty evident.

Let’s start out with some general ROI statements about building a BI solution vs. buying one.

• According to TDWI Research, the average data warehousing project costs $1.1 million and takes 10 months to deliver, while a data mart project costs $544,000 and takes six months to deliver. (1)
• One leading BI implementer has estimated that the cost of deploying a custom solution is typically 2.5 to 3.5 times greater than the cost estimate of deploying prebuilt applications. (2)
• When you add everything up, we estimate about 7X the cost/effort to deliver a similar piece of custom-developed functionality as prebuilt BI apps. (3)

These statements in themselves are pretty powerful when discussing the cost and value of building a solution that equates the same functionality that the BI apps provide.

Let’s further explore some of the soft value statements of pre-built BI applications:

• More timely access to information
• Improved decision making
• Improved performance (no reports against the transaction system)
• BI embedded into the business process. With BI apps, users appear to stay within the PeopleSoft application.
• Total Cost of Ownership (BI apps are supported and maintained)
• Baseline data warehouse in place, providing a foundation to add additional data sources and additional content. It’s a great “foundation.”
• Industry-standard defined measurements

Additionally, here are some soft value statements regarding the Oracle BI apps specifically:

Oracle development takes care of the following activities:

• Requirements gathering
• Data structure and dimensions
• Naming standards & industry KPIs
• Change data capture design
• Metadata
• Source system review
• Alerts and triggers
• ETL design and development
• Reports and dashboards design and development
• Support, maintenance and upgrades
• Enabling BI within PeopleSoft or embedding BI into the business process (seamless integration)

Hopefully this makes clear of the potential of building a “soft ROI” business case for the BI apps. There is a lot of value that cannot always be added up monetarily, but many of these soft ROI factors certainly add up in manpower, time and effort to benefit to solving business problems.

This post concludes this three-part series on this topic.  If you’re interested in learning more, please email me and I will be happy to discuss your plans with you.  We do a lot of BI work here at MIPRO, a great deal of which is focused around planning and intelligently building out BI cases for clients.

CITATIONS

(1) From In Search of a Single Version of Truth: Strategies for Consolidating Analytic Silos by Wayne Eckerson, TDWI Best Practices Report, 2004 (www.tdwi.org/research/reportseries). Technically, the numbers are for consolidating data warehouses, but the common approach for consolidation was starting from scratch.

(2) The Business Intelligence Consulting Group, “The Great Debate: Buy Versus Build,” 2007

(3) Jeff McQuigg – Independent consultant. IT Toolbox Blog 3/17/2008

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Previously by Larry Zagata:

• The Value of Oracle BI Apps For PeopleSoft (Part II)
• The Value of Oracle BI Apps For PeopleSoft
• The Value of (Real) Integration Between Business Intelligence and MS Office
• Business Intelligence Requirements Gathering: Digging Deeper
• Why Excel Is Not an Enterprise BI Solution
• Art Meets Science: Business Intelligence Requirements Gathering
• Living Together: Oracle BI and PeopleSoft
• Back to basics: Why choose an enterprise Business Intelligence tool, anyway?
• Using BI to Survive the Recession, Part I
• Using BI to Survive the Recession, Part II
• Business Intelligence in the real world: Aligning metrics (Part I)
• Business Intelligence in the real world: Aligning metrics (Part II)

Related whitepapers (PDF):

• MiPro’s Business Intelligence Manifesto: Six Requirements for an Effective BI Deployment

Related Services:

• MiPro Consulting: Oracle BI Services
• MiPro Consulting: SAP Business Objects Services
• MiPro Consulting: Resources

Now that I have provided my opinion and thumbs up approval of the Oracle BI apps, let’s discuss the nuances of implementing them.

With all of Oracle BI’s pre-built ETL, data structures and reports, one would probably think it should be very straightforward. Well, if your shop is totally vanilla and you  accept the metrics as Oracle defines them, then yes, the implementation would be pretty uncomplicated. Oracle’s BI apps are built on the excellent OBIEE platform, which is proven, scalable and stable. The metrics are based upon industry standards.

But that doesn’t mean its out-of-box metrics are your metrics.  I’ll get to that in a second.

Regardless of whether or not you’re a vanilla install, you still have the technical aspects of installation and configuration of the OBIEE foundation, as well as the installation and configuration of the BI apps. Depending on your security needs, your platform and overall size of your infrastructure will determine the relative ease or complexity of this installation and configuration. And remember, with any installation we aren’t simply installing to get the product available for use – we want to install in the appropriate manner for stability, scalability, failover and maintenance.  These are big deals.

Aside from the technical install and configuration, the core time and effort it takes to implement will depend on two primary considerations:

First: As hinted at before, how vanilla or customized is your PeopleSoft solution? As you may have discovered, when you customize any ERP application it makes patches, maintenance and upgrades more challenging because you have changed source code, tables, fields etc. Likewise, if you have customizations it also affects the Oracle BI apps. You have to understand the changes, because they will impact the ETL scripts, data structures, reports and dashboards.  For any change you make, you have to understand if the Oracle BI apps are impacted by that change and make the appropriate changes to the BI app.

Second: How does your business process map to the metrics?  If you agree with the out-of-box metrics and how they are measured, then there is little to change here other than testing to ensure results.  However, if your preferred metric is different than how the BI app’s metric is defined, then you either have to change your measurement preference or make the changes to the BI app.

Here is an example. Let’s say the BI app measures invoice payment terms as starting at the point the invoice is generated. This means that the due date and all of the reports use the invoice print date as the date the clock starts ticking. If your organization uses the anticipated receipt date the customer receives the invoice as the date the clock starts ticking, you have to change your measurement or change the metric in the BI app. A simple example, but hopefully you get the point.  Bottom line is that there has to be some deliberate thought given to these seemingly pedestrian details.

One of the key activities of implementing BI apps is indulging this requirements gathering fit/gap process to define and evaluate the two factors mentioned above.  This activity as absolutely crucial and often ignored by many organizations, who later complain that their BI systems aren’t effective.  So, the best approach is not to try for the golden plug-and-play, but instead to perform the necessary planning and design first.  I can’t stress this enough.

Next post, we will explore some ROI on Oracle’s BI apps.  Stick around!

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Previously by Larry Zagata:

• The Value of Oracle BI Apps For PeopleSoft
• The Value of (Real) Integration Between Business Intelligence and MS Office
• Business Intelligence Requirements Gathering: Digging Deeper
• Why Excel Is Not an Enterprise BI Solution
• Art Meets Science: Business Intelligence Requirements Gathering
• Living Together: Oracle BI and PeopleSoft
• Back to basics: Why choose an enterprise Business Intelligence tool, anyway?
• Using BI to Survive the Recession, Part I
• Using BI to Survive the Recession, Part II
• Business Intelligence in the real world: Aligning metrics (Part I)
• Business Intelligence in the real world: Aligning metrics (Part II)

Related whitepapers (PDF):

• MiPro’s Business Intelligence Manifesto: Six Requirements for an Effective BI Deployment

Related Services:

• MiPro Consulting: Oracle BI Services
• MiPro Consulting: SAP Business Objects Services
• MiPro Consulting: Resources