The Business Value of

Business Intelligence
“The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”
—Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate economist

The past decade has witnessed an arms race in American

business: a wholesale deployment of information technology (IT)
to the point at which some experts estimate that half of capital
spending by business is invested in IT. The growth of companies
such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, and Siebel—and
their consulting company partners—attests to the magnitude of
this race.

Most of that investment has been in what amounts to better

plumbing, better systems for managing day-to-day operations,
and more frequent and voluminous reports. There is little debate
that these investments are necessary to operate many modern
business enterprises. That said, our experience working with and
talking to business and IT leaders at major companies in a variety
of industries suggests that these companies are still data-rich but
information-poor. In other words, these enterprises lack the kind
of actionable information and analytical tools needed to improve
profits and performance.

Business intelligence (BI) is a response to this need. It is the

next logical progression in management thinking about IT. The
goal of our book is to show you how to follow the lead of
companies who have capitalized on the potential of BI to improve
profit and performance. While many major companies have
implemented data warehouses, very few have used them to
achieve BI. In many companies, data warehousing (DW) efforts
have largely been limited to producing more reports, with a vague
understanding of how this information will benefit the
organization.
However, other companies have gone beyond this and
demonstrate the true potential of BI. For example,

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  Western Digital, a manufacturer of computer hard disk drives
with annual sales of more than $3 billion, uses BI to better
manage its inventory, supply chains, product lifecycles, and
customer relationships. BI enabled the company to reduce
operating costs by 50%.

 Capital One, a global financial services firm with more than

50 million customer accounts, uses BI to analyze and
improve the profitability of its product lines as well as the
effectiveness of its business processes and marketing
programs.

 Continental Airlines, a U.S. airline company that was near

bankruptcy in the 1990s, invested $30 million in BI to
improve its business processes and customer service. In the
following six years, Continental reaped a staggering $500
million return on its BI investment for a return on investment
(ROI) of more than 1,000%.

 CompUSA, a major retailer of computer equipment and

software, uses BI to analyze its sales trends. The company
earned an ROI of more than $6 million in the first phase of
the project.

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 What is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) is a business
management term which refers to applications and
technologies which are used to gather, provide access to,
and analyze data and information about their company
operations. Business intelligence systems can help
companies to have a more comprehensive knowledge of
the factors affecting their business, such as metrics on
sales, production, internal operations, and they can help
companies to make better business decisions.

Rationale for using (BI):

Business Intelligence applications and technologies can
enable organizations to make more informed business decisions,
and they may give a company a competitive advantage. For
example, a company could use business intelligence applications
or technologies to extrapolate information from indicators in the
external environment and forecast the future trends in their
sector. Business intelligence is used to improve the timeliness and
quality of information, and enable managers to be able to better
understand the position of their firm as in comparison to its
competitors.

Business intelligence applications and technologies can help

companies to analyze changing trends in market share; changes
in customer behavior and spending patterns; customers'
preferences; company capabilities; and market conditions.
Business intelligence can be used to help analysts and managers
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determine which adjustments are most likely to respond to
changing trends.
Using BI systems can help companies to develop a more
consistent, data-based decision making process for business
decisions, which can produce better results than making business
decisions by "guesswork." As well, business intelligence
applications can enhance communication among departments,
coordinate activities, and enable companies to respond more
quickly to changes (e.g., in financial conditions, customer
preferences, supply chain operations, etc.). When a BI system is
well-designed and properly integrated into a company's processes
and decision-making process, it may be able to improve a
company's performance. Having access to timely and accurate
information is an important resource for a company, which can
expedite decision-making and improve customers' experience.

In the competitive customer-service sector, companies need

to have accurate, up-to-date information on customer
preferences, so that the company can quickly adapt to their
changing demands. Business Intelligence enables companies to
gather information on the trends in the marketplace and come up
with innovative products or services in anticipation of customer's
changing demands. Business Intelligence applications can also
help managers to be better informed about actions that a
company's competitors are taking. As well, BI can help companies
to share selected strategic information with business partners. For
example, some businesses use BI systems to share information
with their suppliers (e.g., inventory levels, performance metrics,
and other supply chain data).

BI systems can also be designed to provide managers with

information on the state of economic trends or marketplace
factors, or to provide managers with in depth knowledge about
the internal operations of a business.

BI Technologies:

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 For the BI technology system to work effectively, companies
address the need to have a secure computer system which can
specify different levels of user access to the data 'warehouse',
depending on whether the user is a junior staffer, manager, or
executive. As well, a BI system needs to have sufficient data
capacity, a plan for how long data will be stored (data retention).
Analysts also need to set benchmark and performance targets for
the system.

Business intelligence analysts have developed software tools

to gather and analyze large quantities of unstructured data, such
as production metrics, sales statistics, attendance reports, and
customer attrition figures. Each BI vendor typically develops
Business Intelligence systems differently, to suit the demands of
different sectors (e.g., retail companies, financial services
companies, etc.).

Business intelligence software and applications includes a

range of tools. Some BI applications are used to analyze
performance, projects, or internal operations, such as AQL -
Associative Query Logic; Score carding; Business activity
monitoring; Business Performance Management and Performance
Measurement; Business Planning; Business Process Re-
engineering; Competitive Analysis; User/End-user Query and
Reporting; Enterprise Management systems; Executive
Information Systems (EIS); Supply Chain Management/Demand
Chain Management; and Finance and Budgeting tools.

Other BI applications are used to store and analyze data,

such as Data mining (DM), Data Farming, and Data warehouses;
Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Forecasting; Document
warehouses and Document Management; Knowledge
Management; Mapping, Information visualization, and Dash
boarding; Management Information Systems (MIS); Geographic
Information Systems (GIS); Trend Analysis; Software as a service
(SaaS) Business Intelligence offerings (On Demand)- similar to
traditional BI solutions but software is hosted for customers by a
provider. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and
multidimensional analysis; sometimes called "Analytics" (based
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on the "hypercube" or "cube"); Real time business intelligence;
Statistics and Technical Data Analysis; Web Mining, Text mining
and Systems intelligence.
Other BI applications are used to analyze or manage the
"human" side of businesses, such as Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) and Marketing tools and Human Resources
applications. Web Personalization For examples of implemented
Business Intelligence systems; see the BI screenshot collection at
The Dashboard Spy.

History of Business Intelligence

Sun Tzu's The Art of War highlighted the importance of
collecting and analyzing information. Sun Tzu claimed that to
succeed in war, a general should have full knowledge of their own
strengths and weaknesses and full knowledge of the enemy's
strengths and weaknesses. Lack of either one might result in
defeat.

Prior to the start of the Information Age in the late 20th

century, businesses had to collect data from non-automated
sources. Businesses then lacked the computing resources to
properly analyze the data, and as a result, companies often made
business decisions primarily on the basis of intuition.

As businesses started automating more and more systems,

more and more data became available. However, collection
remained a challenge due to a lack of infrastructure for data
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exchange or to incompatibilities between systems. Analysis of the
data that was gathered and reports on the data sometimes took
months to generate. Such reports allowed informed long-term
strategic decision-making. However, short-term tactical decision-
making continued to rely on intuition.

In modern businesses, increasing standards, automation,

and technologies have led to vast amounts of data becoming
available. Data warehouse technologies have set up repositories
to store this data. Improved Extract, transform, load (ETL) and
even recently Enterprise Application Integration tools have
increased the speedy collecting of data. Business intelligence has
now become the art of sifting through large amounts of data,
extracting pertinent information, and turning that information into
knowledge upon which actions can be taken. Business intelligence
software incorporates the ability to mine data, analyze, and
report. Some modern BI software allow users to cross-analyze and
perform deep data research rapidly for better analysis of sales or
performance on an individual, department, or company level. In
modern applications of business intelligence software, managers
are able to quickly compile reports from data for forecasting,
analysis, and business decision making.

In 1989 Howard Dresner, a Research Fellow at Gartner Group

popularized "BI" as an umbrella term to describe a set of concepts
and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-
based support systems. Dresner left Gartner in 2005 and joined
Hyperion Solutions as its Chief Strategy Officer.

Designing and Implementing a

Business Intelligence Program
When implementing a BI program one might like to pose a
number of questions and take a number of resultant decisions,
such as:

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  Goal Alignment queries: The first step determines the short
and medium-term purposes of the program. What strategic
goal(s) of the organization will the program address? What
organizational mission/vision does it relate to? A crafted
hypothesis needs to detail how this initiative will eventually
improve results / performance (i.e. a strategy map).

 Baseline queries: Current information-gathering competency

needs assessing. Does the organization have the capability
of monitoring important sources of information? What data
does the organization collect and how does it store that
data? What are the statistical parameters of this data, e.g.
how much random variation does it contain? Does the
organization measure this?

 Cost and risk queries: The financial consequences of a new

BI initiative should be estimated. It is necessary to assess
the cost of the present operations and the increase in costs
associated with the BI initiative? What is the risk that the
initiative will fail? This risk assessment should be converted
into a financial metric and included in the planning.

 Customer and Stakeholder queries: Determine who will

benefit from the initiative and who will pay. Who has a stake
in the current procedure? What kinds of
customers/stakeholders will benefit directly from this
initiative? Who will benefit indirectly? What are the
quantitative / qualitative benefits? Is the specified initiative
the best way to increase satisfaction for all kinds of
customers, or is there a better way? How will customers'
benefits be monitored? What about employees,
shareholders, distribution channel members?

 Metrics-related queries: These information requirements

must be operationalized into clearly defined metrics. One
must decide what metrics to use for each piece of
information being gathered. Are these the best metrics? How
do we know that? How many metrics need to be tracked? If
this is a large number (it usually is), what kind of system can
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 be used to track them? Are the metrics standardized, so they
can be benchmarked against performance in other
organizations? What are the industry standard metrics
available?

 Measurement Methodology-related queries: One should

establish a methodology or a procedure to determine the
best (or acceptable) way of measuring the required metrics.
What methods will be used, and how frequently will the
organization collect data? Do industry standards exist for
this? Is this the best way to do the measurements? How do
we know that?

 Results-related queries: Someone should monitor the BI

program to ensure that objectives are being met.
Adjustments in the program may be necessary. The program
should be tested for accuracy, reliability, and validity. How
can one demonstrate that the BI initiative (rather than other
factors) contributed to a change in results? How much of the
change was probably random?

Business Intelligence Tools

Business intelligence tools are a type of application software
designed to help the business intelligence (BI) business
processes. Specifically they are generally tools that aid in the
analysis, and presentation of data.

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  Reporting software: generates aggregated views of data
to keep the management informed about the state of their
business
 Data mining: extraction of consumer information from a
database by utilizing software that can isolate and identify
previously unknown patterns or trends in large amounts of
data. There are a variety of data mining techniques that
reveal different types of patterns. Some of the techniques
that belong here are Statistical methods (particularly
Business statistics) and Neural networks as very advanced
means of analyzing data
 Business Performance Management

Business Performance Management (BPM): Business

performance management (BPM) is a set of management and
analytic processes that enable the performance of an organization
to be managed with a view to achieving one or more pre-selected
goals. Synonyms for "business performance management" include
"corporate performance management" and "enterprise
performance management". If we regard BPM and Corporate
performance management (CPM) as near synonyms: BPM would
serve as the more generalized term.

Use of the acronym "BPM" can cause confusion with "business

process management". Use of terms such as "corporate
performance management" or "enterprise performance
management" can avoid that confusion.

BPM has three main activities:

1. the selection of goals
2. the consolidation of measurement information relevant to an
organization’s progress against these goals,
3. the interventions made by managers in light of this
information with a view to improving future performance
against these goals

Although presented here sequentially, typically all three activities

will run concurrently, with the interventions made by managers
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affecting the choice of goals, the measurement information
monitored, and the activities being undertaken within the
organization.

Because BPM activities in large organizations often involve the

collation and reporting of large volumes of data, many software
vendors, particularly those offering "business intelligence" tools,
market products intended to assist in this process. As a result of
this marketing effort, BPM is often (wrongly) seen as being an
activity that relies on software systems to work, and many
definitions of BPM explicitly suggest software as being a
necessary component of the approach.

Using Business Intelligence to

Capture Business Value
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 In economic terms, the business value of an investment (an
asset) is the net present value of the after-tax cash flows
associated with the investment. For example, the business value
of an investment in a manufacturing plant is the sum of the
incremental after-tax cash flows associated with the sale of the
products produced at the plant. Similarly, an investment in BI
creates an asset that must be used to generate incremental after-
tax cash flow. Accordingly, BI investments should be subjected to
a rigorous assessment of how the investment will result in
increased revenues, reduced costs, or both.

Although there are hundreds of ways to express business

benefits, no business value is associated with an investment
unless the benefits achieved result in increased after-tax cash
flows. Again, there is no business value associated with an
investment unless the benefits achieved connect to strategic
goals. For business, the focus is on primarily increased after-tax
cash flows; for government agencies, improved performance and
service to citizens. These principles apply to investments in
factories, equipment, and BI.

For example, it is common for BI vendor value propositions

to emphasize business benefits such as agility, responsiveness,
customer intimacy, information sharing, flexibility, and
collaboration. But investing in BI to achieve such business
benefits may actually destroy business value unless those
attributes can be defined in operational terms and realized
through business processes that affect revenues or costs. For
example, a $2 million investment in a BI application must result in
incremental after-tax cash flow of at least $2 million or the
organization will suffer a reduction in assets.

To illustrate this point, many companies use BI to improve

customer segmentation, customer acquisition, and customer
retention. These improvements can be linked to reduced
customer acquisition costs, increased revenues, and increased
customer lifetime value, which translate to increased after-tax
cash flows. However, a BI investment that improves demand
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forecasting will not deliver business value unless the forecasts are
actually incorporated into operational business processes that
then deliver reduced inventory, reduced order expediting costs, or
some other tangible economic benefit. In other words, the
business benefit “improved forecasting” is useless unless it is
somehow converted into incremental after-tax cash flow.
Looked at more broadly, the quest for delivering business value
via BI can be seen as a matter of determining how an organization
can use BI to

 Improve management processes (such as planning,

controlling, measuring, monitoring, and/or changing) so that
management can increase revenues, reduce costs, or both
 Improve operational processes (such as fraud detection,
sales campaign execution, customer order processing,
purchasing, and/or accounts payable processing) so that the
business can increase revenues, reduce costs, or both

In other words, the business value of BI lies in its use within

management processes that affect operational processes that
drive revenue or reduce costs, and/or in its use within those
operational processes themselves. Just like Harrah’s, many
companies these days aspire to use customer relationship
management strategies that distinguish among customers based
on their value. In retail banking, a customer with loans, large
savings accounts, a checking account with large balances, and
credit card balances who uses online banking is much more
valuable than a customer with only a low-balance checking
account who comes into a branch frequently. Clearly, the bank
would not want to lose the former customer, whereas it might be
willing to lose the latter. For the bank to implement a customer
relationship management strategy based on the difference in
customer value, it first needs BI applications that allow the bank
to know which customers are highly valuable, which are valuable,
which are less valuable, and which are not valuable. But that
knowledge alone is not enough to ensure that the bank does not
lose highly valuable customers. It must also have management
processes and operational processes that take account of the
differences in customer value and treat the highly valuable
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customers preferentially. For example, the bank might waive a
late fee on a loan payment for the valuable customer but not for
the less valuable customer.

Microsoft Business Intelligence

Why Microsoft Business Intelligence?
Microsoft leads the industry in business intelligence solutions.

Microsoft business intelligence solutions are scalable and

designed to evolve with your business. With continuous
innovation since initial release, Microsoft business intelligence
solutions are built on open, industry-wide standards – making
integration with your other systems easier and less costly than
the alternatives.

BI Benefits:
Improve organizational effectiveness
Microsoft business intelligence enables you to create and
manage information through an integrated system that includes
core business productivity features, such as collaboration tools,
search capabilities, and content management. The workplace
becomes highly efficient, resulting in cost savings and low total
cost of ownership (TCO).

Enable IT efficiency while reducing costs

With Microsoft business intelligence, you can cut costs and
reduce complexity by leveraging existing IT investments to
extend the reach of technology you already own. Because
Microsoft Excel, SQL Server and SharePoint are integrated and
inter-operable, you can rely on your existing IT resources and skill
sets for faster implementation and lower total cost of ownership.
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BI In Action:
Accurate, integrated data empowers success at
North Umbria University
Stakeholders at North Umbria University use Microsoft
Business Intelligence solutions to gain access to near real-time,
streaming reports to support effective decision-making.

"Within one year the team was able to launch the full decision
support system, a user friendly web-based portal, called North
Umbria World. It includes dashboards, scorecards, KPIs and
advanced drill-down capabilities. We almost surprised ourselves
with the rather quick and smooth implementation process -- it
really exceeded expectations every step of the way."

Eugene McCrossan, Financial Planning Director for North Umbria

Conceptus Achieves Effective, Integrated

Solution at Half the Cost
Conceptus deployed Microsoft business intelligence solutions
to achieve increased visibility into key data and trends at half the
cost of a competitor.

"By choosing Microsoft, we gained an effective BI solution at half

the cost of an alternative. We were able to use our existing CRM
and ERP systems and our existing data warehouse for building the
OLAP cubes."

Jeff Letasse, Vice President of Information Technology and

Business Systems

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 How Microsoft Business
Intelligence Works?
Microsoft business intelligence expands the reach of your
investments in the Microsoft productivity platform, data
infrastructure and collaboration tools you already own. Our
solution delivers business intelligence by integrating the strengths
of these products on a single platform to empower informed
business decisions.

We offer a full range of business intelligence solutions that

work together to form a comprehensive, end-to-end solution with
the scalability and vision to help you drive your business forward.

Microsoft Office:
Microsoft business intelligence solutions are built on the
tools where you already spend your workday – within Microsoft
Office applications like Outlook and Excel.

Because you can rely on the same intuitive interface you

already know, there is less time needed for training, and you are
able to adopt the new systems more quickly and easily, keeping
costs down.

Microsoft SharePoint:
SharePoint Server provides all the tools your teams need to work
together effectively, by allowing them to collaborate on and

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publish documents, implement workflows, and share critical
information.

Microsoft SQL Server:

SQL Server brings together all your data into a powerful,
scalable, enterprise-ready engine that can store massive amounts
of data and support high query loads and clustering.

Products and Solutions

 Microsoft SQL Server
 Microsoft SharePoint
 Microsoft Office

Some Features of These Products:

Data Warehousing:
Microsoft data warehousing solutions are designed to store
and connect your information securely, making the analysis,
extraction, transformation, and loading processes easier.

Because data is aggregated, compressed and stored in a

dynamic, scalable, integrated system, organizations can reduce
long-term storage requirements and generate reports faster.
Employees spend less time searching for the right data and more
time on higher-value work and better decision-making.

Data Quality:
Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions protect the high
quality of your data with secure integration and tight
interoperability across multiple data sources. You can rely on
high-quality data that is accurate, timely, meaningful and
complete.

Data Mining:
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 Microsoft data mining solutions empower people to go
beyond simple data analysis to identify hidden trends, problems
or relationships in the information. Once insights are extracted
from patterns, clusters and trends, employees can better identify
root causes of problems and predict future outcomes.

Business Intelligence for

Different Departments of an
Organization
BI For IT:
Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions allow you to
leverage your existing technology investments to enable
your IT staff to gain insight beyond the event logs and
performance counters – helping staff identify root causes
behind events and make course corrections that improve
performance.

Microsoft Business Intelligence empowers IT staff to:

 Go beyond canned operational reports with integrated,

interactive performance dashboards, comprehensive
scorecards, and powerful analytics all built on Microsoft
platform components
 Aggregate seemingly disparate metrics into a single overall
performance scorecard
 With Managed self-service Business Intelligence, empower
users to create their own ad-hoc reports using familiar, easy-
to-use tools they already know
 Identify patterns and exceptions with data trending

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  Understand performance issues such as capacity spikes or
downtime with greater event detail
 Rely on a robust security model that provides data security
starting at web sites and dashboards, all the way down to
cell-level detail
 Deploy IT staff more efficiently

BI For Finance:
Today’s financial professional needs integrated,
accurate information to go beyond producing monthly
reports and quarterly financial statements.

Microsoft Business Intelligence empowers financial staff

to:

 Gain visibility into the entire organization’s performance

through familiar, easy-to-use dashboards that monitor key
financial metrics
 With an integrated, unified, trusted data platform, ensure
data quality and create reports with numbers people can
count on
 Get up to speed quickly and spend less time on training by
relying on tools you already know and use every day, such
as Microsoft Excel
 Minimize manual financial processes and reduce errors in
spreadsheets
 Enable organizational transparency to meet compliance
requirements

BI For Operations:
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Operations managers need unified, accurate, up-to-date
information to track inventory, analyze shipping costs,
and resolve production problems quickly and efficiently.

With Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions, Operations

managers are empowered to:

 Monitor and improve operational performance by

consolidating data across multiple information sources
 Gain visibility up and down the supply chain, across multiple
locations and time zones
 Support quality initiatives such as Lean Manufacturing and
Six Sigma
 Accurately forecast demand and spot trends to align
resources more effectively
 Measure and manage vendor performance
 Analyze returns, exchanges, new orders, cancellations, raw
materials and distribution costs
 Optimize transportation methods by analyzing packing data
and weights
 Identify inefficient processes in production, customer service,
and order processing
 Get up to speed quickly and spend less time on training by
relying on tools you already know and use every day, such
as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Outlook

BI For Sales:
Today’s sales team needs unified, accurate, up-to-
date information to analyze sales forecasts, targets,
quotas and customer buying patterns, and promotions—to
drive sales growth.

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Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions empower sales
professionals to:

 Gain visibility into the sales pipeline sooner through familiar,

easy-to-use dashboards and scorecards that track
performance and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs)
 Analyze sales data and trends to identify issues and
implement solutions that help meet sales quotas by target
dates
 Make accurate forecasts about future sales and get ahead of
the next sales cycle
 Understand and predict customer buying patterns to boost
profitability
 Analyze purchasing history to identify the best qualified
sales prospects to increase effectiveness and productivity
 Identify and capitalize on new sales opportunities in a fast-
moving competitive environment

Business Intelligence for Industry

Government:
Every day, government workers need relevant, accurate
information to make decisions that ensure citizens receive a wide
range of critical services—while also making the best use of
limited resources.

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 Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions help agency
workers share and analyze information in context when they need
it most, using familiar technology they already know and like to
increase efficiency and improve performance.

Microsoft business intelligence solutions empower government

workers to:

 Gain greater visibility into all aspects of the organization by

unifying data across multiple sources and locations
 Streamline governance with policy-based management, so
administrators can govern common operations with a global
set of business rules
 Automatically maintain detailed audit trails to help ensure
information is traceable and certifiable
 Reduce training requirements by giving government workers
access to information and BI capabilities within established
workflows and applications they already know how to use
 Combine BI capabilities with enterprise search, collaboration,
and content management functionality to maximize
efficiency

Manufacturing:
From the shop floor to the top floor, everyone throughout the
manufacturing enterprise needs a unified, accurate view of the
business to make informed, relevant decisions. When employees
share the same view of the business, they can collaborate more
effectively and find new ways to increase production and
profitability.

A Microsoft business intelligence solution empowers people at

every level of the manufacturing enterprise to:

 Gain visibility across the supply chain and into enterprise

and operational data through portals and familiar, easy-to-
use desktop and Microsoft Office tools

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  Reduce risk by unifying reliable, accurate data from diverse
sources and providing regulatory compliance by validating
and documenting every aspect of production
 Achieve rapid user adoption and reduce training time with
easy-to-use, familiar tools
 Increase supply chain collaboration and improve productivity
because everyone is "on the same page."
 With visibility into supply chain processes, speed new
product launches and reduce time to market, without
sacrificing quality

Financial Services:
Today more than ever, financial institutions need accurate,
up-to-date information about key performance indicators to
facilitate better decision-making in all areas of operations,
including customer acquisition and retention, sales and service,
risk management and compliance, and financial forecasting.

Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions empower employees at

financial institutions to:

 Gain visibility into the entire organization’s performance

through familiar, easy-to-use dashboards that monitor key
financial metrics, such as cash flow, assets and liabilities,
loans, capital performance, investments, pricing, and critical
industry trends
 Analyze past performance and plan for future performance
based on accurate, complete data
 Get up to speed quickly and spend less time on training by
relying on tools you already know and use every day, such
as Microsoft Excel
 Reduce risk and comply with regulations by automatically
creating accurate reports and documentation
 Gain deeper customer insight and critical knowledge to
develop more profitable customer relationships
 Retain profitable customers with a holistic customer view
that helps identify and retain the most profitable customers
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Higher Education:
Educational institutions face increasing demand for services
at the same time that resources are dwindling. To optimize
limited resources and increase efficiency, institutions must
efficiently budget, plan, track and share accurate, timely
information among staff, students and the public.

With Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions, everyone in the

institution gains access to the information they need to make
relevant, cost-effective decisions.

Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions empower employees at

educational institutions to:

 Gain visibility into operations through dashboards that

present key performance indicators (KPIs) and other critical
metrics
 Effectively track admissions and other trends to accurately
forecast and plan for future resource needs
 Monitor fund-raising efforts, donor histories and patterns in
giving
 Break down communication silos by unifying data and
making it accessible through an integrated data warehouse
 Analyze recruiting and retention data, grade and graduation
trends, tuition discounting programs, and other information
 Respond quickly to legislative and grant requests with up-to-
date reporting and financial information
 Give faculty a clear picture of student performance at an
individual or group level to facilitate instruction

Health Care:

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 Healthcare organizations need accurate, timely information
to address escalating costs, ever-changing regulations, and
increased demand for medical services from an aging population.

Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions empower employees at

healthcare organizations to:

 Gain visibility into the entire organization’s performance

through familiar, easy-to-use dashboards that monitor key
performance metrics, such as patient care statistics, staffing
projections, and workflows
 Analyze and monitor claims data more effectively to prevent
fraud
 Use tools analytics to better understand financial data to
achieve cost savings
 Achieve rapid user adoption and reduce training time with
easy-to-use, familiar tools

Retail:
Retail organizations need accurate, timely information to
react to changing market conditions, identify new customer
segments, improve inventory management, and optimize overall
store performance.

Microsoft business intelligence solutions empower employees at

retail organizations to:

 Increase insight about customer buying patterns with real-

time analytics and reporting
 Monitor and measure store performance with better visibility
of key performance indicators (KPIs) based on historical
information, current conditions, and future goals
 Optimize operations by analyzing current trends, using
advanced visualizations and graphics to perform what if
analysis on vendor performance, inventory, and store
operations

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  Make accurate forecasts about future sales and get ahead of
the next sales cycle

Capabilities of BI:
 Enable business users to store & share office documents in a
Managed Environment
 Show data in the context of a diagram
 Show data in the context of an interactive map
 Identify and automatically clean up bad data
 Combine data from broad variety of sources
 Create manage and distribute standardized and formatted
reports

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 Future Outlook
The Next Wave of Business Intelligence
Just as security technology is something without which
organizations can’t survive, so is BI technology something without
which organizations can’t succeed. However, BI as a set of tools
and concepts for managing organizational and individual
performance still has a long way to go in reaching all of the
necessary people and processes in companies, government
agencies, hospitals, and universities. IDC research into the BI
market has identified that it moves in 15-year cycles. The first of
these periods, from 1975 to 1990, was characterized by
production reporting on mainframes. (Companies such as SAS, IBI,
and IBM began in the BI market during the early years of this
cycle.) The second 15-year period, from 1990 to 2005, saw the
beginning of the "modern era" of BI, characterized by end user
friendlier client/server-based BI tools from vendors such as
Business Objects, Cognos, and Hyperion. Eventually query,
reporting, and OLAP technology migrated from client/server to
Web-based architecture with the development of broad suites of
BI platforms.

As the BI market is maturing, the focus of organizations, BI

software vendors, and systems integrators is changing. To date,
the BI market has primarily focused on delivery of information to
analysts and managers. Progress has been made in delivering
information faster and through various means (e.g., reports,
dashboards, and alerts on PDAs). However, analysts and
managers represent only a relatively small portion of an
organization, estimated at about 15.20% of employees. In fact,
IDC believes that the market for reporting and OLAP tools for
power users and analysts has reached a level of maturity that
cannot sustain the growth rates of the past in terms of new
license revenue. Instead, larger IT vendors such as Microsoft,
Oracle, and IBM along with the existing specialty BI vendors are
now targeting this market. As the market continues to mature, it

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is highly likely that the larger IT vendors will continue to gain
share.

But what about the rest of the organization? Whether we’re

talking about information workers with higher levels of freedom to
decide about their daily workflows and processes or line-of-
business employees who may be restricted by systems and
policies in how they perform their duties, a vast population exists
whose business intelligence requirements have not been met to
their full potential.

The next wave of BI will reach out to these employees as

well as other organizational stakeholders such as suppliers,
partners, customers, and government agencies to improve
information delivery and decision support functionality for all.

This shift in market focus can be only partially addressed

through existing BI software, which has already mentioned was
created with the analyst or power user as the intended audience.
Clearly a frontline employee will have limited use for an OLAP or
an ad hoc query tool. In fact, to address the needs of frontline
employees and line of- business managers, organizations must
redefine and expand what they mean by BI. The expanded vision
of BI must take into account not only the technologies involved
but also business drivers and performance management
methodologies.

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