AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT FROM MEDIAPLANET ABOUT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

28 MARCH 2008 BUSINESSINTELLIGENCE

Utilising data to achieve competitive advantage

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CONTENTS

Strategy 4

Unstructured data 5

Enterprise contentManagement 6

Sharing strategies 9

Sharing information 11

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCEA TITLE FROM MEDIAPLANET

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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Introduction

FAST Search and Transfer, an enterprisesearch company that is being acquiredby Microsoft. “Traditional BI would givehim a numerical analysis of the previousweek’s performance and the latest fore-cast, but true business intelligence willtell him how the competition did lastweek; which new staff have joined withvaluable industry insight; studies on themarket impact of recent acquisitions;

what new products were launched andwhat the press had to say about them.They will need to use other tools to gainthis intelligence.”

Indeed, a BI Rapid Survey Report bythe National Computing Centre andSybase in June 2007 found that 87 percent of BI projects in the United Kingdom have not lived up to expecta-tions and 21 per cent reported that thesystem did not have the data that theyreally need. “BI systems will continue togrow as an increasingly important busi-ness tool,” says Dave Lawrence, techni-cal sales manager at Sybase. “However,they will need to support growing vol-

umes of structured and unstructured in-formation to provide competitive ad-vantage to the business.”

Chris Livesey, director of IBM’s information management softwarebusiness in the United Kingdom, ex-plains its ‘Information on Demand’ vi-sion, which gives managers trustedinformation in a context that they canuse or action to help them to make de-cisions more quickly and more effec-tively. It brings together IBM’s longhistory of data warehousing, its FileNetcontent management acquisition and itsnewly acquired Cognos BI platform.

A portal is a technology designedfor accessing all sources of data, bothstructured and unstructured. It shouldinclude a dashboard giving an instantsnapshot of the state of the businessthrough structured data and unstruc-tured news. “They give you onescreen, but you go in different direc-

tions to get structured andunstructured data,” pointsMichael Cocroran, chiefmarketing officer at Infor-mation Builders.

Instead of getting the userto follow the data, portal soft-ware needs to allow the userto follow a train of thought,presenting them with the rele-vant data, both structured andunstructured, as they progress.Jerry Brown, senior analystwith Bloor Research, cites thecompany page of Google Fi-nance as a good example of‘content intelligence.’ It com-bines stock market data, shareprice graph, press releases,

published comment, competitive statis-tical performance comparisons, blogand community site comments andmanagement ratios that can be drilledinto for further analysis.

True BI software also needs to auto-matically sift information in the back-ground and present relevant data toeach user. “We will see an informationexplosion over the next five years to anorder of magnitude we never expected,”says Mr Cocroran. “Software shouldpresent users with things they need toknow, whether or not they know theyneed to know it, and answers to ques-tions they don’t know how to ask. A lot

To be truly effective, BI must integrate internaland external structured and unstructured data.

True businessintelligence

BI is a very complex business strat-egy that can be very simply describedas the use of interactive end-usersoftware to provide people with theinformation they need to make deci-sions that contribute to the achieve-ment of corporate objectives. For over25 years the vendors have been pro-viding functionality to extract enor-mous amounts of information frominternal structured data, in theform of numbers, in databasesthroughout the organisation.

On 14th September 2006 and26th March 2007 we took a verycomprehensive look at the busi-ness issues surrounding BI. On18th September 2007 we peekedat the underlying technologyand in the introduction we re-ported an emerging interest incombining structured and un-structured data.

Anybody who set out to de-sign a business intelligence so-lution from scratch would haveincluded both. Right from theoutset, the vendors have beenoffering functionality to includeunstructured data, in the form of textand electronic mail, but there has beenlittle take-up from their customers.

It seems that the time has finallycome to combine the 20 per cent of in-formation that is structured with the 80per cent that is unstructured, so we aredevoting this whole supplement to ex-amining ‘true business intelligence.’Taken together, the four reports will givereaders a very complementary and com-prehensive view of BI.

“A senior business manager is plan-ning the week ahead on a Mondaymorning,” suggests Davor Sutija, seniorvice president for product marketing at

of decisions are based on new or real-time data, so predictive analytics andreal-time analytics must be embeddedto enable managers to make a deci-sion on data that isn’t yet in a data-base. It is a major time for change andan exciting time.”

According to Alastair Sim, head ofstrategy and marketing, SAS UnitedKingdom, organisations are not usingIT to drive the decision making thatwill enable them to grow and inno-vate, because they are not seeingstructured and unstructured data as asingle source. “They have invested inoperational systems that only give afinite return on investment,” he says,“but infinite opportunities lie in har-nessing BI for future growth, in par-ticular to feed innovation. Boards ofdirectors can create greater long-termshareholder value by tapping into thewealth of intelligence in their un-structured data.”

An IDC/Teradata survey into deci-sion-making in 2007 revealed that morethan half of the information the 1,000respondents currently deal with for de-cision making is unstructured. “With in-formation becoming the lifeblood of abusiness, how you manage and exploitit is increasingly differentiating onebusiness from another,” says HermanWimmer, European president at the BIvendor. “Time is no longer money,rather it is timely information that isnow money.”

Joanna Causon, director of corporateaffairs at the Chartered Management In-stitute, says that the right processes andprocedures for good decision-makingare critical to the business. Software willhelp to pull together information andsynthesise it, but managers still have tomake judgements or decide whether theinformation in front of them is ade-quate. She says that organisations mustprovide technology and then train theirmanagers and leaders to ask appropriatequestions and think through the conse-quences of any decision they are taking.

“Ignoring unstructured data is atremendous lost opportunity,” concludesSohaib Abbasi, chief executive of Infor-matica, a data integration software ven-dor. “However leveraging it is atremendous opportunity to gain futurecompetitive advantage.”

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Future BI systemsBUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

More than 80 per cent of all data inan enterprise is unstructured infor-mation. Much of this is in word pro-cessing, spreadsheet, presentation,PDF files, electronic mail and scannedinvoices. It also includes pictures, di-agrams, scanned forms and records,audio, video, plans, maps, contractsand customer correspondence.

Guy Westlake, European productmarketing manager at Vignette, an en-terprise content management (ECM)vendor, says that the number ofsources is continuing to rise with

emergence of Web 2.0 technologies,such as blogs, wikis and RSS feeds.Chris Livesey, director of IBM’s infor-mation management software businessin the United Kingdom points out thatdocuments from the pre-computer eracan even be scanned into digital for-mat for processing.

“What sets the human animal apartis our ability to communicate complexinformation in a completely unstruc-tured way,” says Chris Gledhill, man-aging director at PDMS, a software

Context is kingManaging unstructured data is all about giving it structure.

agement company. “Compoundingthis, internal documents almost neverlink to each other, nor do they havethe ability to connect or engage withexternal third-party content. The prob-lem is that this model doesn’t reflectthe way businesses work anymore.”

One solution is text analytics, whichextract meaning and sentiment fromunstructured information. These lookfor the frequency with which wordsare used and the roles and relation-ships among specific words within adocument to determine the context ofthe information.

“Consumers give organisations ahuge amount of information thatsimply isn’t captured because it isnot in a traditional structured for-mat,” says Alastair Sim, head ofstrategy and marketing, SAS UK.“All this free intelligence from theconsumer can actually be harnessedby bringing it together in a BI plat-form, combining it with structureddata and analysing it to spot newmarkets or opportunities.”

Rita Knox, research vice president atGartner, says that company reputation,product failures and customer views ofcompanies’ competitors can all be ex-tracted from customer phone conversa-tions. Logica UK is text mining e-mailsand free form text in call centre sum-maries for its clients. In mobile telecom-munications companies it is scoringcustomers’ propensity to churnby finding out howfed up they

“Context isking when

informationpours in throughevery point of theorganisation”

developer. “We love a good ‘chinwag,’which is why instant messaging, blog-ging and texting are so popular, andthis intrinsic love of chatting translatesinto our organisations. The problem isthat computers are the exact opposite.They need order and structure andthey can’t even recognise anythingoutside their own structure.”

Paradoxically, much unstructureddata is highly structured, such asscanned invoices, but the structure isonly apparent to the user. It has almostno value in its unstructured form, soto extract value from it structured datamust be added to it. This can be donemanually by assigning keywords ordescriptions, or software can analyseit to extract structure from it.

Optical character recognition softwarecan read scanned documents and con-tent analysis or text mining softwarecan read documents and e-mails to un-derstand what they are and what theysay. Clive Longbottom, service directorat Quocirca, points to Witness Systems,which converts voice calls to text, so itcan be searched, and Convera whichwill examine video and compare colour,shape and texture with photographs toprovide facial recognition.

This process of adding informationis called ‘tagging’ or creating meta-data, which is ‘data about data.’ Oncethe structure has been created, it caneasily be managed by the BI system.

“Because written documents aregenerally static, information tradition-ally remains horded in separate de-partments,” says Peter Romaine,director and general manager of XeroxGlobal Services UK, a document man-

are and generating automated actionsto agents.

According to Charles Nicholls,founder of BI vendor SeeWhy Soft-ware, the most valuable answers andthe biggest insights come when datasets intersect, as they do in a tradi-tional data warehouse. The ability toanalyse both structured transactionaldata and unstructured web click-through data is one of the richestseams. The organisation can immedi-ately see when a good customer ishaving a bad day on a website andcan intervene in the session, changethe business process flow or sendthem a promotional, thereby making

BI actionable, something that hasoften eluded organisations.

“Context is king for when informa-tion pours in through every point ofthe organisation,” says Ken Burns,market intelligence manager at Hy-land Software, an ECM software ven-dor. “Context-based informationmanagement creates data relation-ships regardless of whether it is struc-tured or unstructured. Business needsto pursue an information manage-ment strategy that focuses on infor-mation ‘purpose’ rather thantraditional considerations revolvingaround data format and storagesource.”

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Enterprise content managementBUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Enterprise content management(ECM) systems, previously known asdocument management systems, havetraditionally been used to store im-portant documents in a safe andstructured environment. This allowsthem to be quickly recovered to sup-port business processes or to proveregulatory compliance.

“In isolation, ECM delivers nothingbut a policy-centric framework to un-structured information,” explains GuyHodges, head of ECM practice atMorse, a business and technology con-sultancy. “Any value to be gainedtherefore is entirely retrospective, as itenables an organisation to be more ac-countable for its information in theevent that it is taken to task.”

Like a giant electronic filing sys-tem, ECM systems are built on a file

Content management systems are ripe foranalysis by BI tools.

structure of electronic cabinets, draw-ers and files. It will help a user to finda document that they know exists orto list documents with the same key-words assigned, but can be very cum-bersome for finding informationabout a topic, without knowing whatdocuments to look for or what key-words will help find it.

“BI companies like Business Objectshave invested in technology to allowthem to work with true unstructuredtextual content in very high volumesfor decision support,” says ElaineMercer, director of BI at Logica UK,the computer services company.“They are designed with a very stronganalytical component and present theuser with the result of the analysis,together with a link to the documents.ECM tools are designed to retrieve a

document and present it to a person,so they have a very different focus.Both will find a needle in a haystack,but the BI tool will apply businessrules to analyse it and create contextto provide insight.”

Organisations have two alternativeapproaches to managing their un-structured data. The first is to puteverything that has possible value intoan ECM system, with its reliability andsecurity. The second is to leave themwherever they originate, spread acrossvarious network servers, and use en-terprise search engines to find andanalyse them.

Research conducted by AIIM Eu-rope, the ECM association, shows that28 per cent of organisations intend tomigrate their unstructured data to anECM system, 21 per cent plan to donothing and 40 per cent intend to relyon a portal or enterprise search to lo-cate it. “The latter may be pragmatic,”says Doug Miles, United Kingdommanaging director at AIIM Europe,“but shared file systems or an e-mailarchive give the organisation no con-trol over security, access and lifetimemanagement, such as structured stor-age, archiving and disposal. The datawill be accessible, but it will bechaotic for legal discovery and com-pliance issues. It is no better than if

you had chucked it into digital land-fill! It would be safer to print out doc-uments and put them in a filingcabinet.”

Alexandre Pierre, senior productmanager for BI at Open Text, an ECMvendor accepts that reporting and de-cision-making is often not easy andnot well addressed within current ECMsolutions. Their database structures are

designed as transactional systems, inorder to provide high performance,which makes reporting on the under-lying metadata fairly complex.

“Advanced reporting systems mustconnect ECM with other informationsystems in aggregated dashboardsthat give a ‘big picture’ overview,” hesays. “Technical experts, such as IT

developers and consultants, usuallyknow how the data is set up and howto create reports, but are not the oneswho need to use and consume thiscontent. Bridging the disconnect be-tween data discovery and meaningfuldata presentation is critical.”

Ken Burns, market intelligencemanager at Hyland Software, anECM software vendor, says that aneffective interplay between BI andECM solutions is often the last majordifferentiator in a market which israpidly being commoditised. In cus-tomer-focused industries, the abilityto instantly access customer infor-mation stored in the BI system alongwith related forms, e-mails, photosand documents will always providebetter customer service, while drain-ing fewer resources than the compe-tition.

“The days of isolated ECM systemsare quickly becoming a thing of thepast, especially as the market place isgoing through a period of seriousvendor consolidation,” says MrHodges. “The more enlightened ap-proach will see future systems beingimplemented behind BI and searchtools to provide a more flexible andholistic solution driven by the need toaccess unstructured information in auser-defined context.”

Electronic filing cabinets

“Advancedreporting systems

must connectECM with other

informationsystems”

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Promotional Features BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Just a few years ago, there were notmany companies with massiveamounts of data to store and analyse.Now, almost everywhere you look,companies have to, want to, or planto capture, retain, and eventually usevast amounts of data. This has led tothe development of specialised dataappliances to handle data manage-ment requirements.

The appliance approach relievedcompanies of having to build theirown infrastructure out of a mix ofiron, wiring, and hand-coded softwaremodules. If companies then didn’thave to worry about managing theirdata, more time could be spent on thecontent of the data—the informationinside—that can actually bring moretangible value to the business.

The data warehouse applianceachieved that by packaging togethereverything needed to build a datawarehouse to manage all of this data.

Data warehouse appliances are nowfar simpler to install and maintainthan a typical database server plusstorage infrastructure that was pre-viously pieced together. They’re eas-ier to get up and running, but is thatenough? How hard is it to “person-alise” them so that they can adjusteasily to constantly changing re-quirements?

Personalising your infrastructureWhy talk about personalisation in

the context of data warehousing? Ibelieve personalisation is the elementthat brings the data warehouse appli-ance to the next level of usefulness, orrelevance to most businesses. By per-sonalisation, I mean continually ad-justing aspects of the appliance to suitan organisation’s needs.

Once you get a taste for the typeof business insight you can gainfrom making use of your data, themore questions you want answered.You want your data warehouses tocontribute to your agility instead ofdefining your limits. Greater flexi-

bility will translate into more de-mands for scalability, accommodat-ing both complex analytics androutine reporting with everything inbetween, handling more peoplewanting to do a greater variety ofthings with more data.

1.How adaptable is your infrastructure?

To profile your infrastructure’s flex-ibility, consider all the componentsthat have to be touched when youmake significant additions to users,data volume, or applications.

2.How many physical parts are involved?

Include hardware, cables, powerpacks, etc.

How many physical changes have tobe made? Think green in terms ofpower, cooling, and space.

3.How many changes to connectedhardware?

Include all back-up, disaster recov-ery and additional storage hardware.

4.How many changes to dependentsoftware?

For example, the software used tosupport items covered in question 3.

How much work is expected tomeet your basic operating require-ments? Which skills, how much staff,dependencies on business users inputare involved.

5.How much work to test? Consider IT hours and hours on the

business side.The higher the numbers in your an-

swers, the more work, complexity, andrisk are involved with every change.Traditional tiered storage architectureshave very high numbers with its manymoving parts and touch points. Thenewest data warehouse appliances will

have the lowest numbers because theyare designed to be non-disruptive re-quiring no adjustments to applicationsand no disturbance in the businessuser’s world. From a business perspec-tive, they quickly become good “corpo-rate citizens,” scaling easily, requiringlittle attention and few resources. Theyreduce the impact of change, makingchange feasible and personalisationpossible.

To build flexibility into your datawarehouse, you need to start streamlin-ing each of these change effects. Themore minimal the impact of a change,the easier you can adapt to the nextwave of business requirements. Takingthe steps you’ll need to bring your in-frastructure forward, is now an afford-able option you can’t afford to ignore.

Q & AJonathan Saunders,managing director, Dataupia

Q. How do you reduce the long term operating cost of your businessintelligence (BI) infrastructure?A. Go “green.” When it comes to BI infrastructure, companies are literallyrunning out of physical space and power to manage their data. And whiletechnology acquisition costs are being reduced, long-term operating costs aregrowing. Reducing operating expenditures has become a critical considerationin technology evaluation.

There is a simple mathematical equation to calculate the energyefficiency of your BI infrastructure—the “Environmental Footprint.” Thefactors that make up this equation are: the amount of power consumed;cooling requirements; and the amount of physical space used by your datacenter equipment. In order to drastically decrease your footprint in the longterm you must impact all three factors.

When evaluating BI infrastructure technology consider the following:1. Does the solution leverage high efficiency processors to limit powerconsumption?2. How densely is data stored?3. Are special cooling systems required to maintain peak systemsperformance?4. Are the dimensions of the equipment compatible with available floor space?

Today’s next generation data warehouse appliances have been developed toconserve resources by reducing energy consumption and save space whilstincreasing processing power. Efficiencygains can be as high as 50 fold ascompared to traditional infrastructure.

Keep it simple: gaining efficiencythrough data warehouse appliancesBY JONATHAN SAUNDERS MANAGINGDIRECTOR, DATAUPIA

For more information about Data Warehouse Appliances please visit www.dataupia.com/dwa101 or email: info@dataupia.com

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE NETWORK: BRINGING BI EXPERTISE TO YOUR DESKTOP

� Mike Ferguson,Business Intelligence Expertfor BeyeNETWORK

It’s no secret that business intelligence (BI) applications and technologiesenable organisations to make more informed business decisions and providethe strategic advantage they need in today’s competitive marketplace.Consequently, every company must make a determined effort to seek outcomprehensive resources that help them effectively use business intelligence.One truly comprehensive resource is the Business Intelligence Network.

Founded in 2004 to give readers a one-stop resource for all of their BIneeds, the Business Intelligence Network has sites throughout the world,including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Spain.

Anchoring the UK site is Mike Ferguson, Managing Director of IntelligentBusiness Strategies Limited. Based in London, Mike brings many years of industryexpertise to the site.

“I enjoy working with the Business Intelligence Network, helping readersstay in touch with hot topics and reality on the ground in the UK andEuropean business intelligence markets,” says Ferguson. “I find it interestingto explore established and newly emerging business intelligence technologiesand share best practices with the audience.”

In addition to timely articles, news and research, the Network offersreaders a chance to embrace Web 2.0 technologies. All of the sites utilize themost advanced technology available for delivery of content over the web,including RSS feeds, expert-hosted blogs, audio-driven interviews andpodcasting. Users can read articles, pick up the latest research, check out dailyblogs, subscribe to relevant newsletters and download audio podcasts to theirMP3 players.

To experience the best in BI, visit www.b-eye-network.co.uk today!

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Yet despite this, Business Intelligence is stillbig business. Our members still need guid-ance and support throughout their BI proj-

ects lifecycle, but who can they turn to for bestpractices and proven results?

Set-up in 2005, Obis Omni is the UK’s only in-dependent Business Intelligence Community.Bringing together over 1,800 Business and IT pro-fessionals from a range of sectors, the Communitycreates a learning and sharing environment forprofessionals that often only have software spe-cific user groups to turn to for advice. Operatingprimarily via UK based seminars and conferences,we aim to fast-track our member’s BI projects withpeer-to-peer networking, round-tables and work-shops from industry experts and analyst.

This year Obis Omni have already run severalexceptionally successful events for members upand down the UK:

“The Obis Omni event gave me a new outlookon Business Intelligence as seen by a group ofrespected equal peers. We arrived as strangersand left as friends….”

“Thoroughly enjoyed the event….made a re-freshing change from the kind of event where a

variety of speakers (no matter how gifted), arebasically saying their product is the solution toeveryone’s problems.”

“As a fairly new ‘entrant’ into the BI world, itwas very, very interesting to hear about the suc-cess stories in BI, and learn about some of theopposition in getting the organisation to adoptthe Business Intelligence way of thinking.”

“Great meeting with a great speaker”

“In summary it was an enjoyable and relevantevent – both speakers were excellent and had apassion for their topics. Keep up the good work!”

As a Business Intelligence Community, our keyfocus is our members. Through research we en-deavour to bring the right topics and issues toour community and to their region. These in-formal yet interactive workshops allow ourmembers to better understand how to drivetheir projects forward whilst brainstormingwith their peers.

Why did we make the decision to go regional?Whilst being primarily based in London, Obis

Omni has members all over the UK, including Scotland, Wales and Ireland. As aresult, many members cannot attend duetravel and time constraints. ConsequentlyObis Omni have launched regional events in2008, focusing on providing our members theopportunity to network and hear from key in-dustry speakers in their local area, ensuringthat they don’t miss out on vital informationbecause of their location.

This diversification of geography ties in withour diversification of topics in 2008, runningseminars, conferences, and workshops that af-fect or will be affecting our members this year– virtualisation and data security being justsome of these.

Ensuring that our events are driven by theneeds of the membership, Obis Omni continuesto drive our members forward. By increasingour membership we are adding to the “circle ofknowledge and experience”, diversifying theaudience base at our events and bringing in awealth of experience and knowledge that canbe utilised by our community in their workinglife. Joining the Community is FREE, givingyou access to unlimited white papers, casestudies and entry to our events and workshops.

The end is not nigh…….

BY CHRIS MONK, OBIS OMNI

The closing months of 2007 were a rollercoaster ride for Business Intelligence. Buy-outs and mergershave left a substantial portion of the market in the hands of the few “mega-vendors”.

Regional seriesBirmingham 16 April 2008Manchester 15 May 2008

Special Interest WorkshopsKey Performance Indicators21 May 2008 AMData Quality 21 May 2008 PM

The Forum 2008London, 16 & 17 September 2008

Industry Focused Think Tanks8th May, London

For more information on theseevents please contactjay.butcher@obisomni.com.www.obisomni.com

Obis Omni’s annual Business Intelligence Forum features presentations from BI experts at top UKcompanies. Last year these included Head of Application Management at Homebase, Vice Presidentat Visa, IT Director at Cluttons, Head of Enterprise Information Management at ING US Financial Serv-ices, Principle IT Officer at Leeds City Council to name but a few. This two day event provides an idealopportunity for delegates to meet with other BI users, consultants and vendors.

Are you a BI decision maker with a live project and budget to spend?The Obis Omni Forum 2008 provides a unique opportunity to hear peers and experts discuss key is-sues and trends within the BI space. A fantastic opportunity to meet with multiple BI vendors with-out taking you out of the office for lengthy meetings!

Announcing our first BI dedicated Awards Ceremony!Obis Omni are proud to announce our FIRST Business Intelligence Awards Ceremony that is to takeplace on the 16th September at the Obis Omni Forum 2008.

Your chance to be recognised, join us at our gala dinner and awards ceremony!To find out if you qualify for a free place or any of the Obis Omni member special rates, contactjay.butcher@obisomni.com or call 020 7202 7484. Joining Obis Omni is FREE! (www.obisomni.com)

Sponsorship opportunities contact emma.taylor@obisomni.com or call 020 7202 4890Media Partnership opportunities contact sonia.perez@obisomni.com or call 020 7202 4891For further information www.obisomniforum.com

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

OBIS OMNI’S ANNUAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FORUM 2008 16 - 17 September 2008Park Inn Hotel, London Heathrow

CHECK OUT SOME OF OUR UPCOMING EVENTS:

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Sharing strategies BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

No manager can make a decisionbased on just internal structured datafrom a traditional BI system. Mostspend hours absorbing news, scan-ning magazines, reading market re-search reports and searching theworld-wide web. This provides awealth of data that, in one way or an-other, all relates to the internal struc-tured data, but it is only integrated atthe level of the user’s brain!

“If we take lessons from financialmarkets, we know that it is news thatmoves markets, not the results fromthe accounting system,” says SimonWilliams, chief executive of Smith-Bayes, a software vendor that embedsthird party content feeds. “Business ismessy, complex and fast moving, sothe new era of business intelligencemust be able to utilise whatever infor-mation businesses can lay their handson and seamlessly blend both internaland external data sources.”

This approach allows decision mak-ers to map out their strategic optionsand determine the best path forward,based upon what they know today. Italso allows organisations to learn andadapt over time. “It is not having theperfect gameplan,” says Mr Williams,“but how you respond to change thatdetermines the winner.”

Sohaib Abbasi chief executive of In-formatica, a data integration softwarevendor, says that BI should enable new

No organisation is an island

ways of exchanging information be-tween enterprises. Classically, compa-nies in a supply chain are able to bemore responsive to consumer needs byexchanging information, especiallypassing point-of-sale data from retail-ers back up to distributors, manufac-turers and suppliers. They are takingthis data into the data warehouses thatlie at the heart of their BI systems.

“BI is often perceived as a purely in-ternal tool, but it should be more aboutconnecting organisations together,”says Richard Neale, marketing directorat Business Objects. “Taking data frompartners, distributors and customersenables businesses to get a muchclearer overview of their entire supplychain process and the service theyoffer to customers.”

In fact, 24 per cent of the respondents

to an IDC/Teradata study into deci-sion-making in 2007 said they allowcustomers to access their BI solutions.Another 21 per cent provide access totheir suppliers.

“Manufacturers are more accuratelyforecasting demand and raw materialavailability from their suppliers to helpmatch demand to supply,” says Her-man Wimmer, president of EMEA atTeradata, a BI vendor. “But it is notjust manufacturers and retailers shar-ing data, airlines and hotel groups aresharing information with travel agents,while telecommunications companiesare sharing information with contentprovider partners.”

Sharing information in this way isdelivering great benefits, such asdriving decisions on reducingwastage in physical supply chains,

ensuring product availability andhelping organisations to better tailortheir goods and services to their cus-tomers. Organisations are also incor-porating market research data intotheir data warehouses, where it can becombined with internal data to drivemarketing campaigns.

Nick Millman, senior director withAccenture Information ManagementServices, says that the consumer sec-tor, particularly financial services andtelecommunications, is making muchmore use of external data sources. Anexample is the use, such of householddemographics for customer activitymodels. Alastair Sim, head of strategyand marketing at SAS UK, points outthe value of incorporating meteoro-logical data in order to model con-sumer demand.

“External data, from consumershopping habits to census data, pro-vides more context to the customer in-formation that organisations alreadyhold,” says Mr Wimmer. “It fills gapsin their internal data and enhancesanalysis to improve the targeting oftheir marketing campaigns.”

However, just as data quality is amajor issue internally, it is even moreof a problem when there is no controlover data input and management bythe external provider. “Data quality iscritical,” warns Mr Millman, “but thereis no accountability.”

Jerry Brown, senior analyst withBloor Research, says that BI systems

should extract content from onlinecommunities. They can sense and re-spond to what their own and theircompetitors’ employees are saying andwhat potential customers are sayingabout them in blogs, wikis and onlinecommunities across the internet. “Thiswould enable them to sense and re-spond to growth market opportunitiesand competitor activities before theyactually happen,” he says.

Richard Siddaway, Microsoft prac-tice leader at IT services companyCentiq, warns that data quality ap-plies equally with informationsourced from the world-wide web.He advises clients to develop policiesto determine the correctness of thedata. “Most people don’t questionthe validity on internet search re-sults nor the content of Wikipedia,”he says. “Just because data exists, itdoesn’t mean that it is accurate - oreven true.”

“Just becausedata exists, itdoesn't mean

that it isaccurate - oreven true”

Before the big branding change over, managementdecided to improve a number of inefficient busi-ness processes that led to poor decision making.The project was not a technology driven assign-ment but a key operational overhaul. The foun-dation for the project was the need to analyse andunderstand existing business processes to identifyinefficiencies and weaknesses.

THE INTELLIGENCEZavvi can now monitor particular product salesin individual stores. “We can range on a farmore micro level than ever before,” says TonyJohnson, IT Director at Zavvi Entertainment,“building on a store-by-store basis to maximisesales and using the business intelligence systemfor dynamic management.

For example, release dates for new DVDs and CDsare different in the UK and Ireland. Previously,Zavvi monitored performance for both regions onthe same day. However, UK reporting can now bematched to Monday release dates and Ireland’s toFriday’s release dates – giving merchandisers muchmore accurate information over initial perform-ance and restock items to increase total sales foreach new album.

THE RESULTS“Supplies of new games can often be con-strained,” explains Johnson. “With this systemwe can see sales trends by mid-day on the daythe product is released, allowing us to adapt or-ders to meet likely demand very quickly, result-ing in competitive advantage.”

As part of its ongoing programme, Zavvi analyseinventory management, assortment planning, salesmargin analysis and have brought customer foot-fall analysis in-house – all under their enterprise-wide business intelligence (BI) platform, fromMicroStrategy, to monitor conversion rate and av-erage transaction value.

FUTURE PLANS “We were able to conceive and deliver a set of so-lutions that met key objectives,” says Johnson.“The project structure we created integratedseamlessly into our business processes and workculture. As a result, we can look back on a year inwhich we’ve added real value to the business, andlook forward to building on that success as Zavvicontinues to win out in the challenging marketsin which we operate.“We went to tender to find the right BI solutionand MicroStrategy was chosen for its single con-solidated platform and mature web based reportdelivery. We also value MicroStrategy’s analytical

capability, ease of use, speed of reporting andsheer scalability.”

For more information, call 020 8396 0000,email infouk@microstrategy.com or visitwww.microstrategy.co.uk

HOW ZAVVI IS YOUR BUSINESS?The newly formed High Street and online retailer Zavvi Entertainment(formally Virgin Megastores) is using business intelligence to drivereal-time sales information to their 129 newly rebranded stores.

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

External information adds power to information already in BI systems.

� Companies can benefit from sourcing information from a wide range of resources

In today’s fast-paced busi-ness environments, im-portant decisions often

have to be made quickly,with limited information.Having access to data aboutbusiness performance, mar-ket trends and external pres-sures, is critical to drivebusiness growth.

Businesses must also com-ply with stringent reportingguidelines, increasing thepressure to manage informa-tion more effectively.

In response to these de-mands, solutions which provide analysis and managementof enterprise performance are becoming in-creasingly popular. Without such solutions,managers are like parachutists trying to makea pinpoint landing whilst blindfolded.

But information is like news – it must becurrent to have value. Consequently, demandfor integrated analysis systems, which do notsolely rely on retrospective data, but insteadfactor in events as they happen, has exploded.

Therefore, many companies are looking toBusiness Intelligence (BI) to support betterdecision-making. BI refers to technologies,applications and practices for the collection,integration, analysis, and presentation ofbusiness information and also sometimes tothe information itself.

Although companies have been using BI fora number years, BI tools alone achieve onlypart of the challenge. This is because infor-mation can only be studied in retrospect. Im-portant questions remain unanswered, suchas: how is the market environment changing?Is there an easy way management can trackbusiness and market developments? What ef-fect will new legislation have on businessstrategy?

Most companies hold vast quantities ofdata which are spread across their enterpriseresource planning systems, data marts, onlineanalytical processing cubes and Excel spread-sheets. The problem with these disparatesources is that they tie up information so thatby the time data gets analysed, it is too late.

Companies are used to receiving reportsthat tell them what happened, but fail to di-vulge ‘why’. The omission of this context iscritical. Managers need to know what ac-tivities took place to produce certain results.From that, the activities required to facili-tate medium and long term strategies can beplanned and executed. Simply being suc-cessful in the past is no guarantee of suc-cess in the future, but knowing why you were successfulis a good place to start.

The Data Warehouse Some companies believe the answer to the problem lies sim-ply within a data warehouse, which is a storage area wherean organisation’s electronic data is compiled. Data ware-houses are designed to facilitate reporting and analysis and

are beneficial as they store vast amounts of information inone place.

Having a common model for the storing of data, regardlessof the source makes it easier to report and analyse, than if itwere to be placed within multiple sources. However, the datawarehouse can be time-consuming and expensive as it cantake months or even years to implement, and the costs caneasily escalate.

Some studies have shown that the delivery of a compre-hensive data warehouse can take over three years with a totalcost of ownership exceeding $8 million. Therefore by the timethey are in place, the information needs of the user in mostinstances will have already changed.

Instead, competitive advantage is derived through effec-tive analysis, speed and accessibility to the right information,which enables companies to become increasingly agile andmore responsive to market dynamics.

More and more businesses are realising that BI tools alone arenot enough in driving companies’ enterprise planning and arelooking at Performance Management (PM) to help support theirBI. When it comes to PM, there are two options available.

Pre-build AnalyticsOption one is the pre-built analytic, which is a one-off per-formance management application built-in to an existing

system. Pre-built analytics offer a more responsive ap-proach to the data warehouse, as analytics allow the user tounderstand historical patterns with an eye to predicting andimproving business performance in the future. This isachieved through analysing, and monitoring performancemetrics from multiple business angles and levels of detail,using a web browser. The analysis can be viewed on dash-boards, reports, email alerts, and spreadsheets and are dis-played as charts, graphs, maps, tables, gauges, lists andother presentation options.

Yet, while this might seem like an attractive option, pre-built analytics can be time intensive for business users tonavigate, thus cancelling out some of the benefits.

Integrated Performance ManagementThe second option available is an integrated performancemanagement solution, which is capable of driving a com-

pany’s strategic objectives by organisingand analysing business methodologies,metrics, processes and systems that drivebusiness performance.

Integrated PM is increasingly used to aidBI as it is the most effective and easy way toplan, monitor and report, and makes per-formance management more consistent andefficient across a company’s entire enterprise.

Integrated PM gives decision-makers aquick and easy to use solution, providingusers with insight to information, which isused to support an organisation’s strategicagenda.

Recipe for successIntroducing a PM component to an existingBI solution is a very effective approach to in-tegrated enterprise control. Historically, costhas been prohibitive, however costs havesince been lowered over time by vendors as aresult of consistent integration and prefabri-cation. Therefore, a need for only minor cus-tomisation accelerates implementation andlowers overall operating costs.

In conclusion, BI tools alone address onlypart of the challenge, because informationcan be studied only in retrospect. In today’sclimate, companies demand real-time qualityinformation, which is efficient, easy to use,and cost-effective. Existing BI methods can-not guarantee this.

By implementing a performance manage-ment system, organisations can ensure bet-ter decision-making and the ability to reactquickly to change, increasing the likelihoodof achieving strategic goals. Any companylooking to expand its business must balanceshort, medium and long term plans contin-uously against the goals actually achieved,in order not to waste investment capital, andto secure future performance expectations.

Author: Chris Field ( BA ACMA), Business Consulting Man-ager UK, Ireland Middle East and Africa, Performance Man-agement, Infor

For further information:Call: 0800 555789Visit: www.infor.co.uk/pm Email: sarah.jones@infor.com

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

Ultimate IntelligenceChris Field, Business Consulting Manager for Infor, highlights the benefits of

Performance Management solutions in aiding Business Intelligence

Chris Field

AN ADVERTISING INSERT BY MEDIAPLANET 11

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

An internet search engine reads webpages and creates an index of contentbased upon keywords. When it re-ceives a search request from a user itcompares it with the index and re-turns the result.

In contrast, enterprise search en-gines have to analyse a wide range ofdifferent data, in different systemsand different formats and structures,called ‘universal search. The softwarehas embedded complex and powerfulmathematical models, called ‘algo-rithms,’ that are designed to extractmeaning from the data, called ‘con-textual search.’

“Keyword search on the internetcan never produce true business in-telligence within the enterprise,” saysSimon Price, United Kingdom direc-tor of Recommind, a search softwarevendor. “It forces users to either befastidious in their original query orwade through an ocean of unfilteredresponses. Either way, they must putin a huge effort to mine a singlenugget of useful information.”

An internal search engine must beable to access all core business sys-tems, such as SAP and Oracle, contentmanagement systems, BI systems,electronic mail, shared files, intranets,databases, applications, Microsoft Of-

fice documents, PDF files, external li-braries and catalogues and even ex-ternally-hosted services, such asNetSuite and Salesforce.com.

“People don’t magically become in-formation scientists when they go towork in the morning,” says RobertWhiteside, head of Google EnterpriseUK and Ireland. “They just want tofind the most relevant information inthe shortest time and in the easiestpossible way. The key to exploitingthe power of search is providing ac-

cess to all current and future infor-mation types without making theprocess any more complex.”

The answer is for the software toretrieve relevant information for theuser without them asking. MikeLynch, chief executive of Autonomy,a meaning-based computing com-pany, points out that the system cancontinually watch what the user isworking on and bring relevant infor-mation to their attention, which iscalled implicit query.

Matt Eichner, vice president ofstrategic development at Endeca, adiscovery software vendor, says thatthe BI and search markets are converging. There is strong unmet de-

mand for insight by business usersdisenfranchised by technology com-plexity. There is also an increasing in-flux of new valuable informationtypes that business users find critical,but which are not managed well byeither technology individually.

“Users are demanding the ease, in-formation coverage and quick re-sponse of search with the powerfulvisual summaries and analysis asso-ciated with BI,” he says. “New searchproducts are increasingly behavingmore like BI, with filtering, mappingand slicing and dicing of large col-lections of information, and they

are visualising results in chartsand graphs, rather

than lists.”

Michael Cocroran, chief market-ing officer at Information Builders,a BI vendor, says that whereassearch engines have done a greatjob in intelligently providing un-structured content based on rele-vance, when they are applied tostructured databases they returnlots of rows of information but theycannot typically see any relevanceor find what is important.

The promise of searching struc-

tured data is that it will quickly findthe information that users want,without having to go through differ-ent applications and different re-ports. “Search technology can uniteall the important pieces of structuredinformation in the databases under-lying reports,” says Chris Livesey,director of IBM’s information man-agement software business in theUK, Ireland and South Africa. “It is amuch more dynamic way of assess-ing the heartbeat of the business tofind out where it is today.”

Jerry Brown, senior analyst withBloor Research, says that some ana-lysts believe people spend 40 per centof their working day looking for in-formation. He quotes text analyticsvendor Inxight, recently acquired byBusiness Objects, claiming that itssoftware can save a user 60 per centof this lost time or 24 per cent savingin a working day. “Multiply the$100,000 salaries of high-cost knowl-edge workers and an average 1,000-person organisation could save over$6 million a year,” he says.

According to Elaine Mercer, direc-tor of BI at Logica, previously nichevendors, like Autonomy, Business Ob-jects Inxight and FAST, have come ofage. Analysing the context of un-structured data is now mainstream.

“Software currently takes you towhere you will find the answer,” con-cludes Dr Lynch. “For some problems,the goal is to get the computer to givethe answer in natural language.”

Sharing information

“The key toexploiting the

power of search isproviding accessto all current andfuture information

types withoutmaking the

process any morecomplex”

When systems understand meaning they cangive users what they need to know - and willsoon give them a written answer!

The heartbeat of the business

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE