DATA BLENDING FOR (BI) 10 Things You Need to Know about

Based on “Data Preparation: An Essential part of BI Visualization,” Easyl White Paper by Rich Julius

progress.com The Analytics Landscape: 1. Businesses that engage in BI do better.

Bain’s : The Organizational Challenge report It’s not a fly-by-night trend. reveals that companies that use analytics are TWICE AS LIKELY to have top quartile financial performance A.T. Kearney forecasts that worldwide spending on “Big Data” will than those that do not and FIVE TIMES MORE GROW AT A RATE OF 30% (CAGR) from now until 2018, when the LIKELY to make decisions “much faster than market will be $114 billion year. 2 the competition.” 1 Cloud-based Business Intelligence, a subset of this larger market, is expected to GROW AT 31%. 3

1 www.bain.com/publications/articles/big_data_the_organizational_challenge.aspx 2 www.atkearney.com/analytics/featured-article/-/asset_publisher/FNSUwH9BGQyt/content/beyond-big-the-analytically-powered-organization/10192 3 www.redcapgroup.com/media/98e342dd-420c-4716-be25-f21a14f46691/Sector%20Reports/2014-04-09_Business_Intellegence_Report_April_2014_pdf

progress.com 1 Data Prep Reality Check: 2. BI cannot exist without a coherent view of data.

Even though the goal is to plug-and-play for BI Choices For Data Preparation visualization, you can’t just point your BI tool to (more about these later): different data sources and expect magic. That’s the myth that gets in the way of BI adoption – it doesn’t You engage IT to build an expensive, work without data prep. So what do you do? You have time-consuming , which three choices for data preparation: is 50% obsolete the day it goes live,

You blend data manually with Excel, spending 80% of your time in manual prep and 20% of your time actually analyzing that data. The reality is, if you give Or, data preparation short shrift, everything that comes after You go for an easy-to-use, self-serve data prep tool like Easyl. it is a waste. No more manual data prep, no investment in a monolithic data David Dietrich warehouse. Presto data. InFocus, The Global Services Blog

progress.com 2 3. Data preparation supports BI tools.

Data preparation is the work required to give Why You Need Data Prep: BI tools access to all the right data relevant to BI Tools don’t blend data very well. They can do basic tasks, but running a business, setting strategy, and making if your data isn’t optimized for reporting, it’s like putting a whole informed decisions. pineapple in a blender: rind, eyes, core, leaves and all. No wonder you can’t use the results.

Data prep tools enable you to optimize your data using joins and maps that make it more palatable for consumption by BI tools, meaning more accurate analytics.

There are requirements for effective data preparation.

progress.com 3 Data prep involves accessing data 4. needed for BI from different locations.

You can pretend that your data is in just a few systems-of-record, like your CRM and ERP systems. Or you can admit that a big part of the BI puzzle comes from everything from Google Analytics to Excel files strewn across the desktop landscape.

You need a tool that can reach data DATA PREP CRM wherever it’s hiding. TOOL

ERP

progress.com 4 Each data source stores things differently. 5. Really differently.

Your data comes in all shapes and sizes from Here’s another example. In this case, analyzing the relational data to the Google Analytics cube; from Lifetime Value of a Customer is dependent on data cloud API data like Salesforce, Marketo, and Eloqua to from four different locations: NoSQL, NewSQL; and spreadsheets. You can’t achieve meaningful without data preparation.

RESPONSE PATTERNS HISTORICAL ESTIMATES ORDERS IN CUSTOMER TO DIGITAL MARKETING PURCHASES PENDING PROGRESS LIFETIME (Digital Marketing Database) (General Ledger Database) (CRM) (ERP) VALUE

progress.com 5 Standardizing data to ensure consistency 6. and quality is mandatory.

Data quality and normalization involves everything For example, one system uses US date format, while another from validating addresses to blending data that has uses European. State names are used in one system, while different formats, to ensuring records in one system abbreviations are used in another. And is “Bill Smith” in your are reliably matched to records in another source. CRM system the same person as “William T. Smith” in your ERP That’s when the process gets complicated. system?

ERP CUST CTRY REV Acme, Ltd. Great Britain $ 64,228.90 Big Corp. United States $ 354,254.00 Prepared for BI Central Company United Kingdom £ 423,113.16 Customer Country Revenue Acme, Ltd. UK $ 64,228.90 CRM Big, Inc. USA $ 354,254.00 Customer Country Revenue Central Co. UK $ 643,132.00 Acme UK £ 42,345.00 Big, Inc. USA $ 354,254.00 Central Co. England $ 643,132.00

progress.com 6 7. Must-have benefits of data preparation.

If you’re not getting these benefits from your data prep process, it’s time to explore your options for faster, better BI support.

Analytics are based on clean, is reduced up to 75%, digestible data thanks to data blending recipes and templates

BI visualization is more complete and accurate, Knowledge workers enjoy self-serve access preventing flawed analysis to data with automated data prep tools

Repeatable processes speed up Data mining is easier and more flexible using the BI cycle for fast answers an iterative approach for further analysis without always starting from scratch

Ultimately, the big benefit of data preparation is BETTER RESULTS FASTER. There are the three different ways for IT and Business users to perform data preparation.

progress.com 7 8. Manual data preparation is the traditional way.

Manual data prep is error-prone, tedious, and not In addition, it cannot be easily leveraged when you very repeatable, i.e., done from scratch almost every need to add new data sources, dimensions, or answer time. It involves manually pulling data from a variety new questions. of sources and dumping the results into Excel. By the time you are done with all the VLookups and Manual data prep is the reason why analysts spend transformations, your Excel file is an unwieldy and 80% of their time preparing data, and only 20% of poorly-documented data blending application. their time analyzing the results. By now, manual data prep smacks of the olden days.

EXPORT JOIN SHARE/REVIEW

Select data Manually join tables Email to colleagues Export to Excel Manually check data Post to file shares integrity/accuracy Review, correct Re-submit for review

progress.com 8 Data Preparation is also done 9. through large data warehouse projects.

At the other end of the spectrum are large- IT data warehouse projects are expensive, time- scale IT-driven data warehouses (or data marts). consuming, and aren’t known for their flexibility. Software developers, IT professionals and database They are great at querying systems-of-record, but not administrators collaborate to deliver a solution so great at blending data from all the different data that puts the data through a series of extractions, sources typically used by marketing departments. By transformations, filters, and corrections as specified the time the data rolls out, many of the questions have by the particular BI use case. changed, and the solution has to be re-tooled.

progress.com 9 The new generation of self-serve 10. data preparation tools changes everything.

These self-serve tools make complex data blending The new self-serve tools are more nimble, enabling easier for knowledge workers and analysts without a analysts to experiment and do data blending in hours, lot of IT hand-holding. not weeks or months, minus the need for monumental and expensive data warehouse initiatives. Moreover, the work is iterative, automated, and often templated, so analysts can easily shift gears and expand on their knowledge to answer new questions An A.T. Kearney/Carnegie Mellon University study and accommodate new data sources as showed that organizations that do analytics well (“the business evolves. leaders”) tend to foster a culture of cross-functional collaboration and co-creation of BI assets. 4

4 www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/06/24/roundup-of-analytics-big-data-business-intelligence-forecasts-and-market-estimates-2014/

progress.com 10 HIGH-SPEED DATA PREPARATION YOU CAN DO YOURSELF The slog of data preparation is over. What was slow and inefficient, weighed down by days of Excel and email, is now fast and brilliant. For everyone. Business analyst, decision-maker, IT pro, data integrator -- Progress Easyl puts you ahead of the pack. High-performance data preparation is now in your hands.

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