Data Analysis Nirvana: Excel 2013 Business Intelligence Features

Tom Jones – President, Iridium Technology LLC

Introduction – Iridium Technology

• “Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.”

• Founded in 2009

• 8-member team 100% focused on legal BI

BI solutions for ADERANT and ELITE clients

Tuning of existing BI solutions

Custom dashboards/reports

• 45 clients in all regions

• Client firm size 85 – 2300 timekeepers

• Iridium BI consists of cubes and associated dashboards

• Expense data can be loaded from multiple sources

Iridium BI: Module Overview

5

Planning

Agenda Recap – Part 1

• Part 1 (December 2013)

Mini-Demos: slicers, timelines, tables, Quick Explore, etc.

Ad-hoc querying of cubes

Publishing your results through dashboards

“Grab Bag” topics

Calculated member and dimensions

Pivot table tips and tricks

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Agenda – Part 2

• (More!) Ad-hoc querying

• (More!) Tips and Tricks

• Internal Data Model

• PowerPivot (including MDX Designer)

• Dashboarding with Power View

• Other BI Dashboard Options

• (More!) “Grab Bag” topics

• Disclaimer: not all examples are legal-specificBusiness Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

References

• Google “Excel 2013 BI features”

Become Microsoft Office Certified

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

(More!) Ad-hoc Queries(More!) Tips and Tricks

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period. © 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Working with Cubes – Part 2

• Quick recap

• Excel is your primary tool

• Having fun with charts

• Working with data outside the cube

• Period calculations

• Member properties

• Taking it to go

• Working with the GL Cube

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Demo: Ad-hoc Querying

“Grab Bag” BI Topics (1)

• Latency

• Cube Customization (zero compromises)

• Power users love the cubes plus Excel

• You can do this!

BI 101 Series

Query of the Day (“QOTD”) program

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Internal Data Model

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period. © 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Internal Data Model

• Internal Data Model is a new in-memory Analytics Engine in Excel 2013.

• Each Excel Workbook has one

• Combine disparate data sources and analyze them

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLCBusiness Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

Connecting a PivotTable to the Data Model

• The Data Model is a fully-functioning Analytics Cube that can be queried using a PivotTable

Demo: Internal Data Model

PowerPivot

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period. © 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

PowerPivot

• New in Excel 2013 – requires Excel 2013 Professional Plus

• This is the ‘Data Model’ – same engine, more user-friendly

• Can handle data sets of up to 100 million rows (given a 64-bit operating system and enough memory)

• Visualizations of Relationships between data sets

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Relationships in Diagram View

• Visualize Relationships – especially useful when many disparate data sets are brought together

• Drag-and-drop to create ties

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLCDemo: PowerPivot

Cool Features in PowerPivot

• Standalone Charts – for those that like visualizations better than rows of numbers

• MDX Query Designer – for those experienced with MDX

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Standalone PivotChart

• Great for abstracting the data at a glance

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

MDX Query Designer

• For Expert users – a miniature SQL Server Management Studio

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Dashboarding with Power View

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period. © 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Dashboarding with Power View

• Extremely interactive Dashboard within Excel

• Uses the Silverlight framework – can be deployed to a server

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Interactive Dashboard in Excel

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLCDemo: Power View

Limitations of Excel Power View

• Power View in Excel cannot connect to multi-dimensional models (cubes)

• Microsoft does not have any updates on the roadmap or timeframe with enabling connections to multidimensional model

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Other BI Dashboard Options

• Iridium offers a complete set of SSRS-based dashboards as part of Iridium BI

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLCDemo: Iridium BI Dashboards

“Grab Bag” BI Topics (2)

• Dashboard customization

• All cubes are not equal

• 30-day trials

• How to check references (not only for BI projects)

Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.

© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC

Questions?

• Slide deck is available through ILTA

• tom.jones@iridium-technology.com

• www.iridium-technology.com

• LinkedIn

• Thank you!

Call Iridium any time – Free Consultations