Business Intelligence: Drill your Data for better business knowledge and decision making

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Business Intelligence Drill your Data for
better business knowledge and decision making
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Would your employees make better decisions if
they had better Business Intelligence Tools?
Enhanced Business Knowledge Can lead to Better Decision Making

Raw material pricing Impact to product line margin
  Negotiating raw material pricing
  Security of supply strategies
Production cost/Product line margins Targeted pricing decisions
Product line/SKU pruning
Marketing strategies
Material Supply Chain Controlling stock outs
  Optimized inventory costs
  Optimized capacity utilization
  Minimized production costs
Employee time utilization Improving Productivity
Project management oversight
Charging for company costs
Sales Sales growth strategies
  Marketing strategies
  Customer Segmentation
  Sales team effectiveness
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Drilling down in your data base to create
Business Intelligence Reporting Tools
There is no magic involved!

• Reporting Step by Step

Identify Data Source
Cleanup Data
Extract Data
Merge Data
Sometimes Called a Dashboard
Process Data
Present Data
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Reporting Software

• Fast
• Needs teeth
• Flexible
• Specialized

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Successful Reporting Software

• Small
• Intelligent
• Flexible
• Adaptive
• Successful

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Before Creating a Reporting Tool

• Every report has to lead to a decision
• (Of course, a decision can be Everything is
  fine, no reason to act.)
• If you need the report every day
• Automate and become efficient
• If you need the report every half a year
• Do it by hand
• The objective is accomplished when the business
  objective is accomplished

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Transparency already brings Improvement

• Just to show and make it public
• How much old stuff is in the warehouse
• How many customers have special deals
• .
• Helps to take action to improve the situation

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Excel is a Very Powerful Reporting Tool

• Why consider Excel to drive your Dashboard
• Everybody has it
• Everybody knows how to use it
• Has great graphics
• Has automation (VBA)
• Can access any data source
• Other excel sheets
• Any database (Oracle, MS SQL, Access, )
• Web pages
• XML
• Text, Word PowerPoint .
• As any tool, Excel has disadvantages
• Single User System
• Hard to manage centrally
• Versions
• .

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Example

• Time Reporting for Billing at SA

Show Live Example
This is a real example, but it is used only to
show the standard steps of report creation. The
steps are the same for Material Management, Sales
Reporting, etc
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Step by Step Identify Data Source(s)
The data is in our Project Management System.
Every developer logs hours for projects. Data
can be in several systems, but that is not a
problem.
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Step by Step Cleanup Data

• My team is young
• Sometimes
• They are not reporting every hour
• They report to the wrong project
• There text is wrong

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Step by Step Cleanup Data (2)

• Incorrect or incomplete data yields wrong reports
• Cleanup of data requires work and probably
  experience
• A lot of effort in good reporting is required for
  this step
• However, the quality of the data has only to be
  as good as the decision you want to take
• For example it might be sufficient to deal only
  with the 20 of important products
• Or to get the top 10 materials that block a
  warehouse
• ..
• (Very often, to be complete or perfect stands in
  the way of prudent decision making)

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Step by Step Extract Data

• Always extract data 1-1
• Excel can extract data from anywhere
• Other reporting tools can do that as well
• Machines are powerful enough nowadays to handle
  all your needs
• No excuse not getting to the data

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Step by Step Merge Data

• Bring data together from different sources
• Create Lookup Tables
• Bring result into a new worksheet that forms the
  source for the report.

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Step by Step Process Data
Use Excel to process data
Show Live Sample
Highly subjective estimate of effort to develop
reports
Tool Development Time Comments
Excel (VBA) 1
Crystal reports 1.5 Depending on Database
Web Application 3
SAP 7-10 ABAB/4
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Step by Step Present Data
Graphs can give fast way to evaluate data

• A graph should always have
• Header
• Description on axis
• Parameters

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Step by Step Present Data (2)

• Cool is Cool (but not always useful)

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Step by Step Summary Report Cycle

• Identify Data Source
• Cleanup Data
• Extract Data
• Merge Data
• Process Data
• Present Data
• Breaking Reports into steps makes every step
  easier.
• There is no reason, not to have the report you
  need.
• Reports serve a business need.

Sometimes Called a Dashboard
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Effort for Report Creation
Report Effort Comment
Simple Graph 2 min
Pivot Table 6 hours Includes getting data from database
Time Reporting 8 hours
Web Application 40 hours Includes Application
Production Schedule 120 hours Interface to SAP, complex requirements
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More Examples

• SA Monitoring System
• This is a web application to monitor the
  performance of our applications

Show LiveSample
A good selection of graphs can be found
at http//webchart.app.s5-tech.com/
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Example

• Production Planning (Simple MRP)

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Example
This is a Web Application
Show Live Sample
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Example
Pricing Report (find the margin of products)
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Examples
Reports can be automated in Word to be sent to
clients for regular updates
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Summary Enhanced Business Knowledge will likely
lead to better decision making

• Drill your Data - All Reports can be done
• View Report Tools as business projects not as IT
  projects.
• The objective is accomplished when the business
  objective is accomplished