Xcelsius Archive

Web Intelligence vs. Xcelsius vs. Explorer

By
Paul
Published: July 31, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Paul Blogs on BI, XcelsiusTags: , , ,
Web Intelligence vs. Xcelsius vs. Explorer

I was recently at a BusinessObjects user group meeting in Pennsylvania and a representative from SAP who was presenting asked the audience of about 50 attendees if any of them were using SAP Explorer. Not a single person raised their hand. He then asked how many of them had seen Explorer and about 10 people raised their hands. The presenter appeared surprised but I was not.

Although SAP has been very heavily promoting the Explorer product for the last couple of years, the adoption of this newer search based query tool has been slow. There are many reasons for this but the one that stands out the most is, that as a Business Intelligence tool, it is limited.  While SAP BusinessObjects offers a number of Business Intelligence tools for different functions, the majority of customers prefer to pick just one or two for mass user consumption and they will tend to pick tools that can provide the widest range of functionality.

I recently conducted an ad-hoc survey of about 200 BusinessObjects customers in the U.S. encompassing small, medium and large companies and found that the top BI tools in use were Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, Desktop Intelligence and Xcelsius. When looking at which tools they had most recently added in the last 3 years and were strategic for their future BI initiatives, it was Web Intelligence and Xcelsius.

Web Intelligence is seen as an end-to-end BI reporting and query analysis tool. It has both a web based version and a rich client version to be used off-line. It has good integration with Microsoft through Live Office and use of web parts and overall it has a rich array of functionality for self-service BI.

Xcelsius is probably the best BI data visualization and dashboard tool on the market today. It allows customized development of complete end-to-end BI solutions. It integrates with Microsoft, Adobe, Email, Google, Web as well as a host of other BI solutions. It also has a rich offering of add-on components and functionality to enable write back, alerts and mobile integration.

When we look at SAP Explorer, it is not really in the same category as Web Intelligence and Xcelsius. Explorer is a search web-based query tool for simple end-user ad-hoc analysis with limited reporting and customization ability. It can integrate with other BusinessObjects tools like Web Intelligence and Xcelsius and allows export to Excel but there is no real integration with other applications. It is a great solution for “one off” BI applications but not for end-to-end solutions.

SAP has been previewing the next potential edition of Explorer known as Exploration Views since the beginning of the year and this allows more end-user control and customization of the views.

Both Explorer and Exploration Views demonstrate very nicely and it is easy to get excited when seeing them but then the same could be said for Web Intelligence and Xcelsius.

I am sure we will continue to see more of Explorer but I see the future strength of the SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions remaining with Web Intelligence and Xcelsius for the foreseeable future.

Image Credit: http://www.presentermedia.com

Best Xcelsius Dashboard Award Winners Receive Accolades at IBIS 2011

By
Paul
Published: June 27, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, XcelsiusTags: , ,
Best Xcelsius Dashboard Award Winners Receive Accolades at IBIS 2011

The winners of the highly coveted InfoSol Best Xcelsius Dashboard awards were announced on Monday at IBIS 2011.  After each of the dashboards in the four categories was explained and demonstrated, representatives for the companies received the etched glass pyramid accolade that has become synonymous with the awards.

This year’s “Best Business Dashboard” award went to Rural Metro Corporation for their Daily Business Insight dashboard which was developed to show daily insight into operational, billing and financial data from different systems delivered in a simple and effective way. The interface was designed in a format that made sense to management and provided the ability to coordinate the distribution of matching Web Intelligence reports to their mobile devices. One of the key benefits of the dashboard was that it helped to create a consistent means of communication across the business.

The “Most Innovative Dashboard” award was won by McKesson Specialty Care Solutions for a dashboard they developed to provide a single view of all program enrollment and fill activity for a key client to quickly access the data they need in order to respond to internal data requests, in a timely, efficient and accurate manner. The dashboard made great use of different Xcelsius components including color coded maps, selection tables and a variety of different charts while using tabs and selection buttons to make the navigation both simple and powerful. The dashboard resulted in timely and accurate turnaround to requests that benefitted both McKesson and their client.

The “Most Valuable Dashboard” award was claimed by Banner Health for their automated dashboard used to analyze and monitor patient throughput within designated Emergency Departments within the Banner Health system. The dashboard is able to access a large number of key operational and clinical metrics providing standardization and trust in the data throughout the organization. One of the key benefits was an improvement in overall patient satisfaction by reducing the wait time between a patient’s initial arrival time and examination by a physician.

The fourth award this year was renamed the “Most Inspired Dashboard” award and was won by Sohar Aluminum from Oman for their dashboard to bring about accountability, transparency in daily work and ultimately consistent, accurate data. The dashboard was inspirational in both its design and functionality by making use of write back functionality enabling supervisors to enter their actual and target results through the dashboard itself. In addition, other alert dashboards were created that are automatically scheduled and emailed to supervisors who are late entering their data. The dashboard has been so successful that it has actually brought about a culture change in the way people look at data and processes at the company.

After the awards, many companies present vowed to enter even more amazing dashboards for the 2012 awards and I can’t wait to see them.

Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

By
Paul
Published: June 20, 2011Posted in: Blog Featured, IBIS, InfoSol, News, Xcelsius, Xcelsius End UserTags:
Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

IBIS 2011 kicked off last night with its welcome reception and solutions showcase demonstrating some of the latest business intelligence solutions and one solution in particular created quite a buzz – MyBI Mobile.

As I walked around the showcase showing Xcelsius dashboards running on an iPad, people stopped with looks of disbelief mixed with wonder.

“How are you doing that?”

“Xcelsius doesn’t run on an iPad or an iPhone”

Well, I am happy to report that with MyBI Mobile, not only does Xcelsius run on an iPad and an iPhone, but also on an Android. And it not only runs but it sings too! It has a fabulous simple menu system to serve up different content on the device and that content can also be Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence in addition to Xcelsius. With Web Intelligence you can also create new reports from the mobile device – that’s cool! When viewing and interacting with the content, you can perform a “pinch and zoom” action on any part of the screen to automatically enlarge that area of the dashboard or report.

While many companies have invested in building both dazzling and effective Xcelsius dashboard business intelligence solutions, they have often been challenged when trying to find ways to move these to mobile devices. The operating system for the IPhone and IPad (iOS) does not support Flash and SWF outputs natively but with MyBI mobile the barriers have been lifted. You can now take your key Xcelsius dashboards and just serve them up on iPads, iPhones and Androids without changing them and interact with all the features just the same as on the PC.

I cannot express enough how incredible this is and what it means to the millions of Xcelsius users around the world who want to take their dashboards mobile  - you are free of your shackles and you can now deliver Xcelsius to the most popular mobile smart devices out there.

I recently heard there are an estimated 200 million iOS devices in use today and now all those users can enjoy the full functionality of the amazing data visualization of Xcelsius through MyBI Mobile.

If the excitement at IBIS is anything to go by, you will certainly be hearing and seeing a lot more of this solution in the coming months so stay tuned.

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.  

Bragging Rights

By
Paul
Published: March 7, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, XcelsiusTags: , , ,
Bragging Rights

Last week I received an email from the father of a girl who I used to coach on my soccer team. The email was entitled “Bragging Rights and Thank You” and he explained how his daughter had just been selected for the High School All Regions First Team. She is only a sophomore and helped her high school varsity team to win the State Championship in their division.

Coach Paul with the Desert Elite

I first coached her at our soccer club when she was 10 years old and she transitioned with me from recreational to competitive soccer. She was fast and fearless and it was not difficult to see that she had natural talent on the soccer field. During the 5 years I coached her, I encouraged her simply to do what she loved most which was to play well, be creative and have fun. I just watched from the sidelines and cheered as she improved and dazzled us all with new skills with each game.

Anyway, her father was justifiably proud and the “bragging rights” were in order.

So the day after, I receive an email from a customer who has been troubleshooting an Xcelsius dashboard issue with the help of one of our consultants, Roxanne.

Roxanne had suggested to the customer to create a copy of the dashboard and create new queries and XML cache’s with new names.  The customer was emailing to say that since doing this, he has been unable to recreate his original problem and is happy it is working.  He added a postscript that said,

“ I have to mention I used your name in naming the queries, xml caches etc while recreating. This must have had a positive effect”

 So it appears by naming the dashboard queries and XML caches “Roxanne” something, his problem is solved and his dashboard is running great! Well, I could not let this pass without both sharing it and bragging about it.

Roxanne is one of InfoSol’s top consultants and a true Xcelsius guru. Unlike my soccer player, she was a little more than 10 years-old when she learned BusinessObjects and Xcelsius but , just like my soccer player,  I simply encouraged her to do what she loved most which was to be creative and have fun. The result is a Business Intelligence Superstar whose mere name causes queries to behave and run better!!

If you want to determine if my bragging rights are justified, you can attend the Xcelsius  Master Hands-on Bootcamp at this year’s IBIS2011  which will be taught by Roxanne and witness first hand her amazing talents or you could just rename your dashboard queries after her!

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.

Leading Zeros in Xcelsius – Tech Tip

By
Roxanne
Published: February 7, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Tech Tips, Xcelsius End UserTags: , , , , , ,
Leading Zeros in Xcelsius – Tech Tip

What can I do if Xcelsius is chopping off the leading zero’s in my order numbers?

This question comes up often when I’m teaching an Xcelsius training class.  Often enough that I’ve decided to discuss the solution here in a tech tip on our blog.

This scenario can happen with different data sources (XML, Live Office, Qaaws) when a number string is interpreted by Xcelsius to be numbers rather than string data.  As many people have tried, it is not enough to format the cells as text in the Excel spreadsheet of Xcelsius.  We need to use a trick to add those leading zeros back in. 

For example, say my Order numbers are all 3 digit numbers (for simplicity sake).  My order numbers are loaded into Column D, but then converted to their proper 3 digit format in Column F with the use of the Length formula in Excel, LEN.  By simply combining an if statement and the Length function to determine the length of a value, we can add the appropriate number of zero’s in front of a value, and voila, properly formatted Order numbers! 

See example below:

using the LEN function in Excel

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.

Comparing BI Dashboard Solutions: Hummer vs. Fit

By
Paul
Published: January 24, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Paul Blogs on BITags: , , , , , ,
Comparing BI Dashboard Solutions: Hummer vs. Fit

My youngest son recently learned to drive and he now takes himself to school three times a week in my wife’s orange Honda Fit. For those not familiar with this awesome sub-compact, it is a nifty 38 mile per gallon cute little dynamo of a car. It is practical, economical, environmentally friendly and, most importantly of all, my wife adores it.

So the other night, my son decided to chat with me about cars.  This was mainly due to the fact that a girl from his junior class parks in the spot next to him driving a huge black Hummer.  He always seems to arrive at the same time as she does and, as he put it, “It’s just not cool stepping out of a little orange car as she climbs down from her big black Hummer.”

I explained to him that you really should not compare a Hummer with a Fit. They are two very different vehicles with different capabilities. A Hummer would be an ideal vehicle if you were planning some “off-roading” in the desert but for driving to school it is expensive, bad for the environment and not very practical.

Although, in many ways we are conditioned to compare, we often end up comparing items using different criteria and coming to vastly different results.   Comparing the Honda Fit to the Hummer may put the Fit ahead in terms of fuel efficiency, maintenance cost, price and many other areas but many people would still pick a Hummer over a Fit to drive.

So when people come to me and ask me to compare Xcelsius to Qlikview, Dundas, Corda or other BI dashboard solutions, my first response is usually to first ask about the solution they are trying to implement and then ask about what will be their main criteria for selection.

Usually, the bigger issue is the data and metrics that they want to compare. These often do not exist in a form that can easily be used in a dashboard solution and a Data Mart may need to be created first to do any meaningful comparisons. The quantity, quality and frequency of change of the data are also all important factors to be considered.

The dashboard, like most user interface solutions, is usually the tip of the iceberg above the water and the larger and more important consideration is that mass of data under the water. We tend to get caught up in comparing features of dashboard tools and the tool vendors love to show their competitive analysis matrices and reports from “independent” analysts and organizations that they pay to create for them.

Yes, factors like ease of use, dynamic visibility, underlying technology and price are important too but if you focus on the solution itself then the weighting of these items will become more apparent and fall into their rightful place. If the solution is too difficult to use or too expensive, then you can eliminate it from consideration right away.

I have always been a great believer in “try before you buy” but more importantly in doing that “trying” in the context of the solution you want to create. So, in my opinion, the best way to compare dashboard solutions is to set up a meaningful pilot project and see which one truly meets your needs the best.

No, I am not going to encourage my son to test drive a Hummer to see if it is the best vehicle for him to drive to school because there is no way he could ever afford to own and run a vehicle like that so we can eliminate that one right away. Besides, there are better ways to impress the girls.

Photo: ca. 1999 — Apple and Orange — Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis – downloaded from Microsoft clipart online.
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