Business Intelligence

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Nickolas Randall
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1 Business Intelligence Software Tools for Decision Support Speaker: Rod van Buskirk Principal Consultant Westin Engineering AWWA California-Nevada Section 2010 Annual Fall Conference, Sacramento, California

2 Acknowledgements Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility California Water Service Company Connexus Energy Denver Water Greenville Utilities Commission (North Carolina) Henrico County Dept. of Public Utilities (Virginia) Louisville Water Company Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago Santa Clara Valley Water District 2

3 Agenda Business Intelligence (BI) Defined Comparison of Core Utility Software Applications vs. Business Intelligence (BI) Software Applications Types of BI tools Capabilities of BI Software BI s role in utility performance improvement Categories and BI system vendors Critical success factors in selecting BI Software 3

4 What is Business Intelligence, or BI? Simply Put: Delivers the right information, at the right time, in the right format to guide your decisions. Three Parts: 1.Discipline of decision making 2.A class of Software 3. A Business Value Discipline Software Value 4

5 What is Business Intelligence, or BI? Different Perspectives Discipline Perspective: Integrated practices, enabled by specialized software, that support decision making at all levels to improve business and operations performance. Software Perspective: Aggregates data from various business applications and delivers information in context of business and operational performance to enable collaboration, analysis and action. Value Perspective: Measure effectiveness of strategies using operational data. Deliver real-time information to guide daily decisions. Monitor business processes and enable timely adjustments to improve efficiency and responsiveness. 5

6 What s the difference between core applications and business intelligence applications? Core Utility Applications Data Business Intelligence Applications 6

7 What s the difference between core applications and business intelligence applications? Core Utility Applications Process transactions Automate workflows Generate data lots of data Data Business Intelligence Applications Generate Information to support decision making Streamline performance management Generate graphs, forecasts, trends and reports 7

8 What types of Business Intelligence Software tools are commonly used? Core Utility Applications Customer Service & Billing Finance /Accounting Human Resources Purchasing/Inventory Management Capital Program Mgmt. Asset Management Maintenance Management Operations Control Data Business Intelligence Applications 8

9 What types of Business Intelligence Software tools are commonly used? Core Utility Applications Customer Service & Billing Finance /Accounting Human Resources Purchasing/Inventory Management Capital Program Mgmt. Asset Management Maintenance Management Operations Control Data Business Intelligence Applications Management Reports Management Dashboards Performance Scorecards Alerts & Notifications Report Graphics & Drill-Downs Analytics and Trending Forecasting/Projections Simulation/Modeling Data Mining 9

10 What are the capabilities of specialized Business Intelligence Software? Dashboards & Scorecards Supervisors Department Heads Analysts General Managers 10

11 Business Intelligence Dashboards: Monitoring Business & Operational Performance 11

12 How do BI Systems support utility performance improvements? REPORT Operational Reports Financial Reports Performance Reports MONITOR Dashboards Alerts Scorecards ANALYZE Root Causes Exceptions Trends 12

13 How do BI Systems support utility performance improvements? MONITOR Dashboards Alerts Scorecards REPORT Operational Reports Financial Reports Performance Reports ANALYZE Root Causes Exceptions Trends Customer Service & Billing Customer Problem Resolution Meter to Cash Maintenance Work Backlog Outage Durations Operations Water Source Mixing Energy Costs Finance / Budgeting Budget Shifts Budget to Actuals 13

14 How do BI Systems support utility performance improvements? MONITOR Dashboards Alerts Scorecards REPORT Operational Reports Financial Reports Performance Reports ANALYZE Root Causes Exceptions Trends Gaps with traditional, Excel-based reporting Inadequate data controls or data quality management Manual data imports Excel not designed to be a data warehouse or a BI tool! BUT Excel, in conjunction with a sound BI approach, is a very good software tool for analysis and trending 14

15 What are the key factors for selecting the bestfit Business Intelligence Software Tools? User Scale Functionality Departmental Embedded BI High Report Developers OLAP Ad Hoc Query Utility-wide Power User (Analysts) BI Spreadsheets Dashboards & Scorecards Casual User (Executive, Manager, Front-line worker) End-user Reports (Interactive, drill) External Customers / Suppliers / Regulators Production Reports (invoices, statements, static) Low 15

16 Who are the BI software vendors? Tier 1 Software Vendors offering complete BI Suites targeting larger organizations Oracle BI IBM / Cognos SAP / Business Objects 16

17 Who are the BI software vendors? Tier 2 Software Vendors targeting mid-sized organizations Older, long-term market presence MicroStrategy, Actuate, among others New market players LogiXML, QlikView, Pentaho, JasperSoft, PivotLink, among others 17

18 Who are the software vendors? Microsoft Continues to expand its BI capabilities moving from being a Tier 3 to a Low-End Tier 2 vendor Currently - unconnected, un-integrated, software tools Large database market share; strong data warehousing capabilities The #1 Analysis and Reporting software tool Microsoft Excel 18

19 Who are the software vendors? Software as a Service (SaaS) Business Intelligence Online web applications over the Internet Leased per user or fully hosted off-site Utility pays an annual fee for the online service SaaS Advantages No need to maintain internal hardware and software Automatic upgrades Supports utilities with no internal IT staff Off-loads tasks from internal IT staff Provides more flexibility Vendors offering SaaS BI Tools Tier 1 Vendors SAP, Oracle, IBM Tier 2 Vendors PivotLink, JasperSoft, Pentaho, LogiXML, QlikView 19

20 What are the critical success factors for selecting appropriate BI software? Obtain executive commitment; focus on the key management trending needs Create an executive vision for Business Intelligence Assess high-level business requirements for BI Formulate a broad-based plan for deploying BI software solutions with timeline & budget estimates Identify a short list of BI vendors appropriate to the business requirements Issue RFP to short list; review proposals and scripted demos based on specific solution needs 20

21 Thank You Contact: Rod van Buskirk Westin Engineering Inc Zinfandel Drive Rancho Cordova, CA Cell: (916) Get presentation and other insight:

BI Platforms User Survey, 2011: Customers Rate Their BI Platform Vendors

BI Platforms User Survey, 2011: Customers Rate Their BI Platform Vendors Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00211769, Rita L. Sallam, 4 April 2011, RA1 07132011 Gartner recently surveyed business intelligence