Description
Around the globe, companies must cut costs and reduce risks as they confront slower sales, hesitant suppliers, and tighter credit.
Business Intelligence: Thriving in Economic Uncertainty
White Paper
Published: November 2008
For the latest information, please see http://www.microsoft.com/BI
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................. 3
The backdrop: uncertain economic times ......................................................................................................... 4
The critical success factors for surviving economic uncertainty .............................................................. 4
Reduce costs ............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Operate smarter, more strategically ............................................................................................................... 5
Innovate to create a condition for growth ................................................................................................... 7
Powerful, cost-effective solutions: Microsoft Business Intelligence ....................................................... 8
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Introduction
There’s little doubt that the current economic situation presents challenges for businesses of
all sizes in every industry. Around the globe, companies must cut costs and reduce risks as
they confront slower sales, hesitant suppliers, and tighter credit. But with challenges come
opportunities. If you maintain a long-term perspective—even as you take short-term steps to
adjust to economic realities—you can sharpen your organization’s focus. Even with limited
resources, it’s possible to achieve your business objectives if you reduce costs, make smarter
strategic decisions, and continue innovating new products and solutions.
With Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI), you can focus your resources—whether they are
people, technology, or capital assets—to achieve these goals and generate the maximum
return for your organization. You get the right information to the right people faster. As a
result, they make smarter, more informed decisions, increasing efficiencies in the short term
and positioning the company for growth in the long term.
Because you probably already own much of the Microsoft Business Intelligence solution with
Microsoft® Office 2007 suites and Microsoft® SQL Server®, it’s also the most cost-effective
choice for deploying Business Intelligence throughout your organization.
The backdrop: uncertain economic times
In an uncertain economy, many companies feel the pinch of reduced business activity.
Customer orders fall. Scrutiny for management decisions rises. And suppliers and lenders seek
safe, low-risk investments. As a result, it becomes increasingly important to do more with less,
compete effectively for limited credit, and reassure stakeholders and investors.
Doing more with less usually involves “belt-tightening” measures, such as hiring freezes and
layoffs. Management examines budgets more closely, looking for ways to save money without
compromising on quality or service. Executives reevaluate travel, computer, and supply
expenses, and attempt to negotiate better rates for everything from freight contracts to
insurance premiums.
Competing effectively in a tight credit market also raises new issues. Limited credit means
fewer available funds for investments. Now is the time to carefully analyze investment options
so that limited funds are put to the best use. And securing new funds requires forecasting an
accurate return on investment—whether it’s an outlay for new IT infrastructure or new
machinery. In addition, frozen credit can impact the entire supply chain, causing delays or
limited availability to key raw materials. It’s crucial to have contingency plans for handling the
potential impact of constrained trade.
Finally, in an uncertain economy, stakeholders and lenders are less willing to take risks. They
seek low-risk investments that keep their capital investment whole and return even a small
profit. Before investors will approve additional funds, they want to know that management has
evaluated multiple scenarios—such as worst case, most likely case, and best case—and
aligned potential returns within a range of market uncertainty. During periods of upheaval, it’s
essential to rely on solid financial analysis to assess risk and return. Armed with this analysis,
it’s possible to reassure the stakeholders and lenders that are financing strategic initiatives.
The critical success factors for surviving economic uncertainty
To address the challenges of doing more with less, competing for funds in a tighter credit
market, and reassuring cautious stakeholders and investors, you need to increase visibility into
your financial and operational performance. This paper addresses how Business Intelligence
can help you reduce costs, make smarter operational decisions, and continue innovating so
you can survive—even thrive—within an uncertain economy.
Reduce costs
Business Intelligence can reduce costs in two ways: It helps you root out wasteful, expensive
inefficiencies and it automates routine processes, saving you valuable time and resources.
Find inefficiencies
To identify areas of inefficiency, you need complete insight into your financial and operational
performance. Powerful business intelligence tools improve financial visibility so you can better
analyze your operations. Take for example, Culver Franchising Systems, Inc. (CFSI), a company
that operates hundreds of restaurants and franchises throughout 17 states. With the help of
Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions, CFSI helps franchisees lower food costs and improve
the speed of service. The solution provides CFSI with better visibility into the performance of
Culver’s restaurants and menu items, and identifies areas where restaurants can reduce costs
without compromising quality or speed of service. Like CFSI, you can use Business Intelligence
to understand variances and interdependencies and drill down into detail to find trends.
Armed with this analysis, you can make smart, cost-reducing changes than improve
operational efficiencies.
Save money
Another way to cut costs is to automate routine processes so that you can reduce time-
consuming manual intervention. Consider TAC Americas, a company specializing in energy
management. It no longer manages multiple charts of accounts or relies on a host of macros
to consolidate and report the numbers. The company now uses a Microsoft Business
Intelligence solution to simplify and automate its consolidated results. The time saving of such
automation is significant: It’s slashed TAC Americas’ consolidation process from about four
hours to fifteen minutes.
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly provides another dramatic example of using Business Intelligence
to save money. They developed a Business Intelligence solution to pull data from an ERP
system and other data sources, eliminating many hours of work. One newly automated visual
presentation—a "relationship diagram," which lets managers collapse charts for multiple drug
projects into a program-level view—saves Lilly $500,000 a year in labor costs, the company
says.
1
Operate smarter, more strategically
With effective Business Intelligence you not only reduce costs, you operate smarter and more
strategically, building a foundation you can grow on when the economy picks up. A robust
Business Intelligence solution supports your ability to operate smarter by helping you:
? Get real-time information to the right employees
? Find profitable customers
? Pivot on a dime
Get real-time information to the right employees
You want to empower your employees with the real-time information they need to make
better, more strategic decisions. Business Intelligence gets the right information to the right
people faster. For example, customer support representatives can use Business Intelligence to
review information that helps them identify cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. Sales
directors can gain visibility into the pipeline and prioritize their efforts around their most
profitable customers. And your CFO can set automatic alerts to warn of potential problems
with cash flow. With access to real-time information, your employees—those that close deals,
build customer relationships, and plan for the future—can quickly analyze what’s happening
within the business today and make decisions based on information that’s both current and
relevant.
1
InformationWeek 500: Orion Builds Efficiency Into Eli Lilly's R&D System, Mary Hayes Weier, InformationWeek, Sept. 15, 2008.
Find profitable customers
Profitable customers are the ones worth fighting for. In uncertain economic times, you simply
can’t afford to waste precious time and resources on customers that are not in a position to
buy. Business Intelligence helps you analyze customer profitability, so you can allocate your
limited resources on those customers that are profitable now—and cultivate those customers
most likely to grow your sales when the economy recovers.
PREMIER Bankcard, one of the nation’s largest credit card providers, uses powerful analytics to
answer an endless array of “what if” questions to identify the best mix of customers. “We just
had a meeting earlier this week with a department that makes decisions on the credit
worthiness of our customers,” says Dan Zerfas, vice president of software development. “Their
question was: ‘What if we made a slight percentage point change in our approval rate for one
element of customer qualification? What would this change?’”
“It used to take months to answer this type of question, assembling and analyzing the data,”
says Ron Van Zanten, directing officer of business intelligence. “With analysis services and the
rest of our Business Intelligence environment on the Microsoft application platform, we can
provide even better results within just a few days. The drill-through capabilities of analysis
services are very important to our analysts.”
Pivot on a dime
Your ability to sense and react to shifting market dynamics can set you apart from the
competition. You need to identify problems early on, so you can make quick decisions in
response to changes in the marketplace. You need analytical tools that can help you turn data
into powerful information, driving better, faster decision making. And you must be able to
incorporate course changes into future forecasts and plans.
Detecting potential problems early is critical to altering course and improving operations. A
powerful BI solution delivers an information-rich dashboard that helps you identify problems
before they become insurmountable. Glenn Yaffa, executive vice president of sales and
marketing at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates notes, “The dashboard gives me an immediate view of
the key performance indicators that I need to track. It enables me to act faster to address
potential problems.”
Yaffa credits his dashboard with providing an early warning when the company’s orders for
imported wine appeared insufficient to meet anticipated demand. Because of the alert, Yaffa
called his national sales manager and was able to address the potential problem before it
actually cut into revenues.
In addition to early detection, Business Intelligence offers sophisticated analytic tools that turn
data into powerful information. Mark Kinkade, CIO at the Illinois Department of Transportation
(IDOT), explains how that agency’s Microsoft Business Intelligence solution drives critical
decisions by providing users with the ability to slice and dice data and decisions. “With the
Microsoft solution, IDOT can allocate resources more effectively and quantify the decisions
we’re making. It’ll also allow our staff to make better decisions quicker,” says Kinkade.
Not only can Business Intelligence help you track key metrics and rapidly analyze data, it lets
you forecast and plan based on multiple scenarios and changing business conditions. With
integrated forecasting and planning, you can quickly test and map the best route through
economic uncertainty. Further, you can use comprehensive scenario planning, for example, to
provide assurances to stakeholders and lenders that you have thoroughly vetted funding
requests for strategic initiatives.
Using a Microsoft Office PerformancePoint® Server 2007-based solution, GPX, a manufacturer
of specialty tires, is better able to ensure consistent measurement of targets and track results
throughout organization. “The integrated Business Intelligence solution is not only intuitive
and easy to use, it helps deliver significant strategic value to our organization by allowing us
to report current activities and better forecast for the future,” says Andy Soares, manager of
business intelligence and data integrity.
Innovate to create a condition for growth
In any economy, innovation is essential to business success. While the economic downturn
lasts, you need to cut costs and make better strategic decisions. You also must continue
creating products and services that will drive greater revenues when the economy improves.
With an effective Business Intelligence solution, you can identify buying patterns so that you
can focus your resources on creating and producing only in-demand products.
For example, the success of a pharmaceutical company directly correlates to its ability to
innovate needed treatments. Eli Lilly’s scientists, who work on several thousand potential new
drugs at any given time, are always looking for the next potential blockbuster. Eli Lilly adopted
a new centralized portfolio management system, based in part on Office PerformancePoint
Server 2007 for Business Intelligence and Office SharePoint® Server 2007 as a system portal,
to facilitate that process. Scientists can now assemble portfolio information in a matter of
hours, a process that used to take a month or two. "Our ability to access, apply, and manage
information through the portfolio, from basic innovation to marketplace dynamics, has to
advance dramatically, and this is one of those tools that will help us do that," says CIO Mike
Heim. "As a pharmaceutical company, your innovation engine and the ability to bring those
innovations to market is crucial," Heim says. "If we don't innovate, we go out of business."
2
2
InformationWeek 500: Orion Builds Efficiency Into Eli Lilly's R&D System, Mary Hayes Weier, InformationWeek, Sept. 15, 2008.
Powerful, cost-effective solutions: Microsoft Business Intelligence
A new generation of flexible, cost-effective Business Intelligence solutions can help you reduce
costs, make smarter operating decisions, and continue innovating in a down economy.
Further, these solutions let you understand and respond to changing business conditions with
greater insight and speed, which is especially critical in an uncertain economy. Business
Intelligence solutions from Microsoft combine the best value, pervasive deployment, and
complete integration you need to deliver the most cost-effective and feature-rich Business
Intelligence solution.
Best value
Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions deliver greater value at lower cost than many
competitive products—making them particularly ideal in difficult economic times. When
resources are limited, leveraging what you already own is a smart, cost-effective approach.
A case in point: Ste. Michelle Wine Estates adopted its Microsoft Business Intelligence solution
for just half the cost of alternative solutions. “The Microsoft Business Intelligence solution
gave us the best combination of price and performance of any of the options that we
considered,” says Alan Stefanin, the database architect at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. “We have
a best-of-breed strategy, and Microsoft Business Intelligence fit into that perfectly. A
significant share of our IT infrastructure is based on Microsoft technologies, and this solution
will operate easily with what we already used.”
Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions provide the best value for your money by maximizing
your existing IT investments and requiring only small, incremental investments in technology.
And in the long run, Microsoft solutions offer lower support, training, and maintenance costs
than competitive solutions.
Pervasive deployment
To reap the full performance-enhancing benefits of Business Intelligence, you need a solution
that is easy to use and makes your employees smarter. Business Intelligence doesn’t need to
be so complex that it shuts out regular business users. Nor does it need to eat up IT resources.
Microsoft Business Intelligence has removed these barriers to usage, making Business
Intelligence accessible to all your employees—from line-of-business managers to customer
service reps. Because it’s so intuitive to use, you can deploy Microsoft Business Intelligence to
all of your employees. With more employees able to review performance daily and make more
informed decisions, the productivity of your workforce rises.
Fully integrated
In addition to providing the best value and enabling pervasive deployment, Microsoft
Business Intelligence solutions come fully integrated with rest of your Microsoft Office
productivity tools—including Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007,
and other Microsoft Office applications. Microsoft SQL Server provides the data management
and analysis platform, and Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 delivers powerful
performance management capabilities. Because all of these products are built on the industry-
leading SQL Server, they inherently work together from the beginning—not sometime in the
future. Joe Gregg, the IT director for Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, explains it this way, “The
Microsoft Business Intelligence solution was a natural extension to our Microsoft-based
environment, so integration was easy and we were able to take advantage of much of the
software—such as SQL Server and Visio—that we already had.”
The close integration between your Microsoft applications extends Business Intelligence
capabilities throughout your organization, supporting rapid insight and action. It also
facilitates a self-service Business Intelligence environment with analytics, content
management, workflow, and collaboration embedded into key business processes.
Conclusion
During periods of economic uncertainty, your organization must cut costs and make more
strategic decisions, emphasizing low-risk investments that drive maximum value. Because you
already own much of the Microsoft Business Intelligence solution, it’s cost-effective to deploy
and easy to integrate into your IT environment. Microsoft Business Intelligence can offer your
organization these compelling benefits:
? Lower total costs. Utilize your existing investments in Microsoft SQL Server, Office
SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft Office 2007 to drive end-user adoption,
dramatically reduce per-user costs, and generate unprecedented value.
? Empower employees to make better business decisions. Giving information workers
quick access to data and enabling them to perform analysis with minimal hand-holding
from IT lets them make fast, accurate decisions.
? Enjoy rapid deployment and faster time-to-benefits. Promote wide-spread adoption
and benefits with the intuitive-to-use, yet powerful Business Intelligence capabilities
embedded within the everyday productivity tools your employees already use.
? Realize powerful synergies with other Microsoft applications. Deploy the unified
communications capabilities within Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, for
example, to nimbly act on Business Intelligence generated insights and “spread the
wealth” with your co-workers, customers, partners, and suppliers.
To learn more, visit us at www.microsoft.com/BI.
Legalese
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the
date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment
on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.
This white paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
DOCUMENT.
Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of
this document may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of
Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter
in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does
not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.
© 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Communications Server, Excel, Office, SharePoint, and SQL Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
doc_775539305.pdf
Around the globe, companies must cut costs and reduce risks as they confront slower sales, hesitant suppliers, and tighter credit.
Business Intelligence: Thriving in Economic Uncertainty
White Paper
Published: November 2008
For the latest information, please see http://www.microsoft.com/BI
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................. 3
The backdrop: uncertain economic times ......................................................................................................... 4
The critical success factors for surviving economic uncertainty .............................................................. 4
Reduce costs ............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Operate smarter, more strategically ............................................................................................................... 5
Innovate to create a condition for growth ................................................................................................... 7
Powerful, cost-effective solutions: Microsoft Business Intelligence ....................................................... 8
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Introduction
There’s little doubt that the current economic situation presents challenges for businesses of
all sizes in every industry. Around the globe, companies must cut costs and reduce risks as
they confront slower sales, hesitant suppliers, and tighter credit. But with challenges come
opportunities. If you maintain a long-term perspective—even as you take short-term steps to
adjust to economic realities—you can sharpen your organization’s focus. Even with limited
resources, it’s possible to achieve your business objectives if you reduce costs, make smarter
strategic decisions, and continue innovating new products and solutions.
With Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI), you can focus your resources—whether they are
people, technology, or capital assets—to achieve these goals and generate the maximum
return for your organization. You get the right information to the right people faster. As a
result, they make smarter, more informed decisions, increasing efficiencies in the short term
and positioning the company for growth in the long term.
Because you probably already own much of the Microsoft Business Intelligence solution with
Microsoft® Office 2007 suites and Microsoft® SQL Server®, it’s also the most cost-effective
choice for deploying Business Intelligence throughout your organization.
The backdrop: uncertain economic times
In an uncertain economy, many companies feel the pinch of reduced business activity.
Customer orders fall. Scrutiny for management decisions rises. And suppliers and lenders seek
safe, low-risk investments. As a result, it becomes increasingly important to do more with less,
compete effectively for limited credit, and reassure stakeholders and investors.
Doing more with less usually involves “belt-tightening” measures, such as hiring freezes and
layoffs. Management examines budgets more closely, looking for ways to save money without
compromising on quality or service. Executives reevaluate travel, computer, and supply
expenses, and attempt to negotiate better rates for everything from freight contracts to
insurance premiums.
Competing effectively in a tight credit market also raises new issues. Limited credit means
fewer available funds for investments. Now is the time to carefully analyze investment options
so that limited funds are put to the best use. And securing new funds requires forecasting an
accurate return on investment—whether it’s an outlay for new IT infrastructure or new
machinery. In addition, frozen credit can impact the entire supply chain, causing delays or
limited availability to key raw materials. It’s crucial to have contingency plans for handling the
potential impact of constrained trade.
Finally, in an uncertain economy, stakeholders and lenders are less willing to take risks. They
seek low-risk investments that keep their capital investment whole and return even a small
profit. Before investors will approve additional funds, they want to know that management has
evaluated multiple scenarios—such as worst case, most likely case, and best case—and
aligned potential returns within a range of market uncertainty. During periods of upheaval, it’s
essential to rely on solid financial analysis to assess risk and return. Armed with this analysis,
it’s possible to reassure the stakeholders and lenders that are financing strategic initiatives.
The critical success factors for surviving economic uncertainty
To address the challenges of doing more with less, competing for funds in a tighter credit
market, and reassuring cautious stakeholders and investors, you need to increase visibility into
your financial and operational performance. This paper addresses how Business Intelligence
can help you reduce costs, make smarter operational decisions, and continue innovating so
you can survive—even thrive—within an uncertain economy.
Reduce costs
Business Intelligence can reduce costs in two ways: It helps you root out wasteful, expensive
inefficiencies and it automates routine processes, saving you valuable time and resources.
Find inefficiencies
To identify areas of inefficiency, you need complete insight into your financial and operational
performance. Powerful business intelligence tools improve financial visibility so you can better
analyze your operations. Take for example, Culver Franchising Systems, Inc. (CFSI), a company
that operates hundreds of restaurants and franchises throughout 17 states. With the help of
Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions, CFSI helps franchisees lower food costs and improve
the speed of service. The solution provides CFSI with better visibility into the performance of
Culver’s restaurants and menu items, and identifies areas where restaurants can reduce costs
without compromising quality or speed of service. Like CFSI, you can use Business Intelligence
to understand variances and interdependencies and drill down into detail to find trends.
Armed with this analysis, you can make smart, cost-reducing changes than improve
operational efficiencies.
Save money
Another way to cut costs is to automate routine processes so that you can reduce time-
consuming manual intervention. Consider TAC Americas, a company specializing in energy
management. It no longer manages multiple charts of accounts or relies on a host of macros
to consolidate and report the numbers. The company now uses a Microsoft Business
Intelligence solution to simplify and automate its consolidated results. The time saving of such
automation is significant: It’s slashed TAC Americas’ consolidation process from about four
hours to fifteen minutes.
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly provides another dramatic example of using Business Intelligence
to save money. They developed a Business Intelligence solution to pull data from an ERP
system and other data sources, eliminating many hours of work. One newly automated visual
presentation—a "relationship diagram," which lets managers collapse charts for multiple drug
projects into a program-level view—saves Lilly $500,000 a year in labor costs, the company
says.
1
Operate smarter, more strategically
With effective Business Intelligence you not only reduce costs, you operate smarter and more
strategically, building a foundation you can grow on when the economy picks up. A robust
Business Intelligence solution supports your ability to operate smarter by helping you:
? Get real-time information to the right employees
? Find profitable customers
? Pivot on a dime
Get real-time information to the right employees
You want to empower your employees with the real-time information they need to make
better, more strategic decisions. Business Intelligence gets the right information to the right
people faster. For example, customer support representatives can use Business Intelligence to
review information that helps them identify cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. Sales
directors can gain visibility into the pipeline and prioritize their efforts around their most
profitable customers. And your CFO can set automatic alerts to warn of potential problems
with cash flow. With access to real-time information, your employees—those that close deals,
build customer relationships, and plan for the future—can quickly analyze what’s happening
within the business today and make decisions based on information that’s both current and
relevant.
1
InformationWeek 500: Orion Builds Efficiency Into Eli Lilly's R&D System, Mary Hayes Weier, InformationWeek, Sept. 15, 2008.
Find profitable customers
Profitable customers are the ones worth fighting for. In uncertain economic times, you simply
can’t afford to waste precious time and resources on customers that are not in a position to
buy. Business Intelligence helps you analyze customer profitability, so you can allocate your
limited resources on those customers that are profitable now—and cultivate those customers
most likely to grow your sales when the economy recovers.
PREMIER Bankcard, one of the nation’s largest credit card providers, uses powerful analytics to
answer an endless array of “what if” questions to identify the best mix of customers. “We just
had a meeting earlier this week with a department that makes decisions on the credit
worthiness of our customers,” says Dan Zerfas, vice president of software development. “Their
question was: ‘What if we made a slight percentage point change in our approval rate for one
element of customer qualification? What would this change?’”
“It used to take months to answer this type of question, assembling and analyzing the data,”
says Ron Van Zanten, directing officer of business intelligence. “With analysis services and the
rest of our Business Intelligence environment on the Microsoft application platform, we can
provide even better results within just a few days. The drill-through capabilities of analysis
services are very important to our analysts.”
Pivot on a dime
Your ability to sense and react to shifting market dynamics can set you apart from the
competition. You need to identify problems early on, so you can make quick decisions in
response to changes in the marketplace. You need analytical tools that can help you turn data
into powerful information, driving better, faster decision making. And you must be able to
incorporate course changes into future forecasts and plans.
Detecting potential problems early is critical to altering course and improving operations. A
powerful BI solution delivers an information-rich dashboard that helps you identify problems
before they become insurmountable. Glenn Yaffa, executive vice president of sales and
marketing at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates notes, “The dashboard gives me an immediate view of
the key performance indicators that I need to track. It enables me to act faster to address
potential problems.”
Yaffa credits his dashboard with providing an early warning when the company’s orders for
imported wine appeared insufficient to meet anticipated demand. Because of the alert, Yaffa
called his national sales manager and was able to address the potential problem before it
actually cut into revenues.
In addition to early detection, Business Intelligence offers sophisticated analytic tools that turn
data into powerful information. Mark Kinkade, CIO at the Illinois Department of Transportation
(IDOT), explains how that agency’s Microsoft Business Intelligence solution drives critical
decisions by providing users with the ability to slice and dice data and decisions. “With the
Microsoft solution, IDOT can allocate resources more effectively and quantify the decisions
we’re making. It’ll also allow our staff to make better decisions quicker,” says Kinkade.
Not only can Business Intelligence help you track key metrics and rapidly analyze data, it lets
you forecast and plan based on multiple scenarios and changing business conditions. With
integrated forecasting and planning, you can quickly test and map the best route through
economic uncertainty. Further, you can use comprehensive scenario planning, for example, to
provide assurances to stakeholders and lenders that you have thoroughly vetted funding
requests for strategic initiatives.
Using a Microsoft Office PerformancePoint® Server 2007-based solution, GPX, a manufacturer
of specialty tires, is better able to ensure consistent measurement of targets and track results
throughout organization. “The integrated Business Intelligence solution is not only intuitive
and easy to use, it helps deliver significant strategic value to our organization by allowing us
to report current activities and better forecast for the future,” says Andy Soares, manager of
business intelligence and data integrity.
Innovate to create a condition for growth
In any economy, innovation is essential to business success. While the economic downturn
lasts, you need to cut costs and make better strategic decisions. You also must continue
creating products and services that will drive greater revenues when the economy improves.
With an effective Business Intelligence solution, you can identify buying patterns so that you
can focus your resources on creating and producing only in-demand products.
For example, the success of a pharmaceutical company directly correlates to its ability to
innovate needed treatments. Eli Lilly’s scientists, who work on several thousand potential new
drugs at any given time, are always looking for the next potential blockbuster. Eli Lilly adopted
a new centralized portfolio management system, based in part on Office PerformancePoint
Server 2007 for Business Intelligence and Office SharePoint® Server 2007 as a system portal,
to facilitate that process. Scientists can now assemble portfolio information in a matter of
hours, a process that used to take a month or two. "Our ability to access, apply, and manage
information through the portfolio, from basic innovation to marketplace dynamics, has to
advance dramatically, and this is one of those tools that will help us do that," says CIO Mike
Heim. "As a pharmaceutical company, your innovation engine and the ability to bring those
innovations to market is crucial," Heim says. "If we don't innovate, we go out of business."
2
2
InformationWeek 500: Orion Builds Efficiency Into Eli Lilly's R&D System, Mary Hayes Weier, InformationWeek, Sept. 15, 2008.
Powerful, cost-effective solutions: Microsoft Business Intelligence
A new generation of flexible, cost-effective Business Intelligence solutions can help you reduce
costs, make smarter operating decisions, and continue innovating in a down economy.
Further, these solutions let you understand and respond to changing business conditions with
greater insight and speed, which is especially critical in an uncertain economy. Business
Intelligence solutions from Microsoft combine the best value, pervasive deployment, and
complete integration you need to deliver the most cost-effective and feature-rich Business
Intelligence solution.
Best value
Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions deliver greater value at lower cost than many
competitive products—making them particularly ideal in difficult economic times. When
resources are limited, leveraging what you already own is a smart, cost-effective approach.
A case in point: Ste. Michelle Wine Estates adopted its Microsoft Business Intelligence solution
for just half the cost of alternative solutions. “The Microsoft Business Intelligence solution
gave us the best combination of price and performance of any of the options that we
considered,” says Alan Stefanin, the database architect at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. “We have
a best-of-breed strategy, and Microsoft Business Intelligence fit into that perfectly. A
significant share of our IT infrastructure is based on Microsoft technologies, and this solution
will operate easily with what we already used.”
Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions provide the best value for your money by maximizing
your existing IT investments and requiring only small, incremental investments in technology.
And in the long run, Microsoft solutions offer lower support, training, and maintenance costs
than competitive solutions.
Pervasive deployment
To reap the full performance-enhancing benefits of Business Intelligence, you need a solution
that is easy to use and makes your employees smarter. Business Intelligence doesn’t need to
be so complex that it shuts out regular business users. Nor does it need to eat up IT resources.
Microsoft Business Intelligence has removed these barriers to usage, making Business
Intelligence accessible to all your employees—from line-of-business managers to customer
service reps. Because it’s so intuitive to use, you can deploy Microsoft Business Intelligence to
all of your employees. With more employees able to review performance daily and make more
informed decisions, the productivity of your workforce rises.
Fully integrated
In addition to providing the best value and enabling pervasive deployment, Microsoft
Business Intelligence solutions come fully integrated with rest of your Microsoft Office
productivity tools—including Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007,
and other Microsoft Office applications. Microsoft SQL Server provides the data management
and analysis platform, and Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 delivers powerful
performance management capabilities. Because all of these products are built on the industry-
leading SQL Server, they inherently work together from the beginning—not sometime in the
future. Joe Gregg, the IT director for Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, explains it this way, “The
Microsoft Business Intelligence solution was a natural extension to our Microsoft-based
environment, so integration was easy and we were able to take advantage of much of the
software—such as SQL Server and Visio—that we already had.”
The close integration between your Microsoft applications extends Business Intelligence
capabilities throughout your organization, supporting rapid insight and action. It also
facilitates a self-service Business Intelligence environment with analytics, content
management, workflow, and collaboration embedded into key business processes.
Conclusion
During periods of economic uncertainty, your organization must cut costs and make more
strategic decisions, emphasizing low-risk investments that drive maximum value. Because you
already own much of the Microsoft Business Intelligence solution, it’s cost-effective to deploy
and easy to integrate into your IT environment. Microsoft Business Intelligence can offer your
organization these compelling benefits:
? Lower total costs. Utilize your existing investments in Microsoft SQL Server, Office
SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft Office 2007 to drive end-user adoption,
dramatically reduce per-user costs, and generate unprecedented value.
? Empower employees to make better business decisions. Giving information workers
quick access to data and enabling them to perform analysis with minimal hand-holding
from IT lets them make fast, accurate decisions.
? Enjoy rapid deployment and faster time-to-benefits. Promote wide-spread adoption
and benefits with the intuitive-to-use, yet powerful Business Intelligence capabilities
embedded within the everyday productivity tools your employees already use.
? Realize powerful synergies with other Microsoft applications. Deploy the unified
communications capabilities within Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, for
example, to nimbly act on Business Intelligence generated insights and “spread the
wealth” with your co-workers, customers, partners, and suppliers.
To learn more, visit us at www.microsoft.com/BI.
Legalese
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the
date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment
on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.
This white paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
DOCUMENT.
Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of
this document may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of
Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter
in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does
not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.
© 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Communications Server, Excel, Office, SharePoint, and SQL Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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