Infoburst 2009 Archive

Winners of 2010 Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards Announced at IBIS 2010

By
Paul
Published: June 14, 2010Posted in: Blog Featured, Business Intelligence, IBISTags: , , , ,
Winners of 2010 Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards Announced at IBIS 2010

As Xcelsius becomes more widely used and more mature, the level of complexity and creativity in its usage in Business Intelligence applications appears to grow exponentially.  This was the third year of InfoSol’s Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards and there was no shortage of great dashboards on display at IBIS 2010 at the Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel, California.

IBIS 2010 Winners

Most Valuable Dashboard SPX Service Solutions Detroit, MI
Most Innovative Dashboard United Educators Washington, DC
Best Business Dashboard Aluchemie Rotterdam, Netherlands
Most Xcellent Dashboard ARI Mt. Laurel, NJ

 

SPX wins Most Valuable Dashboard

This year’s winner of the Most Valuable Dashboard was SPX Service Solutions who developed a series of complex dashboards to provide on-line interactive views of Global Strategic Customers and Line of Business P&L’s for company executives and financial managers. The data was retrieved from an SAP BW (Business Warehouse) and delivered comparisons and analysis never previously available.  The number of possible comparisons and drill-downs is huge and created some real challenges for the BI/BW team at SPX in terms of the amount of data to be retrieved. However, SPX overcame the data quantity and performance hurdles by using InfoBurst XDS with its Intelligent Caching.

The Most Innovative Dashboard Award is for the dashboard that is designed and developed in an innovative way or for an innovative solution.  United Educators, who provide insurance to educational institutions, needed a solution to enable their clients to Self-Serve and Leverage Policy Data to make informed decisions.  The United Educators dashboard application was certainly an innovative solution with its peer selection function that retained anonymity of the institutions being compared. Also, the design using selection /de-selection of multiple peer groups and write-back to prevent users “gaining” the system was unique and creative.

Best Business Dashboard won by Aluchemie

The Best Business Dashboard was awarded to Aluchemie, a manufacturer of anodes needed for the electrolysis process by which aluminum is extracted from ore, based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. They were looking for a way to get Team Leaders, Production Managers and Executives excited about the roll out of their Manufacturing Execution System software, used to manage and monitor work-in-process on the factory floor. Xcelsius was the answer and they created a comprehensive set of options in a multi-tab dashboard with more than 120 different dynamic graphs showing trend analysis along with shift-by-shift and day-by-day comparisons of key production line metrics. The dashboard revolutionized their manufacturing reporting and brought to light critical production issues that could be seen clearly for the first time.  As one Team Leader put it, he felt like they were finally, “coming out of the Stone Age”.

ARI receives Most Xcellent Dashboard Award - IBIS 2010

Last but not least, the Most Xcellent Xcelsius Dashboard was won by ARI, an international fleet Vehicle Leasing and Management Company.   ARI already had the ability to compare and analyze key life cycle metrics of any vehicles through their existing customer portal but they wanted to make it more visually dynamic and add even more useful functionality. They used Xcelsius to create a visually intuitive interface with picture icons, dynamic sliders and a lot of pizzazz.

ARI’s Dashboard Prototype was shown at a key trade show and received rave reviews.

Representatives of the winning companies received their prestigious glass pyramid awards and also participated in a customer panel to explain how their dashboards were conceived and how their respective businesses are benefitting from them.  In addition, three of the winners also presented insightful case studies on their dashboards.

Bursting Xcelsius Dashboards

By
Paul
Published: June 6, 2010Posted in: Blog Featured, InfoBurst, Infoburst 2009Tags: , , , ,
Bursting Xcelsius Dashboards

A company recently approached us with an interesting requirement concerning how to more efficiently distribute information about mobile phone usage to each of their hundreds of customers. The method they were currently using was manual and labor intensive as they were pulling information into Excel spreadsheets, creating graphs and then cutting and pasting into PowerPoint presentations that were emailed to their Account Managers who would present them to the various customers.

They had seen Xcelsius dashboards and were impressed by the dynamic visualization and felt this could make both an attractive and appealing way to present the information to their clients. However, they were faced with several challenges regarding automatically populating the dashboards initially and then automatically distributing them as standalone offline entities that could be used by both their Account Managers and clients without being connected back to the originating system.

They did not want to run separate jobs for each client to populate each dashboard. They wanted to run one job that would provide all the statistics for all customers and then split or burst that data by customer to feed each customer’s unique data into the same dashboard template. The amount of data that would be initially retrieved was large (many tens of thousands of rows) and even some of the individual customer dashboards had a fair amount of data (several thousand rows). Once the data had been burst for each customer it would need to be populated into the dashboard template, published as a shockwave file (SWF) and attached to an email that would need to be sent to the right group of people for each dashboard.

While this may seem like a tall order, the new InfoBurst 2009 solution was able to achieve all this relatively simply and quickly. InfoBurst 2009 is a scheduling, bursting and publishing solution for both Business Intelligence reports and dashboards . It has a built-in scheduler that can be either time or event based triggered. The event can be the result of a SQL statement which makes it very versatile for starting a job only when data has changed or other dependent events have occurred. InfoBurst can accept data from SQL, a Stored Procedure or a Business Intelligence query or report (Web Intelligence, Crystal, Desktop Intelligence, Microsoft Reporting Services etc.).

When handling Xcelsius dashboards, InfoBurst 2009 uses unique mechanisms for both ‘OFFLINE’ and ‘CONNECTED’ distribution requirements.

 For a ‘CONNECTED’ scenario, the Cache can be accessed from the Xcelsius dashboard in a variety of ways so that only the data required for a particular component of the dashboard is retrieved when required. We provide a number of components that we collectively call ‘INTELLIGENT CACHE’. The CACHE QUERY mechanism in InfoBurst 2009 allows you to use the full power and capability of SQL to selectively retrieve, aggregate and sort the data required for your Xcelsius dashboard from the Cache. The CROSSTAB mechanism allows you to generate crosstab tables in advance or on-demand. The FLIP mechanism allows you to PIVOT an existing Crosstab, switching the X and Y axis data. These features save an enormous amount of time and effort over other methods of pulling data into an Xcelsius dashboard and it’s fast! For ultimate flexibility, it is possible to have multiple caches and to populate a cache with data from multiple data sources.

 For an ‘OFFLINE’ scenario, InfoBurst 2009 is able to create and manage separate ranges within the Cache, and Burst these ranges to a common Dashboard, embedding the data inside of the SWF file and delivering the same Xcelsius dashboard with different data for each individual client.

InfoBurst 2009 also has intelligent distribution capabilities where it can read from an LDAP compliant address book, a database table or an Excel spreadsheet to select the relevant email addresses or target destinations for the dashboard or report. Since this customer required the offline dashboards to be sent via email , the information was read from a database table containing all the individual’s information and is able to determine the customer name and criteria and select just the email address for the relevant recipients.

This company is now using InfoBurst 2009 to distribute offline Xcelsius dashboards automatically , intelligently and swiftly to its customers and is saving a lot of time and money in the process.

For more information or a free demonstration and trial on InfoBurst 2009, go to www.InfoBurst2009.com

Data Quality Dashboards

By
Moksh
Published: April 20, 2010Posted in: Business Intelligence, Infoburst 2009, XcelsiusTags: , , ,
Data Quality Dashboards

The stream of articles, white papers and videos desperately trying to convince the business community of the negative impact of poor data quality on their bottom line seems to be never ending.  It almost seems like the IT brigade is marching into a cul-de-sac at the end of which is a brick wall with three large letters written on it – ‘ROI’.  Data Quality projects share their dreaded fate with all other projects emanating from the IT division and including the geeky word ‘data’ in their title.  While the management continues to remain blissfully ignorant of the unsettling financial and human consequences of bad data, customers, employees and business itself continues to suffer from ‘Data Quality Blues’.

The one technology in recent years that has managed to captivate the business users in organizations across the globe is undoubtedly – Dashboards.  Dashboards speak to them in a language which they are familiar with, the language of graphs, charts and metrics.  The BI Dashboard serves as an abstraction layer that shields the business users from the intricate and unwelcoming world of the ‘Data Churners’.  It is this instrument therefore, that should be leveraged to enlighten the management of financial losses that are incurred due to a seemingly trivial typo error or a misplaced digit in the sales figures.  Although this may not be the panacea one is looking for, creating a real-time dashboard which attaches a price tag to every data quality issue and extrapolates the figures to demonstrate their long term impact, may just act like a sip of coffee that will stimulate their business senses.

 Here’s an example of a Data Quality Dashboard

 This dashboard was the outcome of the convergence of three technologies: BO Data Quality,  InfoBurst 2009,  and Xcelsius.  Bundling a DQ dashboard with DQ Services benefits in the following ways: 

  • Getting the initial buy in from the senior management
  • Understanding the DQ issues that are creating havoc
  • Tracking the performance of the DQ initiative itself
  • Displaying the relevant financial metrics to answer the ROI question
.
Photo Credit: Sieve photo in this post from Wikimedia

Europe Trip 2010: Day 8 Denmark – Vikings and Excel Post-Processing

By
Paul
Published: April 19, 2010Posted in: Business Intelligence, Europe Trip 2010, InfoBurst, Infoburst 2009, Paul Blogs on BITags: , , ,
Europe Trip 2010: Day 8 Denmark – Vikings and Excel Post-Processing

I arrived late at night at Copenhagen airport and headed for the taxi rank to get to my hotel. As I exited the terminal, there was a large sign pointing to “Danish Taxis” to the right and “Swedish Taxis” to the left. Not understanding the difference, I figured I should opt for the Danish taxis since I was in Denmark.  As we drove to the hotel, I asked the driver about the Swedish taxis and he explained that they were cheaper but they take you to Sweden so I guess I made the right choice!

I checked in at the Kong Arthur Hotel (Kong being King in Danish) and made it to my room where this huge modern painting hung above my bed. I have included a picture since it will have different interpretations to each viewer.  At that time it was saying to me “No matter how tied up in knots you are, come to bed”. In the morning, I noticed there was both the outline of a man and a woman in the picture and I had a totally different interpretation.

Although I did not see a lot of Denmark in one day, I did get to meet quite a few Danish people in my meetings and learned that Denmark is the home of Lego, Lager beer, ham and Vikings. I also noticed that the average Dane is significantly taller than the average European – must be that special beer and ham! 

I was visiting one of the largest companies in Denmark where a couple of the divisions use BusinessObjects for their Business Intelligence. They were interested in finding a better way to schedule, publish and distribute their reports so I showed them a demonstration of the new InfoBurst 2009 along with presenting a few customer case studies. They were particularly excited about the ability of InfoBurst to apply Excel macro post processing. It seems they, like many other companies, have large numbers of Excel users that want all their Business Intelligence reports delivered in Excel format but publishing reports directly from BusinessObjects to Excel does not provide all the features in the Excel output that they want delivered to the user. For example, one customer wanted to make use of data grouping and outlining within Excel for one-click collapse and expansion of individual data groupings in the report. In addition, they wanted each and every data group and outline to be automatically collapsed in the initial delivery of the report – keeping the report compact and easier to view. This simply cannot be done publishing from BusinessObjects to Excel but with InfoBurst 2009, you can execute a VBA macro following report production and produce a revised version of the report for publishing.

This caused great excitement amongst my Danish audience and there were smiles and vigorous hand shaking at the end of the meeting.  I think they really appreciated the logical building block of adding the Excel post-processing – just like Lego!

Europe trip 2010: Day 2 Paris – Business A La Carte

By
Paul
Published: April 11, 2010Posted in: Business Intelligence, Europe Trip 2010, Infoburst 2009, Paul Blogs on BITags: ,
Europe trip 2010: Day 2 Paris – Business A La Carte

I arrive in Paris in the middle of a train strike and I am expecting the worst but as I step off the Eurostar train from London (not on strike – different company) and jump on the Metro (not on strike – different company), I notice nothing unusual.  I was told by a close friend who lives in France that strikes have become a way of life there since they are so numerous and people have learned to adapt. In fact, I end up arriving at my appointment early and so I have time to go to lunch with the people I am meeting at SAP.

Eating in France is not so much a necessity as it is a religion. It is not to be rushed and the social aspect is as important as the eating itself. Needless to say, the discussion over lunch was really interesting and stimulating as we exchanged ideas on the future of various Business Intelligence solutions.

During the meeting and demonstrations after lunch, I was able to see the SAP Explorer solution running on an iPhone which I know the Londoner’s will love (see my BLOG from Day 1).  I was also able to share the latest features of InfoBurst 2009 with the people from SAP.

At my next meeting that day with another partner, I started with the demonstrations and update on InfoBurst 2009. This was quite interesting since one of the people in the room did not speak English but he seemed to catch on due to the visual and intuitive nature of the solution.  It also helped that I was very animated when I presented and when he looked really bemused, I threw in a sentence in French. This always seemed to make him laugh and I was not sure if this was because my poor French or due to my “Inspector Clouseau” accent. 

After this meeting I went to dinner with the partner and, again, had a great conversation about strategy which was so much easier over a meal than in a board room.

My “take away” for the day was that the best way to do business in France is while eating and that if ever the restaurants went on strike in France, it would bring business to a standstill!

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