Interuniversity Master in Statistics and Operations Research Title: Business Intelligence’s Self-Service tools evaluation Author: Jordina Orcajo Advisor: Pau Fonseca Department: Statistics and Operative Research University: UPC-UB Academic year: 2015 Facultat de Matemàtiques i Estadística Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Master’s degree thesis Business Intelligence’s Self-Service tools evaluation Jordina Orcajo Hernández Director: Pau Fonseca Department of Statistics and Operational Research 4 1 Abstract This project proposes a comparison analysis between four different tools, called Self-Service tools, from the Business Intelligence area. The comparison was done adapting a Systemic Quality Model, already, formalized and using a database simulated with R. In order to assess the quality of this tipe of software, seven (7) characteristics and eighty-two (82) metrics were considered. 5 Index 1 Abstract ................................................................................................................................. 5 2 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 8 2.1 Approach ....................................................................................................................... 9 2.2 Introduction to BI systems ............................................................................................ 9 2.3 BI users ........................................................................................................................ 11 3 Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 13 3.1 The systemic quality model (SQMO) ........................................................................... 13 3.1.1 Level 0: dimensions .......................................................................................... 13 3.1.2 Level 1: categories ........................................................................................... 14 3.1.3 Level 2: characteristics .................................................................................... 14 3.1.4 Level 3: Metrics ................................................................................................. 16 3.2 Algorithm ..................................................................................................................... 16 3.2.1 Product software ............................................................................................... 16 3.2.2 Development Process ...................................................................................... 17 3.3 Adoption of the systemic quality model (SQMO) ....................................................... 18 3.3.1 Scales of measurement ................................................................................... 20 3.3.2 The concept of satisfaction ............................................................................. 24 3.4 Sub-characteristics and metrics for Self-Service BI tools evaluation .......................... 26 3.4.1 Functionality category ...................................................................................... 27 3.4.2 Usability category ............................................................................................. 32 3.4.3 Efficiency category: .......................................................................................... 34 4 Software selection for the evaluation ................................................................................. 35 4.1 Algorithm ..................................................................................................................... 35 4.2 The 4 evaluated software ............................................................................................ 40 5 Data ..................................................................................................................................... 41 5.1 Relational data model ................................................................................................. 41 5.2 20141220_Initial_test ................................................................................................. 42 5.3 Tables .......................................................................................................................... 44 5.3.1 Client table ......................................................................................................... 45 5.3.2 Auto table ........................................................................................................... 46 5.3.3 Region table ...................................................................................................... 46 6 5.3.4 RiskArea table ................................................................................................... 47 5.3.5 Guarantees table .............................................................................................. 48 5.3.6 RiskAreaXGuarantees table ........................................................................... 49 5.3.7 Policy table ........................................................................................................ 50 5.3.8 SinistersXYears ................................................................................................ 51 5.3.9 Sinisters table .................................................................................................... 52 6 Evaluation Results ............................................................................................................... 53 6.1 Results ......................................................................................................................... 55 7 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 61 8 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 62 9 Figures index ....................................................................................................................... 64 10 Tables index ..................................................................................................................... 65 Annex 1 : Scripts for 20141220_Initial_test database ................................................................ 66 Annex 2 : Questionnaires ............................................................................................................ 76 Annex 3:QlickView evaluation..................................................................................................... 85 Annex 4: SAP Lumira evaluation ................................................................................................. 94 Annex 5: MicroStrategy Analytics evaluation ........................................................................... 101 Annex 6: Tableau evaluation ..................................................................................................... 108 Annex 7: Reporting examples ................................................................................................... 113 7 2 Introduction This study belongs to the business sector. In particular the Business Intelligence sector, where I participated doing this Master’s degree thesis. Business Intelligence (BI) is the name associated to the set of tools and techniques for the transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes. BI technologies are capable of handling large amounts of unstructured data to help identify, develop and otherwise create new strategic business opportunities. And the main goal of BI is to allow the easy interpretation of these large volumes of data. In particular, the Self-Service BI aims to boost that the company is able to get useful information from their own data. The idea behind deploying self-service software, is to empower business people to analyze and understand data without specialized expertise. There are many benefits that can be derived through the implementation of a self-service BI system. Functional workers can make, faster, better decisions because they no longer have to wait during long reporting backlogs. At the same time, technical teams will be freed from the burden of satisfying end user report requests, so they can focus their efforts on more strategic IT initiatives. There are many Self-Service BI tools in the market, and before recommending a particular one, a depth analysis of the available tools on the market must be done, according to own requirements. And because of this, the aim of this thesis is to build a comparative assessment of Self-Service BI tools, adapting a Systemic Quality Model (SQMO) and apply this methodology in the evaluation of four (4) particular tools. In order to accomplish this, first of all we had to learn how to use Self-Service BI tools in order to know its operation, what they can do and understand how useful they are for the BI sector. Knowing, with a minimum level of depth, tools in order to evaluate them, demands spending much time in addition to technical and functional knowledge. And because of this , we have done this work together with the department of Business Intelligence from INDRA S.A and under the tutelage of Dr. Pan Fonseca. Secondly, we adapted the SQMO to particular aims and finally four (4) tools were evaluated. They were Tableau, MicroStrategy Analytics, QlikView and