AUBI Business Performance Consoles High-Level Business Requirements

AUBI Business Performance Consoles – High-Level Business Requirements

1. Who are the business users of enterprise information? (who)

Today’s enterprises have come to recognize that when timely, relevant and insightful information is made available to users at all levels of the organization, the greater the collective efficiencies can be achieved. This trend is driving information to be provided to not just executives and power users, but to all business users – including managers, employees, customers, suppliers, partners and analysts.

2. The evolving informational needs of business users (what)

Business users have been leveraging data warehouses and business analytic techniques to help them gain much easier access to the information captured within the enterprise. However, they are also realizing that there is a wealth of information stored in formats outside of a typical enterprise transactional system. These formats include discussion forums, emails, blogs, images, video files, etc., and the data is often highly unstructured. Additionally, there are syndicated data sources that can provide data – on customers, suppliers, partners, etc. – that can augment information already captured internally.

Business users want the structured and unstructured data to be merged together, from both internal and external sources, to transform into a combined view to help them gain broader insight into business questions. They also want to continue to leverage the flexibility of business intelligence techniques to analyze this information easily.

3. Improve business process efficiency and make better business decisions while maintaining focus on key objectives (why)

Close the loop from analysis to action

Business users have long searched for improvements to bridge the gap in translating the insight gained from business intelligence into appropriate actions to improve business conditions. They want to be able to measure and monitor business performance in a BI environment, and directly launch relevant and immediate actions in the corresponding transactional and/or analytic systems, thus improving the overall efficiency of the business process. This will help to finally close the loop from analysis to action.

Aligned with strategic objectives of the enterprise

While it is important to improve the efficiency of business processes as mentioned above, it is critical that business users maintain their focus on key strategic goals in order to help them make the right business decisions. An analytic system needs to provide the ability to measure and monitor business as well as individual performances against these defined goals. More importantly, the system needs to be able to link the departmental and divisional goals back to the strategic initiatives of the enterprise. This will ensure all business decisions are aligned to help achieve the overall objectives of the enterprise.

Change the behavior of the organization

When actionable intelligence is presented in the context of organizational goals, business users will begin to act in support of those goals. Users will become more diligent in analyzing day to day business activities and be more confident that they are making the right business decisions. The overall competency of the organization will improve, supporting the desired change in behavior.

4. Provide information in the business users’ work environment (where)

It is important that business users have access to the information where they need it. “After all, if information is not available where and when users need it, it is often worthless — busy businesspeople simply don’t have time to hunt for data.”1 Whether their primary work environment is a browser-based application, an MS Office application, email, or smart phone, information must be made available in that environment, and in the right business process context.

5. Share information collaboratively and innovatively (how)

Many business users are already familiar with BI dashboards as a popular and effective user interface by which to display metrics of business performance. The traditional BI dashboard allows users to gain insight on business conditions after the fact, typically by way of daily, weekly or monthly ETL processes that refresh the content of the underlying data warehouse.

Business Performance Consoles

A Business Performance Console is a new analytic application that complements the BI dashboard. A Business Performance Console can be designed for operational, tactical or strategic purposes. It will leverage BI dashboard, scorecard, Web 2.0 as well as other BI technologies to more effectively meet the evolving needs of business users who want more options on business information.

Support Collaboration of Business Users

The Business Performance Console will emphasize empowering business users on information sharing, communication, and collaboration. Information will be made available to not just executives and power users, but to all business users of the enterprise – including managers, employees, customers, suppliers, partners and analysts. BI dashboards today often lack the capabilities to support a truly collaborative environment for business users to share information easily. Business users are increasingly using tools such as instant- messaging, chat, social-networking sites and blogs to enhance information sharing. OBIEE Scorecard will have annotation capability (user-entered free form text) on KPIs, and OBIEE plans to offer this feature more broadly on metadata objects in the future. However, it is unclear if OBIEE can support or integrate with collaboration tools such as chat and social-networking. The WebCenter portal technology offers support for a variety of collaboration services; however, because not all Apps Unlimited product families are currently deploying the WebCenter portal, this option – although technologically viable – may incur a high TCO for customers.

Provide Real-Time and Transformed Data

The Business Performance Console will enable users to review and act on key information from transactional systems on a more real-time basis. It will present a merged view of information using both structured and unstructured data from both internal and external sources. OBIEE technology is beginning to offer enhancements in XML Gateway support to better support these requirements. However, there are no indications that the pre-built OBIA dashboards will leverage these new capabilities when available. A key element of Business Performance Consoles is to leverage RSS Web feeds, D&B Supplier Data, and data mashup views to provide additional business insights.

Enable Closed-Loop Analysis to Action / Better Decisions Linking to Strategic Objectives

Business Performance Consoles will close the loop between analytics and transactional systems in context of relevant business processes. Business users will be able to transition from measuring and monitoring business performance to making immediate and relevant updates to improve business process efficiency. Moreover, business users will be able to focus on strategic objectives within the Business Performance Console to help them make better business decisions.

Information flow for many BI dashboards is mostly one-directional. That is, information is extracted from the transactional source system(s) into the dashboard’s underlying data warehouse for analysis. Seldom do these dashboards trigger appropriate feedback, ratings or updates in the transactional system as a result of the analysis. OBIEE technology currently offers Action Link and light write-back capabilities. However, perhaps with the exception of CRM related content, the pre-built Oracle Business Intelligence Application dashboards for the most part do not offer out of the box Action Link or write-back integrations to EBS or PeopleSoft source systems. A key element of Business Performance Consoles is to move beyond the notion of stopping at report delivery, but to deliver pre-built business rules and functions to automate and/or update repeatable, operational activities in the source systems for true closed-loop business processes. OBIEE technology will also provide KPI and balanced scorecard features in an upcoming release so that key performance metrics can be defined, measured and monitored, and to link departmental goals to enterprise strategic objectives.

Provide Information in Users’ Work Environment

Business Performance Consoles can provide information to business users in their primary work environments – including browser-based applications, MS Office applications, email, or smart phone. This enables users to have access to information where they need it, and in the right context. OBIEE offers a variety of services that can support these requirements and should be fully explored.

Key Elements of Business Performance Consoles

In essence, a Business Performance Console is more than just a browser screen populated with graphics and tables. It is a comprehensive business analytic application with built-in business process logic designed to help organizations optimize and manage business performance and achieve strategic objectives.

Business Performance Consoles can be characterized by the following key elements:

Performance-Monitoring key elements: . Monitoring: Effectively measure and monitor performance; link to enterprise strategic objectives . Real-time: Accurate, real-time information . Accessible: Anytime, anywhere access to that information

Performance-Analysis key elements: . Interactive: Interactively touch and visualize information . Dynamic: Make changes to reports immediately . Transformative: Combine internal and structured data with external and unstructured information

Performance Control key elements: . Collaborative: Easily share that information with others . Action-driven: Use analytics to identify issues and drive immediate actions

Notes: Other possible elements to consider for future: predictive elements Assign priorities to each key element

6. What Oracle technologies are available to support Business Performance Console key elements?

Key Element Oracle Technology Availability Pros Cons Reference Measure & OBIEE Scorecard 11g Balanced scorecard UI can be complex; Monitor analysis; strategy tree requires separate can support ties to license enterprise objectives OBIEE KPI List 11g Supports target setting; clean-looking UI; does not require separate license OBIEE iBots (alerts) 10g - Now WebCenter Services 11g (See consideration A) (See consideration A) (Tasks, Worklist)

Real-time OBIEE OLTP direct 10g - Now data source OBIEE Trickle-feed TBD (need research) (need research) Interactive OBIEE Dashboard 10g - Now Easy to use OBIEE Essbase 10g - Now Good flexibility in spreadsheet functionality OBIEE MS Office 10g - Now? User familiarity with (need to research Plug-in MS Office products limitations)

Dynamic OBIEE Answers 10g - Now Flexible and intuitive ad-hoc reporting tool

Transformative OBIEE XML TBD (need more info) (need more info) Gateway Enhancements WebCenter Services 10g - Now (See consideration A) (See consideration A) http://www.oracle.c (Mashups, Wiki, om/technology/prod discussions) ucts/webcenter/ser vices.html WebCenter Services 11g (See consideration A) (See consideration A) (RSS, Tagging)

Accessible OBIEE Briefing Book 10g - Now Oracle Widgets and TBD Relatively small Unsure how well- http://widgets.us.or Gadgets technical footprint defined and acle.com/ (and thus perhaps supported these lower TCO) technologies are within Oracle WebCenter 10g - Now (See consideration A) (See consideration A) Anywhere (desktop, wireless, voice, MS Office)

Collaborative WebCenter Spaces 11g (See consideration A) (See consideration A) http://www.oracle.c om/technology/prod ucts/webcenter/owc s_r11_tech_previe w1.html (See WebCenter Services 10g - Now (See consideration A) (See consideration A) http://www.oracle.c consideration B) (IM, chat) om/technology/prod ucts/webcenter/ser vices.html

Action-driven OBIEE Action Link 10g - Now Can link from OBIEE Typically does not to transactional automatically trigger systems update actions OBIEE Action 11g? Offers extensible (need more research) Framework menuing at table cell level. More of a point- to-point integration to source apps. OBIEE Write-back 10g - Now Provides updates via Better suited to multi-channel UI support SQL Updates infrastructure. Can vs. Inserts (need support BC gateway more research) services. More open to updating multiple parts of source apps.

Considerations:

A. WebCenter: WebCenter offers a portal UI that can support a wide range of Web Services. However, it is not widely adopted by AU, and thus can incur high TCO. B. OBIEE: OBIEE is expanding its capabilities, but does not appear to be able to support collaboration in the near term.

7. What are the UE design patterns for the overall Business Performance Console?

i.e. – Do we always start with a summary page (such as dashboard page) with alerts, workflow, KPIs, RSS web feeds, etc., followed by more detail pages?

Engage UE team to help define this.

8. What are the UE design patterns for the specific Business Performance Console key elements?

i.e. – What are some approaches to displaying data mashup information? i.e. – How should IM or chat interactions be triggered and displayed?

Engage UE team to help define this.

9. Gather customer feedback on UE approaches to Business Performance Console design?

Engage UE team to help manage this.

Footnotes: 1 Lothar Schubert and Jens Doerpmund, Embedded Analytics Are Not a Myth, 2007 Appendix:

1. Dashboard screenshots from various vendors:

. SAP dashboards from PilotSoftware acquisition

. SAP scorecards from PilotSoftware acquisition

. Bitam’s Enterprise Performance Management Dashboard

. Dundas Data Visualization’s Personal Finance Dashboard . DataMicron Nu Vision Dashboard

. Strategy Companion Corp’s Analyzer Business Intelligence Dashboard

. XLCubed’s CIO Dashboard 2. Data Mashup screenshots from various vendors:

. LogiXML Geographic Visualization

. Pentaho Google Maps Dashboard