Table of Contents: Visual Analytics in the Situation Room 4 Visualize and Collaborate 5

Transcription

1 A 5-Minute Guide to Business Analytics

2 Table of Contents 3 The Status Quo: Data is Locked in the Data Center 4 The New Reality: Visual Analytics in the Situation Room 4 Visualize and Collaborate 5 Data in Motion 5 Empowering the Business User 5 Real-Life Analytics 6 Learn More About Spotfire Analytics

3 A 5-Minute Guide to Business Analytics In Hollywood, nothing is more chic than analytics. On TV shows like CSI and in films like Money Ball, the industry s most iconic stars depend upon data to help solve problems or thwart world destruction. Even superheroes rely on solutions accessed at the touch of a finger on a sleek, glowing screen. Hollywood gets it: Analytics is sexy. The Status Quo: Data is Locked in the Data Center Even after decades of investment, most business intelligence users can t get the information they need when they need it and must resort to asking IT for help. The conversation usually goes something like this: Business user: I have this really critical problem. A new competitor has come on the market with a different price point and is eating our lunch. I need a new report and fast. IT: Oh, OK. I can help you with that; I ll put it right at the top of my list and probably can have it back to you in a week or so. Business user: Never mind, just give me the raw data and I ll dump it into Excel. The issue isn t a lack of data; big data is real and getting bigger every day. The crux of the problem for most people is uncovering the most relevant data when you need it. Today, that often means having to wait on IT, or taking matters into your own hands by manually wrestling with Excel to build massive spreadsheets. Often, neither is satisfactory. That s why a new class of business intelligence technology has emerged in recent years. These analytic or data discovery technologies are designed to be highly visual and much more user-driven so business and technology users can more quickly develop insights and speed action. 3

4 The New Reality: Visual Analytics in the Situation Room Picture this: A room in the C-suite with large screens on the walls. This is the room where executives at a major corporation go to meet, see live data, and interact with it. Forget presentations where numbers are handed out on print-outs, or an analyst distributes a spreadsheet, or a PowerPoint deck is projected onto a screen. The people in this new breed of corporate situation room are the brain trust of a global corporation who want, not only the latest key performance indicators (KPIs), but also hands-on access so they can understand in real time what s driving the changes. They want to interrogate their data and they don t want to wait days or weeks to get answers from IT. They re looking for a competitive edge, now, and they re betting their business that data visualization technology can deliver it. In this room, where instant insight and immediate action reign, you can walk in and explore the data on the spot or answer a question from the CEO instantly. In fact, in this company, it s the CEO who often says, I need access to this data myself so I can explore this on my own. I want to really understand what s going on here. And so it is in this place, where an appreciation for concepts such as, dimension-free data exploration, visibility into the unknown, or self-service discovery initially take root and eventually spread across the organization. Make no mistake: on-demand visual data analysis isn t hypothetical. TlBCO Spotfire, an enterprise-class analytics and data discovery platform, is delivering it today, to leading organizations around the globe. Spotfire was founded on the belief that business intelligence is vital to high-performing companies. The ability to probe, prod, and pull data from every perspective to quickly examine anything from the largest trend to the smallest detail and everything in between is central to the Spotfire architecture. In this way, with a user-centered design foremost in mind, users from any business or technical background can explore data freely while abiding by IT s existing security permissions and not only discover new insights, but also quickly turn those insights into action. Spotfire analytics compresses decision-making cycles, building confidence in decisions through transparency in data, so users at all levels of an organization can take fast and informed action. Visualize and Collaborate Spotfire offers a unique data visualization interface. Scientific studies have confirmed it time and again: visualization aids comprehension. If users can not only just access data, but also see, touch, and feel it, the data becomes real. And Spotfire analytics adheres to those well-founded and time-tested design principles. The contextual collaboration capabilities built into Spotfire analytics are not designed in a vacuum. On the contrary, they reflect the way people work together at TIBCO, where smart people come together to maximize creativity and innovation. TlBCO has always been at the forefront of innovation, so it s not surprising to find TIBCO Spotfire driving new ways to visualize the massive amount of data that decision-makers are faced with and to work with that data in new ways. And we re not just talking about IT users here. TIBCO s Finance staff enthusiastically and independently has adopted Spotfire analytics. And if somebody goes to the CFO with a presentation, she ll likely start out the conversation by saying, Have you put it through Spotfire yet? Look, if we do this the old school way, I m going to ask a bunch of questions, and you re going to tell me that you re going to get back to me in a few days. Let s save us both a lot of time. Put the data that you want to show me into Spotfire so we can better understand in real time the story that the data is telling us. That way, we ll both feel better about the decisions that we ll make, and we ll get there a lot more quickly. 4

5 Data in Motion Many traditional systems look at stale data sitting in a data warehouse. With today s current rate of change, though, and the number of data sources typically involved for any single decision, most people need the ability to look not only at data-at-rest, but also at datain-motion. Spotfire analytics can analyze data in traditional data stores as well as monitor data in motion, alerting you to exceptions, outliers, and other data points according to your organization s unique business rules. Putting Spotfire s predictive and event-driven functionality to work means enabling users to anticipate opportunities and risks, to plan confidently in the face of uncertainty, and to take corrective action quickly, when needed. Providing just the right information at the right time to the right people is known as the Two-Second Advantage. This is the competitive edge Spotfire analytics delivers. Empowering the Business User Most people don t consider themselves data analysts. However, nearly every knowledge worker needs to get answers from data quickly, and on a frequent basis. With Spotfire analytics, you don t have to be an analyst to need to understand and gain insight from data. TIBCO has made it easy for all types of users to gain insight from their big data. Whether they wish to combine data from multiple sources into a single analysis without requiring help from IT called data mashup embed analytics into their standard business processes to speed decisions, share insights internally and externally by collaborating via social platforms, or enjoy the power of exploring data to any level of detail without requiring IT intervention, Spotfire analytics delivers what today s users need to turn insight into action quickly. One key outcome is becoming more predictive, being able to visualize a data stream and say, with 80 percent confidence that the current pattern is going to follow the forecast. The combination of visualization, exploration, and speed enables business users to become so smart and efficient it s almost scary. Real-Life Analytics In the real world, we need information to help drive decisions. We need to ask questions of the data and questions of each other. As one client recently said to us, Visual analytics has got to become part of our stack. Empowering users is an important theme, and it can be done in a way that supercharges creativity and collaboration while offering the governance and security that IT requires. Hollywood s vision gets this dynamic right: Data and people are partners immersed in an ongoing and ever-changing conversation. Analytics provides people with the competitive advantage they need. Spotfire analytics allows the conversation with data to blossom. In companies where business intelligence and data discovery become a way of life, every idea is verified. Business executives and staff refuse to take any perceived truth at face value. Data becomes as cinematic as Hollywood s wildest dreams, a story ready to be told. With TIBCO Spotfire, businesses finally have the tool that gives them the Aha! moments they need to support smart strategy and execution in a fast-paced competitive environment. 5

6 Learn More About Spotfire Analytics From interactive dashboards and data visualization to predictive analytics, Spotfire s intuitive analytics and data discovery software provides an astonishingly fast and flexible environment for visualizing and analyzing your data, helping you make smarter decisions every day. To learn how Spotfire, an enterprise-class analytics and data discovery platform, speeds users from insight to action with industry-leading capabilities such as dimension-free data exploration, data mashup, and contextual collaboration, contact Spotfire today: TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX) is a global leader in infrastructure and business intelligence software. Whether it s optimizing inventory, cross-selling products, or averting crisis before it happens, TIBCO uniquely delivers the Two-Second Advantage the ability to capture the right information at the right time and act on it preemptively for a competitive advantage. With a broad mix of innovative products and services, customers around the world trust TIBCO as their strategic technology partner. Learn more about TIBCO at TIBCO Spotfire 281 Summer Street, 3rd Floor Boston, MA US: EMEA: Fax: spotfire.tibco.com , TIBCO Software Inc. All rights reserved. TIBCO, the TIBCO logo, TIBCO Software, TIBCO Spotfire, the Spotfire logo, and the Two-Second Advantage are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks in this document are the property of their respective owners and mentioned for identification purposes only. 6 exported02may2014