It lets you model your business data into information that
makes sense to humans who need to make good decisions.
It makes a little knowledge a powerful rather than dangerous
thing by quietly translating your human question into an unambiguous data query
that a data machine can respond to accurately.
Take for example products by supplier, rather than just
returning a list, the universe will ask whether you mean available products,
previously stocked products or previously sold products. The universe is
semantically dynamic – the results are dependent on the meaning. While the
lists may be similar they will probably be slightly different, which could be
the difference in determining which supplier to award a contract to.
If you want product in stock and products sold it will
ensure that one value isn’t multiplied by the other. Which these data machines
will do if you don’t talk them right.
It lets you roam through time, space, products, customers,
suppliers and the other dimensions of your business.
It presents numbers as you expect to see them: costs summed
by material, inventory counted by product, headcount averaged over time.
It ensures that Fran from Finance and Oliver of Operations
share a common vocabulary of clearly defined business terms.
Love is a strong word for a piece of technology you can’t touch
or feel and certainly can never love you back, but the universe does its job of
bridging the gap between people and data really, really well.
To quote Flight of the Concords in ‘The Robots’, “a little
understanding could make things better.”
Written by Angus Menter, BI Practice Manager, DSCallards - The Business Objects People
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