BIntel

A strategy on how to use the information produced at every phase of a business operation is essential in ensuring the business' right course. Each decision made will always be a make or break scenario wherein it would either help the business, or fail it entirely. This is the very reason why indispensable business solutions are needed in every form of organization that will provide a real-time report and analysis for the proper assessment of the business status. A software solution that integrates data from all areas of the enterprise and delivers reports and timely analysis is what every business entity needs. This is often known as business intelligence or BI. Business intelligence has made its...

Recently as of the time of this writing, Microsoft took yet another step in the direction of making it easier for business partners and clients to add customization to its BI suite of software. (BI stands for "business intelligence".) Microsoft has released its Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation. This is a bundle of customizable documentation and source code, and it's for free to all users of MS CRM software. Clients and business partners can build on the tools found in this bundle for the creation of customized BI applications, or simply use them as they are found. Microsoft is just one of the sellers of CRM software that is now endorsing what it calls "BI for the masses", which essentially...

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is disrupting traditional approaches to business analytics. The long deployment cycles, high costs, complicated upgrade processes and IT infrastructure required of traditional on-premise business intelligence solutions are no longer acceptable in the era of on demand. Instead a new breed of analytic solutions has emerged that are simple to set-up and simple to use and deliver immediate business value. The difficulty for customers is in knowing where to start. With well over 50 analytic applications to choose from on the AppExchange and native transactional reporting features constantly improving in the CRM application itself, it can sometime seem like the...

Financial Rewards Coming from a sales background as I do it is almost unthinkable to me not to financially reward high production. Most people do not come from a sales background. In most activities, financially rewarding production is a foreign concept. In areas where performance is easily measured, like number of widgets sold, company share price, net profit etc. it is very easy to reward production. In others, it is more difficult but with some thought and effort it is doable. Most organisations use an accounting package. Some also use a contact manager. Bigger businesses often use a CRM (Client Relationship Management) program. Manufacturers and farmers will use dedicated manufacturing or...

Whenever I conduct a workshop or teleclass, invariably someone asks the question: "What should I say when the prospect says, 'I'm not interested?'" My response invariably is: "It's probably too late." Certainly you can try to recover from that "I'm not interested" response. You can ask, "Why do you say that?" (Say this gently, as though you are confused and really, really want the answer.) You can repeat back: "Not interested?" (Again, say this gently, as though you are confused.) This sometimes gets people to start talking and explain themselves. Bottom line, however, if everyone that you speak with says, "I'm not interested," you're not saying anything interesting. If you have a compelling script...

With many articles having been written about the cause and course of the recent recession, it is time to look past the theory and focus on real tools and strategies used to survive the downturn, and how in many cases businesses used the 'opportunity' to strengthen their business for greater success both now and in the future. Turbulent times represent a real opportunity to not only improve ones core business but to also improve your competitive position. Naturally, along with strategic opportunities come the inevitable risks, but with a smart course of action, proactive businesses have been able to optimise the opportunities and minimise the risks. The core survival strategy is to: - Tightening cost...

> Technology is not the fundamental challenge that organizations face when it comes to implementing business intelligence (BI) solutions. Certainly a lack of alignment between IT and business is a problem, but it’s really just a byproduct of the fact that BI solutions have been so complex in the past that business users were required to bring in IT to create for them the analysis they wanted.  Technology is not the fundamental challenge that organizations face when it comes to implementing business intelligence (BI) solutions.Certainly a lack of alignment between IT and business is a problem, but it’s really just a byproduct of the fact that BI solutions...

In recent years, there have been numerous calls for company to move away from Excel-based Corporate Budgeting to Business Performance Management/ Business Intelligence (BPM/BI) systems. Reasons cited include: 1. Slow throughput time due to the complexity of the budget. 2. Challenges in maintaining data accuracy during consolidation. Despite the repeated summons to move away from Excel-based Corporate Budgeting, today about 70% to 80% of all corporations (from big corporations to small companies) continue to make use of Excel for their budgeting. So what makes these budget managers stand behind Excel and remain loyal to using it as their primary budgeting tool? The 6 Benefits of Using Excel for...

We hear a lot about making business intelligence more user-friendly, more pervasive — more democratic, if you will. All of the BI vendors are plugging these terms into their sales pitches. Taking Excel and making it part of the bridge to BI seems to make a lot of sense. Read how Microsoft is pitching a seamless transition for BI tools using Excel. One of the continuing knocks against business intelligence is that it remains too darned difficult for all but BI specialists. Back in April, for instance, I blogged about Ace Hardware’s decision to swap out an overly complex BI system for a simpler reporting tool from Information Builders. Interestingly, one of the key reasons Ace opted for the...

Nuance is a challenge for journalists. It's tough to offer a nuanced view of dense topics - and technology topics are among the worst - without boring the reader to tears. In a recent story, I tried to bring out the (nuanced!) concept of companies starting small with business intelligence initiatives before applying BI more broadly across their business. Several of my sources, however, felt I was pitting one approach against the other. Analyst Nigel Pendse, author of the annual BI Survey, feels it appears in the story as if he and Information Builders Chief Marketing Officer Michael Corcoran were "in violent disagreement" over whether BI should be widely deployed throughout an organization or just...

ign="center"> Why activity based costing cannot be overlooked A look into the managerial myth that activity-based costing is too much like hard work! Activity-based costing (ABC) projects traditionally create visions of armies of accountants locking themselves away in darkened rooms, working for months on end to generate any meaningful results, only to have them finally dismissed by line managers as being out of date and unreliable. The time-consuming, cumbersome and costly process of manually collecting, and collating non-system data from a large number of contributors to refresh and recalculate the ABC Model means that most management accountants cannot provide reports in line with business...

As the owner or executive of a business, you have business goals. You have your 5-year goals or your long-term goals, and then there are steps along the way to reach those goals: medium-term goals and short-term goals. If you were a retailer you might have the following goals: Short term: sell a certain amount each sunny day, a certain amount each rainy day, a certain amount each holiday, weekend and weekday. Medium term: Identify your best suppliers. Establish relationships with the most efficient, timely, reliable and innovative suppliers. Attract a higher number of baby boomers than your competition. Long term: Continue to create innovations in the marketplace that can set you apart from your...

> Learn about business reporting. Business reporting is not always easy. Too often we can get swamped down in paper work and long, exhaustive reports that offer entirely too much information. Your business reporting does not have to end up like that. If you find yourself caught in this trap of creating long boring reports that nobody wants to read then perhaps it is time you find a new way to present your findings. Have you ever heard of a business intelligence tool? Chances are you haven’t and that is okay. I will explain exactly what a business intelligence tool is. Quite honestly, it is pretty simple. A business intelligence tool is a tool that allows you to present information in an...

ign="center"> The term covers a large variation of uses within the business environment, and can be categorized by using a small, medium and large matrix. SutiSoft is an IT solutions company dedicated to the strategic synchronization of tailored Business Solutions with best-in-class security to meet customer's critical business needs. SutiSoft solutions are Simple, Scaleable, Secure and Seamlessly integrate into overall IT Operations. SutiSoft Software Solutions Enterprise is based on 3 kinds of Software Solution modules. Business Solutions: Normally A small and medium Business Enterprise contains a broad range of Software Applications, Business Solutions ranging from Accounting Software. The...

Sage X3 vs JD Edwards Enterprise, both of these software applications and its usefulness will be clear with the following details as described in the review. Overview Sage X3 ERP is a fully integrated software application that comprises of functionalities from manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, CRM and accounting and bags 20 years of service in providing solution to the companies. This application is used for the mid sized industries for performing accounting; operations; customer relationship management (CRM); human resources (HR); time tracking; and merchant services. The Sage X3 has to be used in a manner that it reduces the cost. This application is easy to use and implement and...

Metrics software analysis can give you that high-level edge to push your organization or company to the top of your field. With the increasing interest in the field of business intelligence and performance management has also come the development of ever more sophisticated software solutions. This makes the implementation of these objective, data based strategic management approaches not only easier, but also much more effective. This trend in performance management of basing decisions on quantifiable metrics is not new but has been made more popular with the advent of computers. In this information age, people are getting more and more used to the concept of gathering, processing, and acting upon...

Microsoft's Silverlight report viewer is a web application that is a revolutionary cross-platform, cross-browser and cross-device technology integrating graphics, animation and interactivity in a single runtime process. This is the next stage in .NET based media and applications for the Web and has already made marks in its suitability in RIA (Rich Internet Application) and SaaS (Software as a Service) applications. Reports are one important feature of Business Intelligence. Delivering updates has become faster, there is a higher level of interactivity and the rich interfaces have drastically changed the work of corporate analysts. These are just some of the benefits corporate Business Intelligence...

There are no professional guidelines (yet) which define what it means to be a Performance Measurement Practitioner - not like there are for Accountants, Project Managers, Finance Officers and Engineers. So there's little wonder that there are so many talented and capable performance measurement practitioners out there who are underselling themselves. Are you one of them? Find out with this quiz: Q1: How much of your time do you spend - or should you spend - on performance measurement activities? Performance Measurement Practitioners routinely spend at least 40% of their work time devoted to a broad range of performance measurement activities, including the selection of measures aligned to strategy...

Corporate legal Matter Management systems are implemented through multi-million dollar projects that frequently result in unpopular, underused tools that never provide the expected return on investment. One element, common to many such situations, is the limited utility of the data being captured. The data in the matter management system is either irrelevant or inaccessible to the interested parties. Integrated Matter Management reporting is the solution to this problem. In the best case, future reporting needs have been considered and included as critical inputs in the design phase of the larger matter management project. In the worst case, reporting was left out of the design entirely, and end...

IBM and CIO Insights have recently conducted surveys with CIOs regarding their top priorities for 2010. Top Analysts from Gartner gave their opinion about IT budgets and IT spending for 2010 and beyond. The IBM study revealed that Business Intelligence and Analytics are the top priorities for more than 83% of all interviewed CIOs. The CIO Insights survey show business productivity, cost reduction and IT/Business Alignment as top priorities. According to Peter Sondergaad, VP Research, Gartner, 2009 was the most challenging and interesting year for CIOs. He quotes "The IT market is exiting its worst year ever". In 2009 enterprise IT spending will end up to be 2,3 trillion dollars compared with 2,5...

Results from a recently released survey, 2010 SMB Routes to Market Study, reveal a few interesting trends about how SMBs discover, learn about, evaluate and buy technology solutions and services - including their thoughts about BI solutions. The results suggested that small AND medium businesses consider "getting better insights out of the data they already have" as their highest technology priority. Business Intelligence solutions can help solve this problem by enabling the tools that measure and manage organizational goals and objectives. BI can also assist with conducting "what-if" analyses to evaluate different courses of action. Here are the top 4 technology challenges for each: Top technology...

ign="center"> Business reporting is not always easy. Too often we can get swamped down in paper work and long, exhaustive reports that offer entirely too much information. Your business reporting does not have to end up like that. If you find yourself caught in this trap of creating long boring reports that nobody wants to read then perhaps it is time you find a new way to present your findings. Have you ever heard of a business intelligence tool? Chances are you haven't and that is okay. I will explain exactly what a business intelligence tool is. Quite honestly, it is pretty simple. A business intelligence tool is a tool that allows you to present information in an intelligent and...

The Law of Large Numbers implies that the more times you play a game, the more likely it is that your net gain, divided by the total amount you have bet, will be close to the game's expected value. In other words, if a game can be repeated many times, good luck and bad luck tends to wash out. Can this be done with the decisions of technology in the gaming operations? Or running the business? What happens, though, if the game isn't going to be repeated over and over? What if the game - purchasing technology, for instance - is played only once or just a few times? That's when risk aversion comes into play. Being "risk averse" means that you are willing to pay money to avoid playing a risky game, even...

Customer satisfaction is a core KPI in any company, however, it is one that whilst measured is often not integrated into higher level decision making. Rather than driving operational performance, it is more typically bundled with other qualitative market insight KPI such as brand value. Yet customer satisfaction is critical to any company's success. It is a composite of: 1. How effectively your marketing team is matching messages with customers 2. Whether your product development team has been successful in meeting your customers needs. 3. How well your fulfillment process is working Customer satisfaction is determined through a number of interrelated KPI. If we take the three above examples, this...

The best business decisions are made when you can look at the problem from every angle. You need all the data in one place, in a simple, intuitive format. That's why dashboard solutions make perfect business sense. Dashboard solutions pull essential information together about your business's performance in daily reports. Executive dashboards are highly visual reports that provide a snapshot of your company's key performance indicators (KPIs) in a user-friendly way. Dashboards combine charts, tables, gauges, and maps in a single, at-a-glance view to provide the crucial details you need to react quickly in any situation and make the best-informed business decision. Dashboard software that uses Excel...

CRM applications like can show you what deals you have in your pipeline, but they don't help you prioritize the deals or identify which ones are at risk. The CRM application can track your forecast, but it doesn't help you accurately come up with the forecast in the first place. This is where focused sales analytics solutions that are built on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business intelligence platform, not a transactional system, are helping VPs of sales hit their number and avoid nasty quarter end surprises. With the right sales analytics solution you will get more from your CRM investment by being able to answer these three questions: 1. Which deals in my pipeline should I focus on? 2. Which...

In this fast paced world, a company's plans and forecasts have to be constantly monitored, changed and updated to ensure that the business is geared up to face any challenges that may come its way. Flexibility to make necessary corrections and accuracy of the data used to create the plan is essential for a plan to succeed. Lacking an effective business intelligence system, or the knowledge to utilize the system properly, can hinder planning and forecasting. Planning and Forecasting Challenges Faced By Companies: It is essential for the company to have its target goals well defined and measuring metrics in place to analyze how the company is performing and to determine how effective the strategic...

Today, an increasing number of marketers and company executives see the need to determine marketing ROI for their marketing investments. Marketing Return of Investment (ROI) or Return on Marketing Investment is a metric that would optimize marketing spending both short and long-term. It is widely acknowledged that higher ROMI or ROI would mean effectiveness of marketing strategy, increase in revenue and improved market and profit share. There are two types of ROMI that can be used, short-term ROMI and long-term ROMI. The first type is used as an index to measure revenue in terms of dollars, contribution margin, and market share against every dollar spent for marketing activities. The determination...

There are no professional guidelines (yet) which define what it means to be a Performance Measurement Practitioner - not like there are for Accountants, Project Managers, Finance Officers and Engineers. So there's little wonder that there are so many talented and capable performance measurement practitioners out there who are underselling themselves. Are you one of them? Find out with this quiz: Q1: How much of your time do you spend - or should you spend - on performance measurement activities? Performance Measurement (PM) Practitioners routinely spend at least 40% of their work time devoted to a broad range of performance measurement activities, including the selection of measures aligned to...

Just like information technology (IT), human resources (HR) serve the business; just like IT, HR is not taken seriously enough by the business. Maybe it has got something to do with maintenance. Ask for perceptions of such functions and many employees immediately think HR exists simply to help serve core business operations, such as finance, sales and purchasing. It would be anathema to suggest finance is a second rate service that is not crucial to the business. So, why is it OK to simply write-off HR as a second tier service? In short, it is not – and your business is likely to miss out if you take such a blinkered view. Tough economic conditions mean organisations, particularly in the hard-hit...

Oracle Essbase 9 Implementation Guide is a new book from Packt that guides developers through the Essbase fundamentals and its multidimensional database technology. Written by Essbase experts, Sarma Anantapantula and Joseph Gomez, this book helps readers to install the Essbase software and launch a fully functioning Essbase database cube. Essbase is a multidimensional database management system (MDBMS) that provides a multidimensional database platform upon which to build analytic applications. The new data analysis trend involves business intelligence and analytics which is supported by the Oracle Essbase better than anything else is today's multidimensional OLAP technology. This book...

Business dashboards are a must for every businessman who wants to excel despite the toughness of the competition. Having the web-based dashboard is one of the most effective ways of showing the others that you are really prepared for the business battle. This is why if you will notice, companies that are really thriving are those that have their own executive dashboard so that they will be guided in their decision making process so that they can easily manage their business even if they are not physically there. With the web-based dashboard, the enterprise that you are running will be able to face even the strongest competitions head on. This type of dashboard helps in the process of business...

ign="center"> Crystal Reports Alternative Crystal Reports by Business Objects is one of the most popular and widely used reporting solutions in the world. Yet why are so many people frustrated with it? To answer this question you must first understand that there are two types of Business Intelligence reporting users: casual users and power users. Casual users, which typically make up 80% or more of the people in an organization, include executives, managers, staff, and business analysts. Power users, making up less than 20%, include IT developers, super users, and analytical modelers. Power users have no problem working with Crystal Reports because they understand database design, structures...

Activity-based costing (ABC), activity-based management (ABM) and the balanced scorecard (BSC) are established management methods. They are building blocks of performance management systems. ABC and ABM provide cost and other business intelligence about key business elements including resources, activities, products, services and customers. They enable managers to make decisions that improve cost and profit performance. The BSC translates strategic goals into a set of performance measures balanced according to the important dimensions of performance. It helps communicate and execute the strategic plan by defining success in quantitative terms at each level of the organization. ABC and the BSC are...

Have you noticed that technology has expanded the way in which humans now communicate, share information and collaborate to create new things faster than ever before. But has the human ability to assimilate the massive volume of information now available, and the evaluate it in a reasonable time to make timely decisions. The answer is NO! As humans we were educated in the Socratic way of thinking, innovating and making decisions. Each new thought expanded upon previously validated information. Thus evolution of products, ideologies and systems was progressive, but slow. It was also confined to facts previously held as 'true'. Today, information sharing and collaborative thinking has transformed...

BPEL or Business Process Execution Language (an XML format) was created according to the vision that process definitions should be interchangeable between BPM vendors. While that sounds like a noble target, I question its validity. Today BPEL is only supported by that vision as in reality it is unfulfilled. I will explain why that is my point of view and why it causes opposition. People either subscribe to that vision or they are implied to have deeper, immoral motives such as locking customers in. The truth is that any product (BPM or not) locks a customer in, one way or the other. The most successful vendors in doing this are IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and SAP. So maybe BPEL is not a visionary concept...

SAS Institute Systems Certification A00-212 exam SAS Advanced Programming Exam for SAS 9(A00-212) belongs to one of the SAS Institute Systems Certification certified test, if needs to obtain the SAS Institute Systems Certification certificate, you also need to participate in other related test, the details you may visit the SAS Institute Systems Certification certified topic, in there, you will see all related SAS Institute Systems Certification certified subject of examination. SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers improve performance and deliver value...

Oracle announces "JD Edwards World" and "JD Edwards EnterpriseOne" Tools Building upon its Oracle "Applications Unlimited" strategy, Oracle announced the latest release of Oracle's JD Edwards World and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools at COLLABORATE 09. "JD Edwards World A9.2 will allow us to take advantage of new, key manufacturing and distribution enhancements such as Work Orderless Processing, work order ledger, batch ship confirm and the introduction of Oracle BI Publisher and an improved document distribution," said David Bryant, Maxco's Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. " With JD Edwards World A9.2, the cost/benefit ratio is very favorable. With this latest release, and in conjunction...

With the advancement of science and technology changes in lifestyles occur faster than ever before. Work or entertainment, communication or medical treatment, technological solutions are delivered through several easy to sue devices that are built on application software. The convenience and amazing speed of doing things is remarkable and human life increasingly become dependent on IT solutions for virtually every aspect of living. The Internet and Information technology have revolutionized the way businesses are conducted and the wave has swept almost every field of activity bringing enormous changes in our lifestyles. Most of the functions like preparing documents, calculations, images, sounds and...

A curious mind is a great asset in business. When coupled with a good business intelligence system, new opportunities can open up that would previously have been well concealed. As businesses struggle to cope with the rapid pace of the market today, real time intelligence can make the difference between being a market leader, and being out of business. One of the barriers to accepting the insight that business intelligence reveals is emotion. Emotion is wrapped around egos that have for decades made business decisions based on intuition or 'gut feel'. Many managers and executives are finding it difficult to let go of intuition based decision making. However, stack intuition against logic, and in...

The recently released report by TDWI's Wayne Eckerson is all about how the need among business intelligence (BI) teams to do "more with less" has significantly increased following the recession. We summarize the underlying points in the report. One of the ways that BI teams have coped with shrinking budgets is via tactics. In the short-term, they have managed to cut costs without sacrificing quality or output by actions such as cutting low-priority projects, dismissing consultants working on them, and avoiding buying new products and expensive software upgrades. Successful negotiation of software maintenance contracts while relying on vendors for assistance has also lowered capital outlay. In the...

There is a saying that risks are inevitable especially in the world of business. There is no way that we will be able to avoid them. However, the answer to this is to effectively manage them. Whether you are just starting your enterprise or you have an already established business, you will be facing risks and challenges. The right approach for them is to ensure that we are prepared no matter what. This is why it is necessary that you constantly keep track of the performance of your business. It is important that you know what type of decisions that you have to make and when you are in need of them. In this case, what you need to do is to purchase scorecard solution. The balanced scorecard system is...

Today companies are being forced to cope with rising litigation risk because the business environment is simply more litigious. This increased litigiousness has produced a more rigorous due diligence requirement that involves a greater focus on the way intelligence is gathered and the processes associated with it. Part of this rigorous protocol is to monitor the IP landscape generally and competitive targets specifically (companies, products and technologies), before a decision is made to pursue one or more candidates. You can monitor technology in a variety of ways as it is being developed. At the inception of a technology, research platforms can provide only limited assistance because patents aren...

Anyone that has followed the product offerings from SAS in recent years knows that they have a comprehensive, end-to-end Business Intelligence package known as the EBI Suite or it's little brother the BI Suite. These products offer a great business intelligence platform with all of the OLAP, Web Reporting, Analytic and Portal tools that any fortune 500 company could ever need. But what about smaller businesses? Those that love SAS but have a limited budget. Those that just need a way to automate and web-enable some existing base SAS or Enterprise Guide reports but don't have a need for the heft of the BI suite (or its price tag). Well, the answer may have been sitting right under your nose. A common...

Many companies today rely on the general ledger as key part of their management reporting, well beyond the obvious financial information. The current practices in many organisations, and the architecture of their systems, and even the very structure of the software they buy have often been shaped by the history of the adoption of information technology in the firm. In many firms, their management reporting systems reflect the fact that as information technology began to be used extensively by business, often the very first functional area to be automated was accounting. Because finance and accounting are of course at the heart of any enterprise often the first automated reports and the first...

bottom-link"> As more and more financial institutions embrace the concept of CRM, are they really improving their relationships with their customers, and is that improvement equating to dollars on the bottom line? At the same time, while preparing for T+0, many financial institutions are attempting to provide better access to their stakeholders through Portals. How many of these eBusiness initiatives are really using the all of the data stored across the entire enterprise in a truly integrated way that yields valuable data? Are banks getting value for money on their applications? According to Gartner Group - the average Enterprise has 14 different databases, and spends 60-70% of its Application...

Whenever a potential candidate for either an E3 or H1B visa goes job searching for the first time a large part of the process is guess work as they decide what type of company may want to hire and thus sponsor them. It is a crazy system as from far away in a foreign country, possibly having never visited the US before, an applicant has to work out which companies may be more likely to take a chance on a foreigner who they potentially may never meet prior to hiring. As we strongly advocate it is important while maybe applying for positions from abroad, taking a chance and making the effort to come to the US for interviews to enhance you chances. Your resume and background would have to be pretty...

The programs used in businesses should be first rate and should only provide the best assistance that is available for the customers, employees and the other elements that affect the success and the credibility of the company. The SQL Server is once again providing excellent help to those who need it. This is why it is aimed at tailoring to the business needs of the people. Even though there are numerous competitive solutions, SQL remains to be one of the most patronized by the consumers because it has many features that will easily attract the people when it comes to managing their business well. Microsoft SQL Server is reliable, secure and scalable. This data platform provides services that are...

Adobe takes mighty pride in its open source RIA development platform - Flex. Flex is based on the Flash framework which enables the web applications to run visually rich content with multimedia playback. Additionally the latest version of the Flex SDK 4 makes the life of the Flex developers so easy that it cuts down considerable debugging and testing times. A good Flex developer can easily create a fully functional enterprise app and deploy it seamlessly. When in need of a state-of-the-art RIA to brings in more visitors and hence add to the online business image positively, companies should insist on hiring a Flex developer who has profound knowledge of the platform to utilize its power optimally...