Toolkit Approach to Business Analysis

8/6/2019 Toolkit Approach to Business Analysis

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BOARD M.I.T. A Toolkit Approach to Business Analysis 1

WHITE PAPER

A Toolkit Approach ToBusiness Analysis

Maximizing Your Return On Business Information

With BOARD MIT


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .................................................... ........................................................ ..........................2THE CHALLENGE: TURNING BUSINESS DATA INTO BUSINESS INSIGHT..............................................2

The Hidden Costs and Complexity ................................................... ......................................................3Suffer the User..... ........................................................ ....................................................... .................3

THE TOOLKIT: A NEW APPROACH TO BUSINESS ANALYTICS...............................................................3Business Value of a Toolkit .................................................... ........................................................ .......3Business Analysis: The Toolkit Approach Versus Traditional BI ...... ..... ...... ..... ..... ...... ..... ...... ..... ...... ...... .4

BOARD MIT: A TOOLKIT FOR BUSINESS ANALYTICS..... ...... ..... ...... ...... ..... ...... ..... ...... ...... ..... ...... ..... ....5The BOARD Multidimensional Database Engine .................................................. ...................................6Application Environment ................................................ ....................................................... .................6Scalable, IP-based, Multi-tier Architecture .................................................. ............................................7

BOARD M.I.T. DELIVERS REAL BUSINESS VALUE....... ..... ...... ..... ..... ...... ..... ...... ..... ...... ...... ..... ...... ..... ....8Feasibility.............................................................................................................................................8Toolkit Applications (Partial List) ...................................................... ......................................................9Cross-functional Applications of BOARD.................................................... ............................................9Manageable Cost ............................................... ........................................................ ..........................9Performance.......................................................................................................................................10

SUMMARY.............................................................................................................................................10ABOUT ORENBURG................................................................. ........................................................ .....11


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INTRODUCTION

In todays volatile economy companies are under increasing pressure to streamline business processes and

identify new revenue opportunitiesall while maintaining customer loyalty and strengthening vendor relations.

Characteristics of speed, efficiency and quick decision-making are no longer a luxury for only the best

companies. Rather, they are an absolute requirement for survival.

To remain competitive in this environment, companies have implemented business applications such as ERP,CRM, SCM and financial systems to automate processes and improve operational efficiency. In the process

of automating business processes and transactions, these applications generate enormous amounts of

information that can be used for strategic decision making to improve business performance, profitability and

customer loyalty. However, turning this data into meaningful, actionable and relevant information is often

more challenging than it would appear. To accomplish this, companies have turned to Business Intelligence

(BI) solutions, which, under various names have been in existence since computers first started crunching

numbers. Dating back to the 1970s, BI solutions such as those for decision support, were supposed to marry

operational data and analysis capabilities to provide more strategic business management tools. However,

while they promised the world, they delivered little.

So, where are we at today? The unfortunate reality is that many BI solutions are often complicated, costly and

inefficient at managing the data volumes required for meaningful analysis. After almost 30 years and

countless claims of a new cure-alls for corporate reporting and analysisEIS, DSS, OLAP, KPIs,dashboards, balanced scorecards, portals, analytic applicationsits still difficult to find a CFO who can

quickly and easily determine the impact changes in customer payment terms can have on company net cash

flow; or how changes in raw material costs can impact customer profitability.

A new breed of solutions, which can be described as business analysis toolkits, are now available to help

companies gain insight from the information stored within their operational data. By using these integrated

analysis toolkits, companies can rapidly build and deploy sophisticated applications for business analysis,

budgeting, planning, simulation and reporting. These toolkits give efficiencies and true business value by

enabling analysis solutions that provide ease of use, application feasibility and scalable performance while

dramatically reducing development and maintenance costs.

In this white paper, Orenburg explores the toolkit approach to providing business analysis. It also explains

how this approach and BOARD Management Intelligence Toolkit (M.I.T.) can provide faster, more feasibleand affordable alternatives for building custom analysis solutions for strategic decision making.

THE CHALLENGE: TURNING BUSINESS DATA INTO BUSINESS INSIGHT

While the value of providing hard facts to support decision making is widely recognized, managers still lack

the support they need in using information effectively. As a result, companies striving to better manage their

business have turned to BI solutions for reporting and analysis capabilities. BI is generically used to refer to

the broad category of business applications and tools that allow organizations to gather, access, navigate,

analyze, share and leverage business information to make more informed business decisions.

Traditionally BI has taken a technology approach to addressing the challenge of providing business insight,

reporting and analysis to organizations. These solutions typically combine a mixture of open third-party tools

to load, store, process and access data through either pre-packaged applications or ad-hoc analysis tools.

While they are supposed to be open, these systems still require significant hardware and software

investments. In addition, they require specialized knowledge of procedures, techniques or complex languages

in order to be deployed. As a result, implementing these systems has come at a heavy cost financially and

organizationally in many cases, and it has been extremely difficult for many organizations to achieve theproposed benefits of implementing a traditional BI solution.


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Business Analysis: The Toolkit Approach Versus Traditional BI

TOOLS TRADITIONAL BI APPROACH TOOLKIT APPROACH

Architecture Open third-party tools used to load,

store, process and access data through

ad-hoc analysis tools or pre-packaged

applications

Layered multi-product software

architecture which is module-driven and

offers pre-packaged software

applications

An integrated system of tools, designed to

work together to rapidly build and deploy

custom analysis solutions

Single-product software architecture

provides easy setup, flexible configuration

and scalability

Data Extraction,

Transformation

and Loading

Complex data extraction, transformation

and loading tools

Built-in, integrated, programming-free data

transformation tools

Database Relational database modeled for

dimensional analysis (ROLAP) or

proprietary multidimensional database

(MOLAP)

Read-only or limited read-write

Performance constraints with large data

volumes

Integrated multidimensional database,

offers high data compression, scalable

performance and multi-user concurrent

read and write access

Programming-free design, developmentand maintenance with an architecture that

offers easy integration of disparate data

sources

Application

Development

Commercial BI development tools which

are IT-driven and require a highly

technical skill set for application

customization and development

Little, if any, business modeling and

simulation

Intuitive, integrated application

development environment for users to

easily design analysis using drag and

drop toolbox objects

Native database support for business

modeling, advanced analysis, budgeting,

planning, forecasting and simulation

User Environment

Commercial BI clients or applets accessrigid, pre-built applications

Complex, ad-hoc analysis tools which

are difficult to develop and deploy for

diverse sets of functional users

Flexible, integrated application and ad-hocanalysis environment is simple and

intuitive to learn, use and deploy for

diverse sets of functional users

Security Multi-layer, complex security protocols

are limited and difficult to define and

maintain

Database, server and client security are

integrated and easy to define and update

Table 1.0: Illustration of the Differences Between the Traditional BI Approach and a Toolkit Approach.


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BOARD MIT: A TOOLKIT FOR BUSINESS ANALYTICS

BOARD is the industrys first management intelligence toolkit for the rapid development of custom analysis

applications. BOARD takes an integrated system approach to business analysis and offers in one single

toolkit many of the core functions needed to deliver on the diverse analysis needs of organizations of all sizeand industry.

Figure 1.0: BOARD Database/Application Environment

At its core, the BOARD toolkit is a blend of tightly integrated tools which when combined in one environment,

provide tremendous efficiencies during the design, development and deployment of reporting and analysissolutions. In and of themselves these toolsa highly scalable multidimensional database, data reading and

transformation tools, application user interface environment (client and web), security and a multi-tier

architecture for system deliveryare the pieces one might expect to need when building an analysis

application. The BOARD toolkit was designed to use all these tools together within the same development

framework to provide an unparalleled combination of speed, flexibility and affordability. This integrated

approach eliminates the need for high levels of technical expertise and substantially reduces the complexity

and costs associated with building, customizing and maintaining a data analysis environment. Most of these

efficiencies arise by eliminating the technical plumbing involved in combining the various software layers.

BOARDDatabase

BOARD ApplicationEnvironment

(Client and Web)

Source Databases


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The BOARD Multidimensional Database Engine

A unique multidimensional database is the primary engine driving the advanced capabilities of BOARD. The

database has been designed to take full advantage of the efficiencies of the integrated system and offers an

unrivaled combination of scalability, performance and flexibility.

This system approach allows for programming-free visual design and management of the database and data

loading. Fundamental changes to the database are immediately updated throughout the database as well as

all related data read definitions, user applications, security profiles and automated procedures, thus

eliminating significant maintenance activities. These dynamic update features provide for a truly iterative

development process.

The database is also highly scalable and capable of loading and retrieving millions of incoming records while

seamlessly handling dimensions of millions of members. In addition, native simulation functions are

embedded within the database and provide the capability to perform multi-user concurrent data-entry for

applications such as forecasting, budgeting and planning .

DATABASE FEATURES IMPACT

Programming-free visual design, data

load and database management

Easy to learn and fast to develop

Multidimensional storage of numeric,

text and Boolean information

High-speed data access and calculation, modeling flexibility and

extensibility

Multi-cube architecture Easy data integration and modeling

Entity-relationship data structure Adaptable to any organizational structure

Data access optimization Efficient data access and storage

Advanced sparsity management High data compression

Simultaneous data read and write Distributed, cross-functional data collection and simulation

Advanced security Comprehensive (cell level) and easily defined security

Automated data loading and export Streamlined and incremental data updates and exports

Native functions applied at the

database level

Optimal calculation performance

Table 2.0: Highlights of Other BOARD Database Features

Application Environment

The database, data analysis and modeling functions provided by BOARD are made available in the

application environment. The applications are built using a wide variety of objects including reports, charts,

worksheets, calculation models, pictures, gauges and multi-file viewing objects. To build applications, users

simply drag and drop these objects from a toolbox onto the screen without any programming. Through this

application environment, users gain access to a wide range of functions for maximum thoroughness and

flexibility of analysis including time series analysis, exception reporting, sorting, ranking, filtering, color-coding,

80-20 analysis and multidimensional modeling.

Seamless integration with the database makes the objects that comprise the application data-aware. Thismeans they can be easily synchronized for advanced visualization and data exploration. Instead of simply

drilling-down on a report to retrieve a lower level display of the same report, users can click directly on a

report line and immediately see other related objects (charts, gauges, etc.) updated on the screen relative to

the report line. In effect, this produces intuitive, immediate, on-screen drill-anywhere capabilities.

BOARD users can interact with the applications in a variety of ways. This ranges from applications where the

user simply clicks on a button to navigate through the analysis, to the creation of fully distributed end-user

analysis. This approach allows companies complete flexibility in determining the level of end-user

involvement, depending upon the solution needed.


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APPLICATION ENVIRONM ENT FEATURES IMPACT

Programming-free visual applicationdevelopment

Easy to learn, fast to develop and no technical skills

are necessary

Drill down and drill anywhere for data navigation Limitless multidimensional analysis which requires no

predefined navigation

Time-series analysis and end-user calculationflexibility

Trending, forecasting, predictive-modeling and

simulation

Data entry into reports and charts Provides easy data collection interface and facilitates

modeling and simulation

Ability to drill through BOARD to sourcetransactional system

Store only the detail required for analysis with

automatic retrieval of transaction detail

Exception reporting (filters and color coding) Provides immediate, recognizable anomalies

Integrated, Excel-compatible spreadsheet object Provides full spreadsheet functionality and single

keystroke data export to Excel

Advanced charting capability

Rich, charting and graphic capabilities including 2D

and 3D options, interactive bubble charts, chart wizard

and series smoothing

Batch report production Low resource impact required for report production

Table 3.0: Other Feature Highlights of the BOARD Application Environment

Scalable, IP-based, Multi-tier Architecture

BOARDs IP -based, multi-tier architecture offers flexible and easily deployable remote access capabilities.

Dynamic load balancing and clustering makes BOARD highly scalable and reliable for any enterprise, yetrequires minimal hardware and network resources.

Figure 2.0: BOARD Architecture Overview


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BoardClient is the Windows front-end used to create and access applications and databases.

BoardMaster is a middle layer between BoardClient and BoardServer. It handles incoming user requests

and dispatches them to the BoardServers. BoardMaster also provides Web access (the HTTP service)

and some security services.

BoardServer is the multidimensional database engine that carries out all data access and processing on

the Board databases.

Communications between the three components is conducted through a highly efficient internal convention

utilizing the TCP/IP network protocol. The remote computers require minimal network bandwidth, even when

accessing large data sets or performing sophisticated simulations.

BOARDs integrated peer-to-peer (P2P) functionality is a natural extension of this architecture. It allows two or

more users, located in distant sites, to share real-time navigation of applications and voice transmission. This

means users can conduct virtual meetings or collaborative working sessions over the Internet.

BOARD M.I.T. DELIVERS REAL BUSINESS VALUE

BOARD provides a framework for advanced business analysis and reporting that brings substantial business

value to organizations. Organizations can quickly maximize the return on business information across their

organization without the limitations and complexity of traditional BI systems. The following table shows thepractical impact of BOARD with several customers.

BOARDS IMPACT ON ORGANIZATIONS

Syngenta Syngenta, a leader in the pharmaceutical industry, realized a more than 300%

ROI on their BOARD implementation after learning they could be more profitable

by shifting more than 1800 of their 2000 customers from buying direct to buying

through their distribution channels.

Johnson & JohnsonConsumer Europe

Johnson & Johnson Consumer Europe realized a more than 200% ROI in the first

year alone and a payback in the first six months by using BOARD to reduce their

corporate reporting from a 3-week, 10-person process to just 15 minutes.

Manpower GmbH Manpower GmbH, with the help of BOARD, is now able to integrate their SAP-based order management data with their financial accounting software to perform

P&L analysis by order, employee, recruiter, customer, subsidiary, business unit

and more.

Table 4.0: Customer Examples of BOARDs Organizational Impact

Feasibility

One result of BOARDs unique toolkit approach and design is the high degree of flexibility. This enables

companies to easily extend business analysis capabilities to a wide variety of applications and audiences.

Using BOARD, an organization can easily develop tailored solutions to provide business managers across

functional areas the tools they need to dynamically adapt to changes in their business environment. With

BOARD, executives and decision makers can answer more than historical What happened questions.

Information can be modeled to answer predictive questions like What would happen if With BOARDsunique architecture, applications such as budgeting, planning, forecasting, simulation and collaboration are

easily possible and can be deployed anywhere and in a fraction of the time it takes with traditional BI reportwriting tools.


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Toolkit Applications (Partial List)

Corporate Performance Management

CRM Analytics

Budgeting, Forecasting and Planning

Financial Planning and PnL Impact

Production Capacity Analysis

Demand Planning

Supply Chain Analysis

Balanced Scorecards & KPIs

Interactive Executive Dashboards

Marketing Program Analysis

Activity Based Costing

Customer Segmentation

Investment and Trade Analysis

Purchase Analysis and Vendor Rating

Cross-functional Applications of BOARD

An intuitive design, rich interactive web analytics and collaboration capabilities make BOARD highly versatileto support the needs of people of all levels within different functional groups.

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL BUSINESS IMPACT

Executive

Management

Business unit measurement

Easy navigation to metrics

24x7 Information Access

Anytime availability to high-level or detail company

information; easy-to-use and navigate interface;

pro-actively manage organization to detect

potential issues before they happen.

Financial

Management

Budgeting and Planning

Trending and Forecasting

P&L Reporting

Improved capital allocation and cost management

to maximize profitability; simulate multiple business

scenarios to drive planning process and revenue.

SalesManagement

Pipeline Analysis

Customer Analysis

Marketing Campaign Return

Optimized sales process focused on top-margin

account acquisition and customer retention;

measure revenue return on marketing funds spent.

Services

Management

Customer Satisfaction

Product Performance

Returns Analysis

Improved customer experience; reduction in churn;

higher product quality ratings through performance

feedback and analysis; decreased customer

returns.

Operations

Management

Manufacturing Planning

Inventory Turn Analysis

Operating Ratio Analysis

Increased controls over entire supply chain

process; identify inefficiencies and adjust internal

processes to improve capacity, margins and

operational ratios.

Table 5.0: BOARD Cross-Functional Business Impact

Manageable Cost

BOARD provides a highly integrated and synchronized environment that significantly simplifies design and

development. This minimizes upfront costs, improvements and maintenance and allows organizations to

extend and better leverage their existing applications and IT infrastructure investments. Once BOARD is

added to an environment it can easily be leveraged for various needs across an organization without

purchasing additional modules or expensive hardware that requires high amounts of time and expertise to


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implement, learn and maintain. The programming-free environment eases development of custom

applications and can be deployed rapidly using an iterative design approach. This flexibility improves usability

and minimizes ongoing maintenance and training investments. As a result, business analysis systems built

using the BOARD toolkit are easy to learn and adapt for various business functions. This significantly reduces

costs and allows companies to extend the value of the solution throughout their organization.

Performance

The volume of data that companies collect for analysis is growing at a staggering pace. The justification forthis has always been simple the more detail, the better the analysis. However, in addition to the

requirement for efficient management of large data volumes, there is also an increasing need for

decentralized decision-making and accessibility by an increasingly large, diverse and often, remote user

base. BOARD has the power to deliver on all these challenges.

The BOARD multidimensional database is capable of loading and retrieving millions of records at amazing

speeds while seamlessly handling dimensions of millions of members. The database is also highly efficient,

offering high data compression and native functions for streamlined processing. It is also possible to load new

data incrementally, incorporating the latest information into the database in just minutes. In the BOARD

database, it is even feasible to modify the entire rollup structure and incorporate this into the analysis without

reloading the historical data.

BOARD databases and applications are as easy to access as a web site, making remote deployment abreeze, even through the Windows client. The communication between the client and server is highly efficient,

enabling fast analysis response times and remote development capabilities through even the slowest dial-up

connections. This low bandwidth requirement, combined with distributed processing, server clustering and

dynamic load balancing provides an analysis platform that is capable of scaling to thousands of users.

Figure 3.0: BOARD Server Scalability

SUMMARY

A toolkit approach to providing analysis provides a new, unique and cost-effective way for companies who

want to maximize their business data for strategic decision-making. This approach provides significant

advantages over traditional Business Intelligence offerings, which can often be rigid, template-driven, hard to

implement and costly. The BOARD management intelligence toolkit is rapidly deployable for a manageable

cost and can be easily extended to provide value across all departments. With BOARD it is now possible to

create applications that not only highlight historical performance, but also leverage this information to develop

predictive models to take action before it is necessarynot after.


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Case Study/Application Example GlaxoSmithKline

The simple but very powerful and very scalable BOARD M.I.T. architecture allowed us to concentrate

on the business issues, with minimal resource investment on the systems and hardware

infrastructure. Paolo Pogliani, Vice President Information Technology GlaxoSmithKline Italy

Case Study:

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of the worlds leading research-based pharmaceutical companies, with an estimated seven

percent (7%) of the world's pharmaceutical market. GSK has over 100,000 employees worldwide, with over 40,000 in

sales and marketing the largest sales force in the industry. GSK Italy is a market leader operating both in the

pharmaceutical and in the Consumer Healthcare markets.

Business Challenge:

With 2 plants and an R&D center well known throughout Europe, GSK Italy produces 87 million pieces annually, of which

55% is exported to 64 countries. Out of the 3,000 total employees, the sales force comprises 1,300 reps structured by five

business units. To improve business performance GSK Italy needed to improve financial and sales planning and control.

In addition, they needed to give their sales force personalized web access to sales force intelligence.

Solution:

BOARD M.I.T provides forecasting, budgeting and planning tools for financial and sales planning and control as well as

sales force intelligence via the Web. Due to the flexibility of BOARD M.I.T., today GSK delivers more than 600 reports and

charts and approximately 300 Web pages. In addition, the planning process is supported by 50 different forecasting and

cost allocation models.

Impact:

As a result of BOARDs flexible multidimensional database engine, flexible architecture and advanced simulation

capabilities GSK has been able to easily implement flexible and robust financial and sales planning tools that are easy to

use and deploy at a low cost.

ABOUT ORENBURG

Headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, with US operations based in San Diego, Orenburg is the provider of the industrys

only programming-free toolkit for rapid and cost-effective development of custom analytic applications. Companies of all

sizes and across industries are utilizing Orenburgs flagship product, BOARD Management Intelligence Toolkit (M.I.T.), to

improve their reporting, analysis and effectiveness of management decision-making. Orenburg has additional offices and

distributors in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The company has more than 1000 customers worldwide, including global enterprises like GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft, ABN

AMRO, Dupont, Subaru and Montblanc. To learn more about Orenburg and BOARD M.I.T., please visit www.board.com

or call +1 (858) 794-3200.

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Toolkit Approach to Business Analysis