How to profit from data – OBIEE is your weapon

The management of data is core to successful organisations. In recent years, the explosion of cloud computing and virtualisation has made the management of data assets significantly more important. However, few organisations have a well-defined strategy and approach for the use of data assets and data extraction; resulting in wasted resources and stagnant profitability. Because of this, it is imperative, especially in today’s changing environments, to change the way we manage data assets, and ultimately the ability to actually increase the value of data.

While there are numerous applications for data abstraction, the core use cases today surround Business Intelligence and Applications.

• Applications are any information resources that serve the business, such as those created by IT in support of the business.
• Business intelligence includes approaches to structure, understand and represent operational data so that intelligent decisions can be made around the business. In recent years, more cost effective and architecturally elegant solutions, such as data abstraction and virtualization have been produced
  • Common to business intelligence and applications, is the need to leverage data in specific formats that transcend the physical structure.

In the 21st century, if you do not have sufficient software that allows you analyse data in relation to changes in environment, buying habits or forecast future trends; your company has failed before it even starts.

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) is a comprehensive business intelligence system for the enterprise; delivering abilities for enterprise and financial reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, online analytical processing (OLAP), interactive dashboards, and scorecards. This solution is based on a proven unified, highly scalable and modern architecture that integrates with an organisation’s existing IT ensuring the highest return on investment (ROI).

The BI functionality Advantages of using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition for organisations are outlined in our article: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) – The Difference between Success and Failure.

However, in order to avail of these advantages in promoting increased profits, it is important to use data in the right way. This requires a blending of enterprise resources (to deliver a complete, consistent, and reliable source of information) to fulfil the promise of BI through a well-defined strategy and approach for the use of data assets.

Top 3 components of a Data Strategy:
Business context:

• Prior to starting work on your BI strategy, you must identify your overall business objectives, business drivers and goals in order to help formulate BI vision for the growth of business. Using OBIEE, an organisation can identify key performance indicators (KPI’s) of which to concentrate on; enhancing profit potential, while maintaining a proper foundation aligned with your business goals and objectives.

Key Performance Indicators:
The purpose in building a BI strategy is to help business with long-term planning, help middle management with tactical reporting, and help operations with day-to-day decision making to run the business efficiently. In constantly changing business environment, organisations must be able to quickly adapt to new business requirements and evolving sources of information. OBIEE is a wide-ranging BI platform that provides a full range of easy-to-use and intuitive end-user tools facilitating forecasting and budgeting.

• Hyperion Interactive Reporting and Hyperion SQR Production Reporting Tools provide efficient and simplified graphical presentation of data: giving an organisation greater market knowledge allowing for forecasting.

• ‘Write back’ feature allows end users to update or insert data back into the database, aiding periodic forecasting as annual strategies and budgets become outdated each quarter. These tools allow for quick adaptation and reaction times to changing markets, enhancing the chance of profitability.

Data and End user integration delivery:
In order to remain profitable; it is important to determine the best approach for users to access, consume and share information in order to make accurate and factual decisions. Additionally, the use of knowledge management, content management, and portals is the key to sharing information in a collaborative environment.

• OBI Interactive Dashboards: are flexible information containers, which can be personalised depending on user role, controlling how users consume information; while ensuring they receive precise information for accurate decision making in terms of future success and profitability.

• Fully integrated with Microsoft Office, thus, users are familiar with the interface, resulting in less training overheads, saving on IT resources and allowing for information sharing.
• OBIEE reduces the skills required for report production enabling more time to analyse the results, providing ‘actionable insight’ indicating where action is required. This results in better decision making and in turn business success.

Organisations should create enterprise-wide processes for the collection and transformation of data into information and knowledge; connecting together BI, business processes, collaborative applications, and their underlying data stores. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) delivers this functionality quickly and swiftly; providing significant information for decision making and forecasting; in turn leading to organisational success and profitability.