InfoBurst Archive

InfoBurst Test Drive – April 19, 2012 – Distribute your BusinessObjects reports easily

By
admin
Published: April 17, 2012Posted in: Events, InfoBurstTags: , ,
InfoBurst Test Drive – April 19, 2012 – Distribute your BusinessObjects reports easily

UK based SAP BO partner, Blueprint Management Systems, will host a test drive of the latest InfoBurst Enterprise solution at its London HQ on April 19.

InfoBurst enables Xcelsius dashboards to handle large amounts of data with fast performance using its powerful XML data caching capability and to deliver those dashboards both connected and off-line to a variety of destinations including mobile devices like iPads and Androids. Some of the InfoBurst Xcelsius features include :

• An XML data cache able to support millions of rows of data for fast access from Xcelsius dashboards
• A write back connector for Xcelsius allowing write back from the dashboard to any database
• A “Save as Excel” function enabling the dashboard contents to be saved in Excel
• Creation , customized bursting and intelligent delivery of offline dashboards

http://www.bpms.co.uk/events/infoburst-test-drive—19th-april.aspx

Excerpt: Infoburst Test Drive – 19th April
blueprint uk performance management, financial planning & budgeting, business intelligence and data warehousing services allow clients to visualise and control the processes that directly affect success with professional…

The Secret to BI Sustainability – Reuse

By
Paul
Published: March 30, 2012Posted in: Business IntelligenceTags: , , , ,
The Secret to BI Sustainability – Reuse

I was recently in San Francisco over a weekend and got to be a tourist for a day. I was fascinated by the remarkable collection of old trams and streetcars that I both rode and saw throughout the city. They were original restored trams from different cities like New York, Boston and even Milan, Italy.

What a fantastic idea to restore these masterpieces and put them to the use they were built for rather than send them to a museum or scrapyard. A friend told me that the city was able to do this because the tram track gauge was standard and as long as the trams came from cities that used the same track standard they could be used.

After the weekend, I was visiting a software company in Silicon Valley and talking about Business Intelligence solutions on mobile devices. One of the options we discussed was using Xcelsius dashboards on mobile devices.

Now, Xcelsius is undoubtedly one of the best and most popular data visualization tools for the PC but it was designed and developed for the PC using a mouse to navigate. A mobile device like an iPad, iPhone or Android has no mouse and navigation is through touch gestures. The standard dashboard components that ship with Xcelsius were never designed for touch gesture usage and often come up short when used on a mobile device.

Yet Xcelsius is such a versatile and great tool for developing customized dashboards so wouldn’t it be great if you could use it to create dashboards with components that are designed for mobile devices including touch gestures?

Well, that has recently become a reality thanks to a truly innovative solution from Xcelsius component developer, Inovista. They have created a whole set of Xcelsius add-on components designed for mobile devices and touch gestures along with a mobile application that transforms the resulting Xcelsius dashboard into a native iOS or Android application. This allows you to use the Xcelsius toolset you know, love and have invested in and build dazzling mobile dashboards. The resulting dashboards can also be used on the PC.

To make the solution even richer, it also supports the popular and powerful InfoBurst Xcelsius connector options. This includes the direct database connector for fast direct access to databases, the XML Data Cache connector for accessing large amounts of cache data for improved dashboard performance, the XML Data Cache Query connector for using SQL from your dashboard to access selected data from the cache and the Write Back connector that allows you to write back to databases from your dashboard.

Another cool thing about this solution is that the dashboards can be either offline on the mobile device itself or connected to live data giving you the best of both worlds.

I have some of these mobile dashboards running on my iPad and they are both compelling and fast. Some of these will be featured at IBIS 2012.

As we hear more about HTML5 being the future direction for dashboards and mobile business intelligence, it is still evolving and the toolsets that are equivalent to Xcelsius are yet to emerge. The recent announcement that Xcelsius will move in the HTML5 direction is also some way off in the future.

Businesses need solutions today built with tried and tested tools. The idea of using Xcelsius to build mobile friendly dashboards with the Inovista and InfoBurst components allows you to leverage your Xcelsius investment and create easily maintainable and sustainable mobile BI solutions. It’s almost as cool as San Francisco using restored classic trams on their streets!

IBIS 2012 Announced: Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

By
admin
Published: February 6, 2012Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBISTags: , , , ,
IBIS 2012 Announced: Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

IBIS is well known for offering the most effective BusinessObjects learning available along with intelligent and inspirational ideas on how to maximize your Business Intelligence usage and investment.

IBIS 2012: INSPIRED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 2.0, June 10 – 13, 2012, has just been announced and offers an amazing selection of Hands-on Pre-Seminar Workshops, Immersion Training Boot Camps and Executive Seminars on the most popular and latest BusinessObjects solutions delivered by top BI specialists.

The seminar includes 3 full days of learning and peer experiences, and is packaged together to include 3 nights’ accommodations at the luxurious Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point, CA. Along with group meals, resort fees and scheduled events, IBIS 2012 is an incredible value and the most important BusinessObjects event to attend this year.

We invite you to join us for INSPIRED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 2.0. Register by March 31 to take advantage of the early-bird $400 discount.

June 10 Pre-Seminar Workshops

• Advanced Report Bursting, Scheduling & Delivery Using InfoBurst (Hands On)

• Migration to BI 4.x (Hands On)

• Conversion of Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence (Hands On)

• Building Xcelsius Dashboards for Mobile (Hands On)

• InfoBurst Administration Certification (Hands On)

• How to Develop KPI’s

June 11 – 13 IBIS Main Conference

Hands-On Boot Camps

• Xcelsius Beginner Boot Camp

• Xcelsius Master Boot Camp

• XML Data Caching Boot Camp

• BI 4.0 Developer Boot Camp

• Web Intelligence Boot Camp

• BusinessObjects Administration Boot Camp

Executive Seminar Tracks

• Business Intelligence for Executives

• The Tao of Business Intelligence

• Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

 For more details, view the IBIS 2012 Agenda.

Dashboards Making Big Waves at Omani Aluminium Company

By
Paul
Published: November 21, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Paul Blogs on BITags: , ,
Dashboards Making Big Waves at Omani Aluminium Company

Oman is known for its camel racing. It’s quite fascinating to watch as there are no jockeys – just a bunch of brave and skillful people to get the camels lined up and started and then the rest is up to the camels to gallop to the finish line. Watching them, they have this easy loping stride and they don’t appear to be going fast but they cover a lot of ground quickly.

The high speed ferry boats in Oman are very similar. Sitting at the front, you do not think you are going fast but if you go to the back of the boat and see the giant wake being left by the multiple powerful engines, you quickly realize you are moving faster than most speedboats.

So I find myself on this super fast ferry on my way to the port of Sohar in the North of Oman to visit the Sohar Aluminum Plant, one of the largest in the Gulf region. We are taken on a fascinating tour of the entire manufacturing process producing tons of aluminum ingots as its end product. The plant is only about three years old and is fully automated, efficient and clean.  It employs over a thousand people and boasts an impressive track record of productivity. The company puts safety first as its top priority and has not recorded a single injury in over 730 days – impressive. In addition, the company has put together a Corporate Social Responsibility program that both encourages input from the workers and gives back to the local community.

In the middle of the tour, one of the Sohar Aluminium supervisors is explaining the key metrics that their particular area is measured by and one of the other visitors makes a remark that management never really looks at that type of detail, they are just interested in the final production numbers. The supervisor immediately responds saying that is definitely not the case at Sohar Aluminium because they have a Business Intelligence dashboard that is viewed daily throughout the company by everybody which shows all their key performance indicators and how they are doing against their daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals.

Everybody in the organization is looking at the same data and they can see the metrics for other areas. This has created a remarkable culture change in the company as everyone has visibility to these metrics and realizes that their daily actions actually influence the numbers and values that they are seeing every day.  The fact that the dashboard is built in Xcelsius with visually compelling dynamic visibility features and is simple and intuitive to use has also played a big part in the successful user adoption.

Displaying the metrics was only a part of the Sohar Aluminium dashboard solution.  One of the biggest challenges facing the company was getting the shift supervisors and others responsible for the metrics to enter the actual values into the system in a timely fashion. They solved this problem by extending Xcelsius using InfoBurst to create a data input dashboard so the data can be entered through the dashboard itself. This dashboard not only displayed what metrics were missing but it also triggered an alert email that was sent to the supervisor if the data was not entered within 15 minutes of the end of the shift.  If the data had still not being entered within 30 minutes, then a second alert in red was sent to the supervisor again and the General Manager for that area was automatically copied.  This has been incredibly effective as the company has seen almost no late entries since the system was implemented earlier this year.

The dashboard is packed with many more innovative features and you can read about many of them in this PDF of the case study.

Sohar Aluminium was so happy about its KPI dashboard that they have continued to add to it and have even created an operational dashboard that takes direct feeds from temperature and wind speed gauges that are dynamically refreshed every minute. If the recommended thresholds are exceeded, which is not unusual since their plant is located in the Omani desert, then alerts flash up on the dashboard as well as sent directly to the relevant supervisor’s Blackberry phone to tell them to stop certain operations that would be unsafe.

So just like the racing camels and high speed ferry, Sohar Aluminium has covered a lot of distance in a very short period of time. Their initial dashboard solution was developed and operational in just four weeks.

When I presented this case study in a keynote at a conference this week sponsored by large Gulf Aluminium industry leaders, there was a lot of interest and I would not be surprised if, in the future, Oman will be as well known for its innovative dashboards as for its racing camels!

To Cache or not to Cache – Boosting performance in Xcelsius Tech Tip

By
Roxanne
Published: May 23, 2011Posted in: InfoBurst, Products, Tech Tips, Xcelsius, Xcelsius End UserTags: , , , , ,
To Cache or not to Cache – Boosting performance in Xcelsius Tech Tip

I was recently asked this question on how best to handle a 13 month dataset when in the dashboard the goal is to only display monthly detail and summary data.  This is a good question and in my opinion worth sharing here because it is dealing with boosting Xcelsius backend performance.

Question:  Working with a data set consisting of 13months of data with one row for each day (so max 380 rows) and needing to show only monthly detail/summary data in the dashboard, which of the following would you consider to be the better approach to yield the best performance?

1.  Pull 380 rows in cache with date in one column -> pass STARTDATE and ENDDATE from the dashboard and pull every month’s data by writing a cache query.   When the user selects a month for display in the dashboard, Excel will calculate the start and end date of the month and pass those to the cache query with a WHERE clause specifying BETWEEN ‘@STARTDATE’ and ‘@ENDDATE’

Or,

2.  Load 380 rows in the dashboard Excel backend -> calculate the month from the date column within Excel then use a hidden filter to filter the month’s row based on the calculated month in the previous step and calculate the sum and average within excel?

Answer:  As a general rule, if the data set is 200 rows or less, I would say to go with Option 2.  If it is more than 200 rows, I would say you will get better performance with the cache query.  Of course, this also depends on the cumulative total # of rows being loaded into the dashboard.  For example, if you are planning on adding 10+ additional 200 row data sets, then I would definitely go with Option #1.

With too much data in the backend, Xcelsius performance suffers.    InfoBurst allows us to cache a large set of data, and then use a Cache Query to extract just the portion we need to view on the dashboard, as the user makes selections.  This is a tremendous help to the developer who wants to boost Xcelsius dashboard performance.

Oh the Places You will go … with Xcelsius

By
Roxanne
Published: April 25, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, InfoBurst, InfoBurst Dash, XcelsiusTags: , , , , , ,
Oh the Places You will go … with Xcelsius

From the cobblestone streets of The Netherlands, to the beaches of Australia, to the exotic sands of Oman, Xcelsius knows no borders, has no hidden political agenda, but offers innovative business solutions for a diverse range of customers around the world.  Little did I know when I started using Xcelsius 5 years ago that I would have the opportunity to travel around the world providing exciting dashboard solutions in such interesting locations. 

My most recent opportunity was spending a month in the exciting country of Oman, which, despite the recent unrest in the Middle East, proved to be a welcoming, progressive and abundantly interesting country.  Apart from the opportunity to explore this part of the world, it also proved to be an exciting work project, as the dashboards I developed for my customer there included several innovative solutions. 

Upon arrival, I found that the customer had 52 KPIs that were being tracked weekly & monthly in over 60 different Excel spreadsheets, maintained by dozens of people in various locations.  The solution we put together for the customer allowed them to begin maintaining all the KPIs in a database (as it should be), by using InfoBurst to write back values to a database table.  Using Xcelsius as a data entry tool, we created two different dashboards for entering metric values which, with the push of a button, ran update queries back to our database table, which immediately refreshed and presented the data in the main dashboard for the General Managers to view.  This solution provided a new precedence for accountability and consistency across the board.

 There were two additional innovations to this solution which I am excited about.  Both of these involved automatically emailing a mini dashboard as an Event based Alert.  The first mini dashboard was emailed to the project team if a user modified one of the KPI targets.  Key users were allowed to change a target, but the team wanted to be aware when this happened.  Using InfoBurst, we created a query based event that checked every 30 minutes for a condition to be true (a target change).  Whenever that condition is true, InfoBurst initiates a burst of a mini dashboard (.swf file) to the project team, with the following information:

·         Which KPI target was changed

·         What is the new KPI target value

·         Who changed the target

·         What time did this change occur

The second innovative Alert notification mini dashboard involved the time sensitive nature of getting all the KPIs entered by given dates.  Schedules were created in InfoBurst to query for any KPI’s that had not been entered by noon on the first day of the week.  This initiated an email Alert burst of a mini dashboard to the appropriate person responsible for updating the missing KPIs.  A second schedule ran 4 hrs later and emailed the Alert mini dashboard to BOTH the responsible party AND their manager!  This process ensured accountability for getting these Key Performance Indicators entered in a timely fashion for all the General Managers to be able to review in their meetings the following days.

I foresee exciting possibilities that this solution opens up for other customers as well.  Imagine being able to automatically email a dashboard to the VP of Finance when Sales Revenue  falls below a certain level, or ….  Think of the possibilities!

It’s not just that Xcelsius is going places globally but wherever it goes, it is creating new Business Intelligence applications that are slowly but surely changing the world.  

Inspiring Business Intelligence

By
Paul
Published: February 25, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, InfoBurst, InfoSol, Roambi, XcelsiusTags: , , , , , ,
Inspiring Business Intelligence

A few weeks ago I was participating in a career event at a State University where undergraduate students from both Business and I.T. schools were looking for internships with local businesses.  As they stopped by the InfoSol table, the number one question was “What do we do?”  This gave me the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite topics – Business Intelligence.  While most of them had heard of, or even studied, Business Intelligence as part of their courses, few appeared to understand its significance.

The table next to us was a major airline company and I used them as an example, citing that in the recent economic downturn, airlines had to make some tough choices in terms of reducing costs.  They needed to know which aircraft cost the most to maintain and which routes were the least profitable.   That information allowed them to make informed decisions about reducing aircraft and routes with minimal impact to their business and their customers.

I could see the lights go on in their young faces which encouraged me to tell my current favorite Business Intelligence story.

At last year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS 2010), one of the winners of the prestigious Xcelsius Dashboard Awards was a manufacturing company from the Netherlands.  They explained that they were deploying a new manufacturing execution system and wanted to provide some engaging and compelling business intelligence from this system to both encourage usage and provide useful information that was previously unavailable across the company.  They decided to create a business intelligence user interface using Xcelsius.  It would provide in excess of 120 different metrics, deployed graphically and dynamically, about the different production line processes broken down to individual shift level.  The dashboard was dynamically refreshed through the unique intelligent caching mechanism from InfoSol and the impact of this application exceeded the expectations of this company.  For the first time, production, and issues encountered on the production line, was viewed by the entire company and the results were quite revealing.  The dashboard showed that one particular shift was measurably behind all the other shifts.  Since this was visible throughout the company, the workers on this particular shift felt they needed to do something about this and took it upon themselves to correct the issues and improve productivity so that they were on pace to do better than the other shifts. 

What a totally amazing side effect, but one that truly exemplifies not just the power, but the inspiration that can be derived from Business Intelligence.  It was with this example in mind that the theme of this year’s IBIS event “Inspiring Business Intelligence” was born.  There are so many fascinating and inspiring business intelligence stories like this and IBIS 2011 will be based on sharing some of these stories as well as offering an incredible line up of immersion boot camps, executive seminars, training workshops and specialized certification programs. 

IBIS is unique in so many ways as it goes beyond the regular SAP BusinessObjects training to teach best practices that go beyond the conventional ways of designing, developing and applying business intelligence.  The individuals leading these boot camps, seminars and workshops are not just teachers; they are highly experienced consultants, mentors and gurus in their field.

The knowledge transfer that occurs at IBIS is intense and the opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences unparalleled.

IBIS 2011 features hands-on immersion boot camps in Xcelsius, Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports and Xcelsius Data Caching.  The executive seminars cover best practices for success in business Intelligence projects, what’s new on BusinessObjects XI 4.0, and emerging business intelligence tools and technologies.  The main seminar is three full days and the registration is fully inclusive of four nights accommodations at the jaw dropping Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel on the southern California coast (inspirational in itself!).

New to IBIS this year are some very special certified boot camps which will be held on the Thursday and Friday directly after the main event.  These include the renowned FleXcelsius course from Centigon Solutions, teaching you how to create your own Flex components for Xcelsius.  The Roambi Black Belt certification and the InfoBurst Certified Expert (ICE) boot camps will also be offered. 

Most importantly, there will be the coveted Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards, which are quickly becoming legendary.  The awards are open to everyone and the deadline for submitting your inspirational dashboard entry is April 15th.  You can enter your dashboard in one of the following four categories:

-          Best Business Dashboard

-          Most Innovative Dashboard

-          Most Valuable Dashboard

-          Most Xcellent Dashboard

To submit your dashboard entry, click here.

I know that some of the students who stopped by our table left inspired by what they heard about business intelligence just based on the slew of follow-up enquiries.  In fact we have invited two interns to join us starting today. 

I also know that anyone attending IBIS 2011 will undoubtedly leave more inspired about business intelligence than before they came – don’t miss out!

Register today – Early registration discount expires March 31st.

IBIS 2011 registration is now open

By
Yolande
Published: February 2, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, EventsTags: , , , ,
IBIS 2011 registration is now open

Registration is now open… for IBIS 2011: INSPIRED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, June 19 – 24. 

We believe that Business Intelligence is changing our lives in so many amazing ways.  It inspires companies, institutions and people to make timely decisions with confidence and is one of the most exciting happenings on the planet right now.  

InfoSol is inspired to see beyond your data by using Business Intelligence to its ultimate effectiveness.

The SAP BusinessObjects suite of solutions delivers the most leading edge and powerful business intelligence solutions in the marketplace and INFOSOL’S BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR (IBIS),  is the most effective forum for learning how to use these solutions in new and inspirational ways.

IBIS 2011 offers an incredible line-up.  Hands-on  PreSeminar workshops, immersion training boot camps, executive seminars … visit the IBIS 2011 website.  You can view conference details and register.

InfoBurst blog has a new home

By
Yolande
Published: October 11, 2010Posted in: Business Intelligence, InfoBurst, Infoburst 2009, InfoBurst-XDS, XDMTags: , , , , ,
InfoBurst blog has a new home

The InfoBurst team at InfoSol is relocating their Infoburst2009 site to a new web address.  Visit the new product blog at infosolblog.com/infoburst

Winners of 2010 Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards Announced at IBIS 2010

By
Paul
Published: June 14, 2010Posted in: 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.

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