Description
Traditional business intelligence (BI) approaches have fallen short in delivering the expected value and return on investment. High
costs, lengthy implementations and increasing complexity have led to frustration and disappointment for many enterprises.
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
_experience the commitment
TM
ABOUT THIS PAPER
Traditional business intelligence
(BI) approaches have fallen short
in delivering the expected value
and return on investment. High
costs, lengthy implementations
and increasing complexity have
led to frustration and
disappointment for many
enterprises.
However, a new generation of BI
tools is emerging. Data discovery
tools promise to overcome many
of the disadvantages of
traditional BI tools, delivering
more flexibility, ease of use and
productivity at a fraction of the
cost and time.
In this paper, learn how two large
enterprises optimized their BI
performance through data
discovery and discover seven
steps for effectively pursuing and
implementing a data discovery
approach to BI.
Traditional BI tools: Late i s usel ess
Does your enterprise have the right information, at the right time, to make the right
business decisions?
Every month, a chief planning officer at an international company with operations in
18 countries faces that question. And every month, his job is on the line as a result.
A security company experiences rising telecom costs among the seven different
providers it contracts with, but lacks the means to quickly pinpoint where each cost
stems from.
Two different scenarios, yet for many enterprises, each points to one equally
common challenge: the need to gather actionable analytics in real time and in a
cost-effective manner.
For many enterprises, traditional business intelligence (BI) tools increasingly spell
frustration, lost revenue and dwindling competitive advantage—a tough status quo
to maintain in the midst of an already shaky economy. Indeed, many enterprises are
finding it increasingly difficult to justify the huge systems footprint and IT investment
that typically accompany traditional BI approaches.
While traditional BI options, such as query-based BI tools, are adequate in
gathering analytics, they come with a sizable caveat—the enterprise must make the
right data available exactly when it’s needed. More often than not, a time-
consuming cat-and-mouse game ensues to determine which of the various data
warehouses and dashboards holds the right information.
But there’s a silver lining to the BI status quo.
Breaking the BI status quo: Data discovery tool s
As traditional BI tools lose their power to pack a powerful BI punch—due primarily to
high costs and lengthy timeframes associated with BI project implementation—a
new generation of BI tools is emerging.
Data discovery tools offer a small systems footprint versus a complex stack of
modules and layers that accompany traditional BI products. Rather than leveraging
a costly stack of BI product modules to solve one given problem, a “mini” data
discovery tool offers a single, detailed view into an organization’s entire sweep of
data, providing flexibility, ease of use and productivity at a fraction of the cost and
time.
Next generation
business intelligence
Seven steps to improved business intelligence through data
discovery
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
Data di scovery tools: Essential features
The strength of this new generation of BI tools rests upon the following features:
Minimal hardware and software investment. Data discovery tools do not
require the installation of a full technology stack. They also typically come with a
significantly lower software investment cost than that of traditional BI products,
such as SAS, Business Objects, MicroStrategy and Cognos.
Qui ck development and time to market. In the absence of OLAP cubes, data
discovery tools offer quick development time for evolutionary changes. A
developer can execute most functional changes within one business day.
BI case studies: Lessons for today’s enterprise
Two BI case studies offer insight into how an enterprise in any market can seize the
benefits of today’s data discovery tools.
Case number one
The problem: Mul tiple vendors, multipl e contracts and li mited l ine of sight
into costs
One of the largest security and alarm companies in Spain had contracts with seven
different vendors, yet lacked the means to gauge whether each vendor was
providing services as contracted. That question became increasingly critical for the
company to answer in the midst of a monthly bill close to 1.5 million euros (an
amount the company even exceeded during peak periods of operation).
At the time, the company’s financial analysis approach was non-automated, raising
serious questions about its ability to catch possible billing errors.
Every month, the company received approximately 1,500 bills, which it divided into
200 files of different formats and sizes. Each file contained detailed communications
records on 10 million calls/SMSs. With so much information in so many formats, the
company faced an uphill battle to determine overall company costs as well as future
cost projections.
The soluti on
Over a three-month period, CGI and its client developed a QlikView application to
process the avalanche of billing files. This streamlined approach occurred with the
aid of a simple dashboard and analysis program (see graphic on next page).
The solution that ensued allows the company to quickly tally costs associated with
each contracted service on a monthly basis. Information is displayed at different
levels of granularity and customized according to user preference. The user can drill
down further, assessing individual usage records associated with each line item—a
critical step to verify costs in accordance with each provider’s contract.
This line-item view allows the company to track the evolution of costs on a monthly
and yearly basis. The resulting information serves as a powerful negotiation tool as
the company considers additional telecom vendor bids on services.
Data discovery tools do not
require the installation of a
full technology stack. They
also typically come with a
significantly lower software
investment cost than that of
traditional BI products,
such as SAS, Business
Objects, MicroStrategy and
Cognos.
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
With more than 30 holding
companies worldwide, the
enterprise faced the
daunting task of compiling
an accurate monthly
financial snapshot of each
company’s debt structure,
investment portfolio and
meeting covenants...CGI
proposed a financial
dashboard based on the
discovery tool QlikView.
Case number two
The problem: Global company, dozens of holding companies and the need for
an accurate monthl y finance report
Can your finance team quickly generate an accurate monthly finance report? Every
month, the finance department of one of the world’s largest infrastructure companies
was faced with answering that question in advance of a board meeting.
With more than 30 holding companies worldwide, the enterprise had the daunting
task of compiling an accurate monthly financial snapshot of each company’s debt
structure, investment portfolio and meeting covenants.
To tackle the surfeit of financial data across varying national currencies, the finance
department manually revised rows of information and reference data across varying
sheets. This traditional approach amounted to splicing and dicing data into Microsoft
Excel and Access, which consumed more than two weeks of operations time until
the final consolidated financial report was generated.
The use of this Excel/Access reporting methodology grew increasingly unsustainable
through additional corporate mergers, purchases and sales.
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
The solution
CGI proposed a financial dashboard based on the data discovery tool QlikView. The
tool included a dashboard with the ability to automatically generate reports and
standardize input files from each of the organization’s different operating companies.
The resulting financial dashboard now in place automates the reception of expected
files. It also validates the file content of each. The application reports any errors, such
as invalid data and incorrect data formats within the dashboard on a line-by-line basis.
It also manages month-to-month shifts in company structure, such as mergers and
acquisitions.
With the push of a button, the financial planning team can now easily load data. The
end result is an initial financial report within one to two hours of launching the
consolidated report task. The time saved is now dedicated to analyzing the data sent
by the operating companies—a level of granularity that was previously unthinkable.
The data discovery tool employed also includes the flexibility to implement change
requests and modifications at a fraction of the cost of traditional BI tools.
While data discovery
tools hold tremendous
promise, no two
products on the market
are exactly the same.
Buyer education is
critical to ensure a cost-
effective and time-
efficient investment.
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
New BI tools: Try before you buy
While data discovery tools hold tremendous promise, no two products on the market
are exactly the same. Buyer education is critical to ensure a cost-effective and time-
efficient investment. An enterprise can gauge the effectiveness of the new crop of BI
tools through seven essential steps:
1. Do a pilot project. To assess the efficacy of a data discovery tool, an enterprise
has to see it before it can believe it. Seeing requires rolling out a prototype. An
effective prototype may put three to four vendors in competition. Through this
comparative exercise, an enterprise can determine the following: the cost of each
proposed tool; the length of time to implement the BI solution; ease of incorporating
the tool into the enterprise’s existing IT framework; the level of maintenance
complexity of each proposed solution; the interface design (for example, Is it
streamlined?); and the tool’s flexibility of use (its learning curve, specifically).
2. Extract, transform and l oad securely. This process takes information from a
data source, then formats, validates and loads it into a data warehouse or associated
database. An effective data discovery tool allows the user to simply load the data into
another source. In the end, the user serves as a lone, yet effective catalyst, to
transform and validate data—without the aid of a team of technical experts.
3. Determine if the BI tool has an adequate validation layer. A dashboard is only
as good as the information that it is provided. A validation layer within any BI tool is
essential to clean out “bad” data from among the sources used.
4. Create user buy-in. Departments don’t like change, particularly if that change is
perceived as a threat to work scope. In the midst of an understandable reluctance to
embrace new ways of gathering business intelligence, an organization must create
user buy-in, persuasively showing how a new tool can ultimately improve work
performance for all.
5. Mold the user interface to i ndividual taste. If a data discovery tool can
correspond to a user’s individual preferences, half the battle is already won in
creating user buy-in. Data discovery tools in general have a large repository of user
graphs, tables and interfaces, which can be molded to address a user’s visual
interface preferences. With QlikView, each data set is accompanied by three different
colors—a streamlined presentation that encourages minimal training.
6. Give the IT department credit. The typical IT department has likely already made
a large investment in a stack-centric solution and may therefore be wary of a “cheap
and friendly” tool that seemingly upstages that initial investment. However, if the
department is presented throughout the organization as the catalyst for a new, user-
friendly and cost-efficient technology, that reluctance may diminish.
7. Keep expectations realistic. BI requires a continuous approach, driven by user
engagement. While an initial prototype may yield dazzling results within a matter of
days, other BI issues may take longer to resolve. For example, final production
environment dashboards may vary, along with the duration of time to set-up real data
fees and transformations.
If a data discovery tool
can correspond to a user’s
individual preferences,
half the battle is already
won in creating user buy-
in. Data discovery tools in
general have a large
repository of user graphs,
tables and interfaces,
which can be molded to
address a user’s visual
interface preferences.
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
The future of BI: Increasing functionali ty
J ust one year ago, the BI market was defined by an “intensified struggle...,” as
Gartner put it, “...between business users' need for ease of use and flexibility on the
one hand, and IT’s need for standards and control on the other.”
Today, “ease of use” now surpasses “functionality” as the dominant BI platform
buying criterion. As Gartner notes, a new generation of influential business users is
driving BI purchasing decisions through data discovery tools—not traditional BI
platforms—with or without their IT department's consent.
Looking ahead, the market will continue to respond with an increasing tilt toward
“easy to use” data discovery tools that offer flexibility years ahead of traditional data-
mining products, as well as less prohibitive costs, maintenance requirements and
skilled resource demands.
In the meantime, the consumer can expect a buyer’s market ahead. The need to
maintain market share and the fierce competition in the current climate will force all
BI vendors to lower their licensing costs over the next two to three years. Hastening
this trend will be continued consolidation within the BI market and the acquisition of
BI companies by more generic product vendors
Naturally, with that competition will come a continued push toward innovation,
particularly to meet the demands of an increasingly mobile workforce. In keeping with
the evolution of BI tools toward mobile tablets, leading data discovery tool suppliers
are now investing in the development of new adapters for mobile devices and tablets.
These adapters will allow a mobile workforce to upload new and updated data,
visualize it, and make decisions on the run via their mobile tablets and smartphones.
Certain data discovery tool products have already taken a lead with the general
release of adapters for mobile devices. In 2012, enterprises can expect a number of
announcements and product launches that focus on this functionality.
A virtualized consultative platform is another technological breakthrough, which
leading data discovery vendors are helping to shape. An enterprise can now
effectively share information in a secure, virtualized format with multiple users
accessing and analyzing the same document or dashboard remotely. These
advances will help today’s enterprise realize that ultimate critical need—to have the
right information, at the right time, to make the right business decisions.
ABOUT CGI
At CGI, we’re in the business of
satisfying clients. A leading IT
and business process services
provider, CGI has 31,000
professionals operating in 125
offices worldwide.
Working in partnership with
clients for 35 years, CGI has
extensive experience in all
aspects of IT management,
from consulting and systems
integration services to the full
management of IT and
business functions
(outsourcing).
This know-how puts us in a
unique position to help clients
increase the effectiveness and
efficiency of their business
intelligence initiatives. We work
with organizations of all types to
help them select the optimal
business intelligence solutions
to improve their business
performance.
To learn more, visit us at
www.cgi.com or contact us at
[email protected].
doc_282464777.pdf
Traditional business intelligence (BI) approaches have fallen short in delivering the expected value and return on investment. High
costs, lengthy implementations and increasing complexity have led to frustration and disappointment for many enterprises.
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
_experience the commitment
TM
ABOUT THIS PAPER
Traditional business intelligence
(BI) approaches have fallen short
in delivering the expected value
and return on investment. High
costs, lengthy implementations
and increasing complexity have
led to frustration and
disappointment for many
enterprises.
However, a new generation of BI
tools is emerging. Data discovery
tools promise to overcome many
of the disadvantages of
traditional BI tools, delivering
more flexibility, ease of use and
productivity at a fraction of the
cost and time.
In this paper, learn how two large
enterprises optimized their BI
performance through data
discovery and discover seven
steps for effectively pursuing and
implementing a data discovery
approach to BI.
Traditional BI tools: Late i s usel ess
Does your enterprise have the right information, at the right time, to make the right
business decisions?
Every month, a chief planning officer at an international company with operations in
18 countries faces that question. And every month, his job is on the line as a result.
A security company experiences rising telecom costs among the seven different
providers it contracts with, but lacks the means to quickly pinpoint where each cost
stems from.
Two different scenarios, yet for many enterprises, each points to one equally
common challenge: the need to gather actionable analytics in real time and in a
cost-effective manner.
For many enterprises, traditional business intelligence (BI) tools increasingly spell
frustration, lost revenue and dwindling competitive advantage—a tough status quo
to maintain in the midst of an already shaky economy. Indeed, many enterprises are
finding it increasingly difficult to justify the huge systems footprint and IT investment
that typically accompany traditional BI approaches.
While traditional BI options, such as query-based BI tools, are adequate in
gathering analytics, they come with a sizable caveat—the enterprise must make the
right data available exactly when it’s needed. More often than not, a time-
consuming cat-and-mouse game ensues to determine which of the various data
warehouses and dashboards holds the right information.
But there’s a silver lining to the BI status quo.
Breaking the BI status quo: Data discovery tool s
As traditional BI tools lose their power to pack a powerful BI punch—due primarily to
high costs and lengthy timeframes associated with BI project implementation—a
new generation of BI tools is emerging.
Data discovery tools offer a small systems footprint versus a complex stack of
modules and layers that accompany traditional BI products. Rather than leveraging
a costly stack of BI product modules to solve one given problem, a “mini” data
discovery tool offers a single, detailed view into an organization’s entire sweep of
data, providing flexibility, ease of use and productivity at a fraction of the cost and
time.
Next generation
business intelligence
Seven steps to improved business intelligence through data
discovery
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
Data di scovery tools: Essential features
The strength of this new generation of BI tools rests upon the following features:
Minimal hardware and software investment. Data discovery tools do not
require the installation of a full technology stack. They also typically come with a
significantly lower software investment cost than that of traditional BI products,
such as SAS, Business Objects, MicroStrategy and Cognos.
Qui ck development and time to market. In the absence of OLAP cubes, data
discovery tools offer quick development time for evolutionary changes. A
developer can execute most functional changes within one business day.
BI case studies: Lessons for today’s enterprise
Two BI case studies offer insight into how an enterprise in any market can seize the
benefits of today’s data discovery tools.
Case number one
The problem: Mul tiple vendors, multipl e contracts and li mited l ine of sight
into costs
One of the largest security and alarm companies in Spain had contracts with seven
different vendors, yet lacked the means to gauge whether each vendor was
providing services as contracted. That question became increasingly critical for the
company to answer in the midst of a monthly bill close to 1.5 million euros (an
amount the company even exceeded during peak periods of operation).
At the time, the company’s financial analysis approach was non-automated, raising
serious questions about its ability to catch possible billing errors.
Every month, the company received approximately 1,500 bills, which it divided into
200 files of different formats and sizes. Each file contained detailed communications
records on 10 million calls/SMSs. With so much information in so many formats, the
company faced an uphill battle to determine overall company costs as well as future
cost projections.
The soluti on
Over a three-month period, CGI and its client developed a QlikView application to
process the avalanche of billing files. This streamlined approach occurred with the
aid of a simple dashboard and analysis program (see graphic on next page).
The solution that ensued allows the company to quickly tally costs associated with
each contracted service on a monthly basis. Information is displayed at different
levels of granularity and customized according to user preference. The user can drill
down further, assessing individual usage records associated with each line item—a
critical step to verify costs in accordance with each provider’s contract.
This line-item view allows the company to track the evolution of costs on a monthly
and yearly basis. The resulting information serves as a powerful negotiation tool as
the company considers additional telecom vendor bids on services.
Data discovery tools do not
require the installation of a
full technology stack. They
also typically come with a
significantly lower software
investment cost than that of
traditional BI products,
such as SAS, Business
Objects, MicroStrategy and
Cognos.
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
With more than 30 holding
companies worldwide, the
enterprise faced the
daunting task of compiling
an accurate monthly
financial snapshot of each
company’s debt structure,
investment portfolio and
meeting covenants...CGI
proposed a financial
dashboard based on the
discovery tool QlikView.
Case number two
The problem: Global company, dozens of holding companies and the need for
an accurate monthl y finance report
Can your finance team quickly generate an accurate monthly finance report? Every
month, the finance department of one of the world’s largest infrastructure companies
was faced with answering that question in advance of a board meeting.
With more than 30 holding companies worldwide, the enterprise had the daunting
task of compiling an accurate monthly financial snapshot of each company’s debt
structure, investment portfolio and meeting covenants.
To tackle the surfeit of financial data across varying national currencies, the finance
department manually revised rows of information and reference data across varying
sheets. This traditional approach amounted to splicing and dicing data into Microsoft
Excel and Access, which consumed more than two weeks of operations time until
the final consolidated financial report was generated.
The use of this Excel/Access reporting methodology grew increasingly unsustainable
through additional corporate mergers, purchases and sales.
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
The solution
CGI proposed a financial dashboard based on the data discovery tool QlikView. The
tool included a dashboard with the ability to automatically generate reports and
standardize input files from each of the organization’s different operating companies.
The resulting financial dashboard now in place automates the reception of expected
files. It also validates the file content of each. The application reports any errors, such
as invalid data and incorrect data formats within the dashboard on a line-by-line basis.
It also manages month-to-month shifts in company structure, such as mergers and
acquisitions.
With the push of a button, the financial planning team can now easily load data. The
end result is an initial financial report within one to two hours of launching the
consolidated report task. The time saved is now dedicated to analyzing the data sent
by the operating companies—a level of granularity that was previously unthinkable.
The data discovery tool employed also includes the flexibility to implement change
requests and modifications at a fraction of the cost of traditional BI tools.
While data discovery
tools hold tremendous
promise, no two
products on the market
are exactly the same.
Buyer education is
critical to ensure a cost-
effective and time-
efficient investment.
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
New BI tools: Try before you buy
While data discovery tools hold tremendous promise, no two products on the market
are exactly the same. Buyer education is critical to ensure a cost-effective and time-
efficient investment. An enterprise can gauge the effectiveness of the new crop of BI
tools through seven essential steps:
1. Do a pilot project. To assess the efficacy of a data discovery tool, an enterprise
has to see it before it can believe it. Seeing requires rolling out a prototype. An
effective prototype may put three to four vendors in competition. Through this
comparative exercise, an enterprise can determine the following: the cost of each
proposed tool; the length of time to implement the BI solution; ease of incorporating
the tool into the enterprise’s existing IT framework; the level of maintenance
complexity of each proposed solution; the interface design (for example, Is it
streamlined?); and the tool’s flexibility of use (its learning curve, specifically).
2. Extract, transform and l oad securely. This process takes information from a
data source, then formats, validates and loads it into a data warehouse or associated
database. An effective data discovery tool allows the user to simply load the data into
another source. In the end, the user serves as a lone, yet effective catalyst, to
transform and validate data—without the aid of a team of technical experts.
3. Determine if the BI tool has an adequate validation layer. A dashboard is only
as good as the information that it is provided. A validation layer within any BI tool is
essential to clean out “bad” data from among the sources used.
4. Create user buy-in. Departments don’t like change, particularly if that change is
perceived as a threat to work scope. In the midst of an understandable reluctance to
embrace new ways of gathering business intelligence, an organization must create
user buy-in, persuasively showing how a new tool can ultimately improve work
performance for all.
5. Mold the user interface to i ndividual taste. If a data discovery tool can
correspond to a user’s individual preferences, half the battle is already won in
creating user buy-in. Data discovery tools in general have a large repository of user
graphs, tables and interfaces, which can be molded to address a user’s visual
interface preferences. With QlikView, each data set is accompanied by three different
colors—a streamlined presentation that encourages minimal training.
6. Give the IT department credit. The typical IT department has likely already made
a large investment in a stack-centric solution and may therefore be wary of a “cheap
and friendly” tool that seemingly upstages that initial investment. However, if the
department is presented throughout the organization as the catalyst for a new, user-
friendly and cost-efficient technology, that reluctance may diminish.
7. Keep expectations realistic. BI requires a continuous approach, driven by user
engagement. While an initial prototype may yield dazzling results within a matter of
days, other BI issues may take longer to resolve. For example, final production
environment dashboards may vary, along with the duration of time to set-up real data
fees and transformations.
If a data discovery tool
can correspond to a user’s
individual preferences,
half the battle is already
won in creating user buy-
in. Data discovery tools in
general have a large
repository of user graphs,
tables and interfaces,
which can be molded to
address a user’s visual
interface preferences.
_experience the commitment
TM
Business
solutions
through
information
technology
®
©2011 CGI Group Inc. Next generation business intelligence
The future of BI: Increasing functionali ty
J ust one year ago, the BI market was defined by an “intensified struggle...,” as
Gartner put it, “...between business users' need for ease of use and flexibility on the
one hand, and IT’s need for standards and control on the other.”
Today, “ease of use” now surpasses “functionality” as the dominant BI platform
buying criterion. As Gartner notes, a new generation of influential business users is
driving BI purchasing decisions through data discovery tools—not traditional BI
platforms—with or without their IT department's consent.
Looking ahead, the market will continue to respond with an increasing tilt toward
“easy to use” data discovery tools that offer flexibility years ahead of traditional data-
mining products, as well as less prohibitive costs, maintenance requirements and
skilled resource demands.
In the meantime, the consumer can expect a buyer’s market ahead. The need to
maintain market share and the fierce competition in the current climate will force all
BI vendors to lower their licensing costs over the next two to three years. Hastening
this trend will be continued consolidation within the BI market and the acquisition of
BI companies by more generic product vendors
Naturally, with that competition will come a continued push toward innovation,
particularly to meet the demands of an increasingly mobile workforce. In keeping with
the evolution of BI tools toward mobile tablets, leading data discovery tool suppliers
are now investing in the development of new adapters for mobile devices and tablets.
These adapters will allow a mobile workforce to upload new and updated data,
visualize it, and make decisions on the run via their mobile tablets and smartphones.
Certain data discovery tool products have already taken a lead with the general
release of adapters for mobile devices. In 2012, enterprises can expect a number of
announcements and product launches that focus on this functionality.
A virtualized consultative platform is another technological breakthrough, which
leading data discovery vendors are helping to shape. An enterprise can now
effectively share information in a secure, virtualized format with multiple users
accessing and analyzing the same document or dashboard remotely. These
advances will help today’s enterprise realize that ultimate critical need—to have the
right information, at the right time, to make the right business decisions.
ABOUT CGI
At CGI, we’re in the business of
satisfying clients. A leading IT
and business process services
provider, CGI has 31,000
professionals operating in 125
offices worldwide.
Working in partnership with
clients for 35 years, CGI has
extensive experience in all
aspects of IT management,
from consulting and systems
integration services to the full
management of IT and
business functions
(outsourcing).
This know-how puts us in a
unique position to help clients
increase the effectiveness and
efficiency of their business
intelligence initiatives. We work
with organizations of all types to
help them select the optimal
business intelligence solutions
to improve their business
performance.
To learn more, visit us at
www.cgi.com or contact us at
[email protected].
doc_282464777.pdf