2 3 The Changing Face of Business Intelligencedownload.microsoft.com/.../mbs/MBS_Analytics_BusinessIntelligenc… · competitive advantage through faster, more informed decision making

Business Intelligence Within Reach.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The Power of Business Intelligence .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Changing Face of Business Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Microsoft Solutions for Business Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Extend Your Solution Through Partners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Resource CD Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Table of Contents

Built on affordable programs and

technologies, Microsoft Business Intelligence

solutions eliminate many of the barriers

to entry, including the often prohibitively

high initial investment costs and the

steep expenses associated with ongoing

administration and maintenance. Combining

industry-leading ease of use and the

ability to integrate easily and quickly with

a broad range of desktop productivity

programs, intranet applications, and business

applications, solutions built on the Microsoft

Business Intelligence technologies deliver

essential business insights to a wide base of

users, empowering employees to make fast,

highly-informed business decisions as part

of their daily routines. Whether your goal is

to take better advantage of systems already

in place, or implement a new generation

of technologies and applications that can

enhance your company’s competitiveness,

Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions

provide everything your company needs

to track and analyze every aspect of your

business.

This document introduces Microsoft Business

Intelligence solutions, and demonstrates how

solutions that provide business insights to

all levels of the organization deliver a higher

return on their investment and increased

competitive advantage through faster, more

informed decision making.

Today’s organizations have the ability

to gather and store once-unimaginable

volumes of operational data and customer

information. The challenge is utilizing all of

that information to drive better decision

making. The answer lies with “business

intelligence.” Business intelligence provides

organizations with a framework for sorting

through the daily flood of data in order to

extract insights that can provide a critical

edge in today’s highly competitive economy.

Business intelligence tools deliver a deeper

understanding of customer and partner

relationships, as well as key performance

indicators. By translating this understanding

into action, companies can derive significant

benefits in the form of increased profits, an

improved ability to take advantage of new

opportunities, and the ability to respond

more quickly to changing market demands.

Business intelligence is not new. But until

now, the high cost of the specialized

software, skills, and infrastructure required

to build, maintain, and operate business

intelligence systems has meant that only the

largest companies have had the resources

required to implement business intelligence

solutions. Today, a new generation of

solutions built on Microsoft Business

Intelligence solutions has put the power

of business intelligence within reach of

organizations of every size.

Business Intelligence Within Reach

2| Business Intelligence Within Reach Business Intelligence Within Reach | 3

In today’s challenging business climate, companies of all sizes, in virtually every industry,

struggle with a similar set of questions:

How can we increase revenue?

Who are our most profitable customers, and how can we serve them better?

Where are we spending money and seeing the best returns?

Business intelligence provides a powerful way to find the best answers to each of these

questions.

The Power of Business Intelligence


Increased business agility.

Combining more accurate prediction

mechanisms and analysis and reporting

capabilities with real-time transactional

feedback and implementation tools,

business intelligence gives your

organization the capability to move

from an idea to an action almost

instantly. The result is the ability to

respond to new opportunities with

unprecedented speed.

Lowered operating costs. Business

intelligence reduces the amount

of time required to collect relevant

business information and then

empowers employees at all levels to

conduct queries, prepare reports, and

implement the results—with little or no

support from database administrators

and IT specialists.

Benefits of Business IntelligenceEmployees are expected to do much more

analysis in their jobs today than in the past,

in a far shorter period of time, and with

far fewer resources. Meanwhile, the ability

to make and implement accurate business

decisions at lightning fast speeds has

become a critical requirement for today’s

successful businesses.

In the face of these challenges, does your

company need business intelligence?

Business analysts and experts who track the

fast-changing information technology world

are nearly unanimous in their belief that

you almost certainly do. “Ignorance is the

greatest threat to modern business,” reads a

recent Gartner Research article.

By providing insights about your

organization’s important business

information, business intelligence helps

you make decisions with greater speed

and increased confidence. In most cases,

the tangible results can be seen almost

immediately.

CRM

HR

Manufacturing

ERP

Financial

Extending business intelligence to allow users to interact directly with data stored in your ERP, ERM, CRM, point-of-sale, order entry, inventory management, payroll, and other systems allows you to get more out of your investment in database and data management technology.


Business intelligence positions your

company to generate the most value from

existing lines of business and anticipate

new opportunities. Business intelligence

solutions can help your company shorten

product development cycles, streamline

operations, fine tune marketing campaigns,

and improve relationships with customers

and suppliers, all of which means lower costs

and improved profit margins.

Streamlined customer acquisition.

Business intelligence enables

marketers to accurately identify

potential customers and to present

effective, focused campaigns that can

dramatically reduce the per-customer

costs of marketing and advertising.

Increased customer loyalty.

By providing a clear picture of

customer needs, business intelligence

makes it easier to determine which

products, features, and services your

customers value. Business intelligence

also provides powerful tools for

delivering personalized communication

and one-to-one marketing over the

Internet. The bottom line: greater

profitability.

By providing a clear picture of customer needs, business intelligence makes it easier to determine which products, features, and services your customers value.


The Company-Wide Impact of Business IntelligenceNo matter how big your business is, business

intelligence solutions can have far-reaching

effects. With Business intelligence solutions

in place, every operational group will have

access to the information it needs to fine-

tune day-to-day decision making:

Finance. By providing financial

planners with immediate access to real-

time data, business intelligence builds

value into all financial operations,

including budgeting and forecasting.

Operations. From quality control to

inventory management to production

planning, business intelligence provides

a mechanism for analyzing the

performance of any operational process.

Sales and marketing. Business

intelligence offers powerful tools

for understanding customer needs

and responding to new market

opportunities. Marketing analysts

can gauge the effects of pricing and

promotions, target customer segments

more accurately, analyze buying

patterns to take advantage of cross-sell

opportunities, and develop real-time

one-to-one marketing.

Human resources. From skills

assessment to managing the

performance of individuals or groups,

business intelligence supports the

recruitment, retention, and career

development of key employees.

Product development. Business

intelligence gives product development

teams access to critical customer and

market data, along with the crucial

supplier information needed to

conduct accurate cost-benefit analyses

about features and materials.

Customer service. Business

intelligence tools provide a way to

accurately assess the value of market

segments and individual customers,

and help businesses retain the

customers who deliver the most profit.

Supplier relations. Business

intelligence takes advantage of online

supplier and partner integration

to provide new levels of supplier

performance analysis, new design

collaboration opportunities, and more.


Yesterday’s business intelligence solutions required mainframe query and reporting tools

to deliver product and market analysis. In that era, implementing a business intelligence

application was extremely costly, and the tools needed to extract insight from data were

complex, which meant that only a small number of highly trained specialists had the skills

needed to access and query information.

Generating reports from these systems took a long time, and queries had to be run in

batches. This created delays between the time information was requested and the time a

report could be delivered, and it often meant that reports were created based on data that

was already out of date. In addition, reports generated by these early business intelligence

systems were static—to drill down to find additional information on a particular data point

meant submitting another query request.

Today, a new generation of business intelligence solutions—powered by technological

advances—overcomes these limitations, transcending slow, static reporting to

deliver powerful, interactive analytical capabilities in near real-time. Today’s business

intelligence solutions can give organizations a competitive advantage by allowing them

to unlock the power of data; quickly discern trends, patterns, and relationships that

represent important new opportunities; and then use that intelligence to alter course

in hours and minutes, rather than weeks or months.

The Changing Face of Business Intelligence


As a result, business intelligence is rapidly

becoming a mission-critical application that

is essential to success. Critical changes that

are driving this transformation include:

Improved interactivity and ease

of use. Today’s business intelligence

solutions give you direct access to

critical business information, along

with the ability to conduct your

own queries and analysis without

assistance from IT or information

specialists. New forms of graphical data

representation and simpler reporting

tools empower employees to quickly

make better business decisions. With

today’s business intelligence solutions,

employees can also easily collaborate

on analyses, share insight, and act upon

the knowledge they gain.

Cost-effective technology. As the

cost of technology has decreased, so

have many of the barriers to entry for

implementing sophisticated business

intelligence applications. Today’s

solutions leverage existing applications

and IT infrastructure to dramatically

reduce the initial investment and

administrative costs associated with

these systems. Built on familiar desktop

applications, they also minimize the

cost of training.

Integration. Today’s business

intelligence systems deliver the means

to integrate real-time transactional

data into decision-making processes

at both the strategic and tactical levels.

Tight integration with a broad range

of desktop productivity and intranet

applications expands the reach of

business intelligence solutions to

significantly more employees within an

organization. The ability to incorporate

live data into planning models can

dramatically improve the value of

medium- and long-term planning, and

allows managers to evaluate trends

with greater speed and accuracy.

Intuitive graphical data representation capabilities and simpler reporting tools empower users to quickly make better decisions.


To overcome the limitations of business

intelligence systems built on expensive,

complex technologies, Microsoft has

developed a comprehensive set of solutions

that will enable employees at every level of

your company to access data from a wide

range of sources and quickly discern trends,

patterns, and relationships that represent

important new opportunities. Based on

easy-to-use analysis tools, applications, and

reporting capabilities, this new generation

of solutions from Microsoft delivers the

benefits of business intelligence—

including greater speed and quality in

decision-making processes, lowered

costs, and improved competitiveness—

to companies of all sizes.

Programs and technologies that make

up Microsoft Business Intelligence

offerings include Microsoft Office

System, Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000,

and Microsoft Business Solutions.

Microsoft Solutions for Business Intelligence


The Microsoft Business Intelligence Solutions

Microsoft Business Intelligence provides flexible, end-to-end solutions you can use to turn

information into action.

Data Analysis & ReportingIdentify the patterns and trends within large volumes of data.

VisualizationView your data graphically to help you make better business decisions.

Business Intelligence Collaboration PortalCapitalize on the collective insight and experience of your employees.

Analytical ApplicationsBuild a customizable business intelligence solutions from your operational data.

Manage Key Performance MetricsManage key performance goals, as defined by analyzed data.

Office 2003Give knowledge workers the tools they need to access, analyze, and create critical business data.

SQL Server 2000Build scalable, powerful data-warehousing and data-mining solutions.

Microsoft Business SolutionsIntegrate financial and operational data from across your company.


Familiar to millions of people around the

world, Microsoft® Office System provides

a sophisticated set of tools, applications,

solutions, and technologies for accessing,

analyzing, visualizing and reporting

data from virtually any source. The tight

integration of products and technologies

enables the Microsoft Office System to

deliver a rich set of applications that offer:

Improved employee and organizational

productivity through timely, accurate

business decision making based on

powerful analytical, collaboration,

and visualization tools.

Reduced complexity in managing

business metrics and in creating

flexible, sophisticated reports

using tools and solutions that are

easy to use, simple to deploy,

and that take advantage of

existing IT investments.

Comprehensive, reliable, and

secure Business Intelligence

solutions that integrate easily

with existing business systems,

devices, and processes.

Microsoft Office System

To realize the maximum benefit from any

business intelligence solutions, it is essential

that the front-end tools used for information

access, analysis, and reporting are easy to

understand and easy to use.


Powerful Analysis Tools: Excel

A key component of Microsoft Business

Intelligence solutions, Microsoft Office Excel

2003 helps employees access, process, analyze,

share, and display the information they need

to understand real-time business conditions.

A powerful calculation engine, combined

with charting and query features, provides

employees at every level with analytical

capabilities that were once the exclusive

domain of finance or analysis departments.

Microsoft Excel helps employees access, process, analyze, share, and display the information they need to understand real-time business conditions.

With Excel, you can take advantage of

interactive, multidimensional views to

quickly combine and compare large

amounts of data, rotate rows and columns

to see different summaries of the source

data, and display details for areas of interest.

Using Office Web Components, Excel

reports can easily be added to custom

applications and portals.


Improved Metrics Management and

Flexible Reporting: Office Business

Intelligence Solutions Accelerators

Office Business Intelligence Solutions

Accelerators will enable your company to

take advantage of the business intelligence

capabilities in the Microsoft Office System to

quickly address critical business needs.

The Microsoft Office Solutions

Accelerator for Business Scorecards:

Business Scorecards is a Web-based

business intelligence offering that

enables you to easily visualize and

communicate business strategies,

drill down into key business data,

and simplify the measurement of

key performance metrics, resulting

in faster decision making, increased

corporate accountability and

improved business performance.

The Microsoft Office Solutions

Accelerator for Excel OLAP Reporting:

Excel OLAP Reporting is a business

intelligence offering that enables you

to gain critical business insights by

utilizing Microsoft Excel to create

flexible, sophisticated reports with

greater speed and accuracy than ever

before; access relevant information

from multiple sources; perform in-

depth analyses; and improve vital

business activities such as business

planning, budgeting, and forecasting.


Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing:

SharePoint Portal Server

The ability to tap into the collective

knowledge and experience of your

employees is critical to creating a more

agile, better-informed organization that is

quicker at solving problems and replicating

victories. To extend this capability to business

intelligence solutions, Microsoft offers

powerful features that allow employees to

easily collaborate on analysis and share the

resulting intelligence with their peers.

Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server will enable your organization to tie together business data from across different systems into a searchable portal.

Microsoft Office SharePoint™ Portal Server

will enable your organization to tie together

business data from across different systems

into a searchable portal. The result is

improved access, both to key information

and the tools needed to organize and share

knowledge efficiently. This architecture

provides teams with a common view of key

performance indicators and other business

metrics, and it enables them to easily publish

business intelligence from Office 2003, so that

other employees can take advantage of it.


The Benefits of Visualization: Visio,

MapPoint, and Data Analyzer

The ability to visually present complex or

abstract business data is a powerful way

to help employees draw insights, make

comparisons, and spot trends or anomalies.

The flexibility to represent data as charts,

tables, and maps will enhance the value

and extend the reach of your business

intelligence solutions.

The ability to visually present complex or abstract business data is a powerful way to help employees draw insights, make comparisons, and spot trends or anomalies.


Several Office 2003 applications combine

powerful analysis features with intuitive

visualization features that make it easy to

deliver graphical representations of your data.

Microsoft Office Visio® 2003 drawing

and diagramming software enables

you to create business and technical

diagrams that allow you to visualize

and communicate information clearly,

concisely, and effectively in ways that

text and numbers cannot.

Data Analyzer displays the

relationships among unlimited business

dimensions in customizable views

that help you easily identify trends,

opportunities, and potential problems.

Combine business data with geographic and demographic information.

With MapPoint® business mapping

software, you can combine business

data with geographic and demographic

information, and visually plot trends

such as customer distribution, regional

sales performance, and the competitive

landscape against maps of your

markets and territories.

Data Analyzer displays the relationships between unlimited business dimensions in customizable views that help users easily identify trends, opportunities, and potential problems.


Flexible and Complete: SQL Server 2000

with Analysis Services

Today’s dynamic business conditions

demand a complete, flexible solution that

will enable your company to respond more

quickly. SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services

provides Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

capabilities that deliver fast analysis, along

with graphical administration interfaces to

easily chart and monitor information.

Analysis Services works with data stored

in SQL Server 2000 or virtually any other

data source, and it integrates with a

broad range of client applications,

including Microsoft Office, browser-

based applications, and mobile devices

via an intranet, the Internet, or even

while offline. SQL Server 2000 Analysis

Services provides fast access to business

data by creating multidimensional

cubes from information in a data

warehouse. Together with SQL

Server 2000, Analysis Services offers

everything needed to build analysis

applications, and it lowers the total

cost of ownership for business

intelligence solutions by simplifying

the processes required to build and

maintain cubes.

Microsoft SQL Server 2000As decision-making responsibilities move

out of executive offices and into the hands

of mid-level managers and line workers,

the challenge is to provide a focused and

accurate view of the right business data to

the right people at the right time, and then

give them the tools they need to understand

the data and use it to drive intelligent

decisions. By combining the rich, robust data

management capabilities of SQL Server 2000

with the familiar tools found in Office 2003,

Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions

make enterprise-class analysis and reporting

functionality available to the widest possible

range of employees.

At the heart of the Microsoft business

intelligence vision is SQL Server 2000.

A complete database and data analysis

package, SQL Server 2000 opens the door to

a new generation of business applications.

Fully Web-enabled, SQL Server 2000

provides core support for XML and delivers

the ability to query across the Internet, and

even beyond the firewall. Integrated with

Analysis Services and Reporting Services, SQL

Server 2000 includes the functionality and

data mining services needed to provide a

complete solution for analysis and reporting.


Beyond Analysis: SQL Server 2000

Reporting Services

Understanding business information is just a

starting point. Faster, more accurate decision

making also requires tools that enable

employees to share the insights gained from

business intelligence solutions. SQL Server

2000 Reporting Services is a comprehensive

solution for creating, managing, and

delivering real-time reports—in both

traditional paper formats and as interactive

Web-based reports. A complement to

the business intelligence capabilities of

SQL Server, Reporting Services enhances

business decision making with rich reporting

functionality that makes it easy to deliver

in-depth information to the right people in

virtually any business environment.

With SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services,

your company will have a complete set of

tools for creating reports and deploying

custom reporting solutions to individual

employees across your company. SQL Server

2000 Reporting Services supports the entire

reporting life cycle:

Report authoring. Build custom

applications that take advantage of the

Microsoft .NET Framework to connect

to custom data sources, output to

multiple formats, and deliver to a wide

range of devices.

Report management. Publish and

manage report definitions, folders, and

resources as Web services that can be

executed either on-demand or on a

specified schedule.

Report delivery. Provide reports to

employees on-demand (pull) and

through event-based (push) delivery via

e-mail, a corporate portal, in a Microsoft

Office System program, or embedded

within a line-of-business application.

Closed-Loop Analysis With OLAP Actions

The ultimate in business agility—and the

greatest return on investment—comes when

your company can turn business intelligence

into action. OLAP Actions, a feature of Analysis

Services, takes analysis one step further,

allowing employees to take the next steps in

the business process, and trigger the action

with a single click. OLAP Actions enables you

to link analytical tasks with business processes

to shorten the decision cycle and create an

automated, finely-tuned feedback loop that

can help your business respond with once-

unimaginable speed and accuracy to fast-

changing business conditions.

With SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, your company will have a complete set of tools for creating reports and deploying custom reporting solutions to individual employees across your company.


Microsoft Business SolutionsAccess to timely financial and operational data from across your company is essential

to intelligent, effective business decision making. Built on SQL Server 2000, Microsoft

Business Solutions streamline the steps required to input and access data, while providing

powerful, easy-to-use financial reporting, budgeting, and planning tools. Microsoft

Business Solutions will enable your company to make smarter, better-informed decisions

based on comprehensive views of financial information that illuminate the impact that

real-time business conditions have on your bottom line.

Microsoft Business Solutions are designed to integrate processes and related financial

details from financial management operations, including accounting, financial planning,

budgeting, human resources, payroll, and project management; Customer Relationship

Management (CRM) systems that are used to manage sales, marketing, and customer

service automation; and Supply Chain Management (SCM) applications that automate

and streamline collaboration with partners and suppliers.


Microsoft Business Solutions for

Analytics–Forecaster. A powerful

budgeting and planning application,

Microsoft Forecaster provides

Web-based tools that make it easy

to collaborate on budgeting and

forecasting. Microsoft Forecaster makes

it easier to create accurate financial

plans, access general ledger data,

and drill back to data sources. With

Microsoft Forecaster, your company

can control costs, project sales, and

take advantage of new opportunities

with greater effectiveness.


Analytics–Enterprise Reporting.

Microsoft Enterprise Reporting enables

organizations with multiple business

units and locations to gain better

control of their business operations.

With Microsoft Enterprise Reporting,

you can manage complex financial

consolidation and handle detailed

budgeting and planning requirements.

Microsoft Business Solutions for AnalyticsMicrosoft Business Solutions for Analytics

provide the ability to take the volumes of

data collected by financial management,

CRM, and SCM applications and transform

it into business insight that can drive

profitability. Microsoft Business Solutions

for Analytics include:


Analytics–FRx. The financial reporting

standard for thousands of business

professionals around the world,

Microsoft FRx® software provides high-

performance financial reports that are

easy to create, customize, distribute,

and use. Microsoft FRx simplifies the

reporting process, automating updates,

reducing administrative work, and

enhancing communication, while

providing the ability to drill down into

pinpoint financial information.

Microsoft Enterprise Reporting enables organizations with multiple business units and locations to gain better control of their business operations.


Extend Your Solutions Through Partners

The success of your business intelligence initiative will depend in part on your ability to deploy

a solution that is tailored to the unique needs of your company and your industry. To help

you build a solution that is right for you, Microsoft has built an extensive network of Business

Intelligence Service Providers. These consultants can work with you to design business

intelligence solutions that will meet your company’s specific needs. These partners include

knowledgeable industry experts who offer services including:

Packaged business intelligence

solutions that can be deployed off the

shelf to address specific business needs.

Industry expertise and consulting,

to help you tailor a solution to a

specific industry or line of business.

Integration services that ensure that

your business intelligence solutions work

seamlessly with the applications and

systems your company uses every day.

Customization, to create a solution

around your unique processes and

the way you do business.

To learn more about Microsoft Business Intelligence service providers or to find a partner in your area, visit:Microsoft Certified Partner referral site at http://mcspreferral.microsoft.com/default.asp

or Microsoft Business Solutions site at http://www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions/

and choose “Request More Information” or “Have Someone Call You Now”

from the “Next Steps” box.




Business Intelligence Within Reach

Resource CD Table of Contents

Overview

Customer Resources

• Case Studies

• Whitepapers

• In the News

Solutions

Technical Resources

Partners

Additional Resources

• Business Intelligence Websites

• Trial Software Kits

• Competitive

• Technical Sites

• MS Press Books

© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, MapPoint,

SharePoint, SQL Server, and Visio are either registered trademarks or trademarks

of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names

of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of

their respective owners.

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