What Do People Class as Business Intelligence?

What do people class as Business Intelligence? Is it the fancy management reports that you see in your daily or weekly meetings that let you know about churn or sales or another KPI that some has decided is pertinent to talk about? The answer could be a bit more complicated than you might think. Just showing reports on their own isn’t what I would class as Business Intelligence. Of course this is all subjective but reports that invoke no additional thought is not intelligence it’s just display.

In my opinion true business intelligence doesn’t just merely display data, it displays information that can invoke ideas or decisions that can positively affect the success of your business.

It’s possible that you are in this situation. Stagnant reports, boring presentations and repetitive spreadsheets that restrict the creative thought process? You’ve got to ask yourself how am I actually making decisions in my business? Do I have all the necessary tools at hand? Can you make a decision and then show compelling evidence as to why that decision is a good one?

For more information visit www.thebusinessobjectspeople.com. 

Written by Luke Johnson, Business Intelligence Support Technician

How To Display Parameter Entries on a Web Intelligence Report

1. Drag a blank cell onto the report

2. Double click the blank cell

3. Click the formula button inside the blank cell

4. Paste the formula below into the cell 

="Report was run for the period " + Left(UserResponse("psEnter value for Order Date (Start):");10) + " to " +Left( UserResponse("psEnter value for Order Date (End):");10)

Written by Steve Chapman, Senior BI Consultant, DSCallards

BOINC

When you think of charity you tend to think of just giving pages, friends of a certain age doing marathons or people sitting in bath tubs full of baked beans to send cash into the BBC to keep Pudsey socially relevant with the latest spotted eye patch, Gucci no doubt.

Personally this isn’t for me. Why can’t charity be something much more in line with my own beliefs and interests. I’m not sure if I’ll ever run a marathon and the idea of beans simply offends me, I think it’s more the assumption that everyone likes beans is the thing that really irritates me. Like the Beatles.

Moving on from my own irritations this was supposed to be about charity and how it can start at home and be more relevant to yourself.

I was first introduced to BOINC during my time at university in Sheffield. BOINC is a community based grid computing program which allows to you donate CPU cycles to crunch numbers for charitable purposes.  Very few of us use 100% of the resources our computer possess. BOINC uses a portion of this power to help solve mathematical problems or run test models for all sorts of different organisations. From searching for aliens to searching for a cure for cancer, trying to solve historical mathematical problems or helping analyse the Ebola virus, there is something for everyone.

Most charities can’t afford super computers to help with all their research, grid computing allows normal every day computers to link together to form a grid powerful to generate 6,187.945 TeraFLOPS.

Here at DSCallards we have signed up to the world community grid project and we use our old hardware to run BOINC and help all of causes here:

https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/

It’s a great way to repurpose old hardware which would have otherwise been thrown away. We are currently in the top 500 contributors in the UK and climbing.

Written by Luke Johnson, DSCallards.

Concurrent Access License for SAP Crystal Server

So, what is a Concurrent Access License (CAL)?

Simply put, it allows casual users of an SAP Crystal Server system to log in and view BI content that has been published for them to access.

For example, if you have five Concurrent Access Licenses for SAP Crystal Server, five session can be active at any one time.  If there was to be a sixth session, for example another person logging in, it won't allow them until one of the sessions given back into the pot.

Click here for full article.

Written by Rebecca Middleton, Senior BI Consultant, DSCallards

SAP Lumira: Where and What to Eat in Birmingham City Centre

Overview

As a frequent visitor to Birmingham, working mainly in Corporation Street, I thought it prudent to find out the best establishments for an evening or lunchtime meal.  Using SAP Lumira, I have analysed data from the Ordnance Survey website and blended this with data from the Food Standards Agency website.  The sources are shown below and are free to download.  I concentrated my search solely on the city centre postcode regions.

Read full blog here.

Written by Steve Chapman, Senior BI Consultant, DSCallards

Microsoft Will Cease to Support Windows Server 2003 and Small Business Server from 14th July 2015. The clock is ticking ...

If your business relies on your SAP Reporting Platform 2008 and you are on Windows Server 2003 you may need to upgrade! 

July 14 2015 sees Windows Server 2003 reach its end-of-life. The mainstream support finished July 13 2010 and it has been in ”extended support” since then. This means that no further patches or security updates will be available from Microsoft. In itself this poses a Security risk and Compliance problem for businesses. Most third party applications are now only supported on the latest 64bit platforms and application support from these bodies is another major risk driver for the change.

If you are running the SAP Crystal Server 2008 or older you may need to upgrade your platform when you upgrade the windows server to the new version Windows 2012. 

This transition can be managed smoothly and expertly by our experienced team here as we have perfected the migration process so you don’t have to worry.

We can smoothly migrate all your history and instances along with all your reports, show you all the new and improved features including the Universes for easier reporting and even take you mobile! 

When end of life is reached, you’re at increased risk of corrupting your data and running into unsupported applications. Application support challenges can also be complex and costly. Save time and money now to secure the future. 

Call us on 0800 652 4050 or email us today!

Written by Donna Hornickel, BI Sales Executive, DSCallards

The Universe and an Analytic Database?

If you’re modelling your data into business information in the universe then surely creating an analytic database as well is overkill?

It’s a distinct possibility. If your data is in reasonably good shape, then let the universe go at it with what it does best – see “The Universe Is Your Friend”.

However, complex computations such as a validation rule calculating customer eligible for a loyalty bonus may best pre-processed.

Taking this dreamed up criteria as an example:

• has to have had a certain number of transactions for qualifying products (which need to be looked up from one source, decoded and compared to another source)
• over a set value (which varies by customer country)
• in a particular time period
• had no gaps in their membership in that period.
• made no derogatory comments about the Chief Exec's gold handicap.
• opted in to received worldly enlightments about future products.
• and not be related to any member past or present of the company's illustrious management structure.

Whilst the computation could be run at query time it would probably be better pre-processed, so at query time the only computation is true or false.

The universe doesn’t store data. You can sit it on top of a transactional system and let users see who’s bought what products in the last five seconds. But asking that same system which customers are eligible for a loyalty bonus, well that might make two people unhappy. Firstly the next customer waiting for the system to respond so they can buy one of your shiny products, but also the account humble manager wanting to know which of her customers she can delight with news of their eligibility. If the customer loyalty bonus object was selected with a few other objects of similar complexity, the resulting database query could take tens of seconds or over a minute to run. After waiting a minute for that information her mind may wander on to that spreadsheet she keeps of her own sales to her key customers and decide her time is better spent maintaining her own little island of data.

So by trimming the query run time from tens of second or a minute plus to milliseconds what will the impact be? Probably,

• more people will use the system to make fact-based decisions
• people will rely less on their own islands of data, meaning more consistency in decision making between people and departments
• people will find uses for the system you or they didn't originally envisage
• you may see a cultural shift in the way people use information.  After all, data is the new gold!

Written by Angus Menter, BI Practice Manager, DSCallards - The Business Objects People