the most widely used business intelligence paradigm

A White Paper

by Kevin Quinn

The Most Widely Used Business

Intelligence Paradigm

Enabling Pervasive BI with Guided Ad Hoc Reporting

Bringing more than 25 years of software marketing and implementation

experience to his role as Vice President of Product Marketing for Information

Builders, Kevin Quinn oversees the development of marketing for all product

lines.

Mr. Quinn has been credited with helping to define business intelligence end-

user categories through his creation of guidelines for using and employing

business intelligence tools. He has helped companies worldwide develop

information deployment strategies that help accelerate decisions and improve

corporate performance. His efforts in this position have helped propel

Information Builders’WebFOCUS and iWay Software solutions to category

leadership in their respective areas. Kevin is also the founder of

Statswizard.Com, an interactive sports statistics Web site that leverages

business intelligence functionality.

Mr. Quinn holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from

Queens College in Flushing, New York.

Kevin Quinn

3

3

3

7

9

13

Executive Summary

The Business Intelligence Challenge

The Evolution of Business Intelligence

In the Beginning, There Was Batch

Business Units Find a Way: Advanced Ad Hoc Reporting

Next Came OLAP and Cubes

Guided Ad Hoc: Putting the Power of Reporting in the

Hands of End Users

WebFOCUS Report Templates: How They Work

Ranking

Trends

Guided Ad Hoc In Action: Real World Successess

In Their Own Words

1

2

3

7

Table of Contents

5

12

Organizations today face a great challenge. They must make timely business information readily

available to a large base of various users, in a way that is highly relevant and useful to each. But, the

traditional business intelligence (BI) tools at their disposal have forced them to rely on IT resources,

or teach their non-technical professionals how to navigate the complex features and functions of

ad hoc and OLAP software.

In fact, a recent report by Heavy Reading Research shows that only 25 percent of businesses can

claim that at least half of their professional and managerial employees are using BI on a regular

basis. The same report cites that the deployment of BI will likely more than double when tools

become easier to use and non-technical users can more easily embrace them.

Information Builders’ Guided Ad Hoc solutions empower businesses to broaden the depth and

reach of BI – making more reports with more information available to more people across – and

beyond – the enterprise. With Guided Ad Hoc, IT professionals can quickly and cost-effectively

create a single report template, and publish it via the Web. Users can then use an easy and familiar

interface to run their own reports. They can select their measures, dimensions, sorts, filters, and

more from simple drop-down boxes – resulting in the potential for thousands of different content

combinations, to satisfy the widest range of business information requirements.

Today, Guided Ad Hoc solutions are used in thousands of companies of all types and sizes. These

businesses have been able to recognize the true impact that BI can have, by putting the power of

reporting right in the hands of their end users.

1 Information Builders

Executive Summary

2 Guided Ad Hoc Reporting

For decades, BI has been providing companies with a faster, more effective way to collect, summa-

rize, display, format, and distribute the information contained within their enterprise data sources.

This has allowed business professionals throughout and beyond the organization – including

executives, managers, front line workers, customers, and business partners – to view and analyze

timely, accurate data about core business activities, and use it to improve decision-making and

strategic planning.

But, the complexity of traditional BI tools has placed a tremendous burden on IT teams. Developers

typically build reports using intricate programming languages or WYSIWYG design tools, then make

those reports accessible to end users via hard copy, Web browsers, or e-mail. As emerging and

changing business requirements result in a flood of new report requests from end users, developers

often find themselves buried in report-related projects that can distract them from other crucial

corporate technology initiatives.

Throughout the years, numerous advancements in BI solutions have made them more intuitive

and easy to use. Simple desktop reporting tools made business data readily and broadly available

to end users, but delivered static, relatively superficial information that provided limited strategic

value. Ad hoc and OLAP tools offered the kind of in-depth analytical detail required, but were not

widely deployed due to the time and costs associated with training, installation, maintenance,

and support.

That left non-technical users in the same position – requiring the ability to access and interact with

mission-critical business data, but without the time or skills needed to generate their own reports.

Because of these problems, most organizations use only a fraction of their enterprise data – less

than twenty percent on average. And, according to GIGA Group, companies further compound the

problem by making that data available to less than five percent of their business users.

By failing to leverage their most vital asset – their information – companies hinder their own

productivity, and put their ability to truly optimize performance in jeopardy. To reverse this trend,

they must ask themselves:

How do we provide truly meaningful information to a large number of end users at all levels –

while minimizing the reliance on IT staff – without forcing them to learn complex business

intelligence software?

The Business Intelligence Challenge

Information Builders3

In the Beginning, There Was Batch

In the past, programmers wrote COBOL programs that ran in batch mode on mainframes, collecting

and aggregating numbers from data sources. The result was a printed report – complete with

summaries, totals, subtotals, headings, footings, calculations, and more – that would be copied and

shared among employees.

Because these reports provided vital information that end users were unable to access themselves,

IT departments found themselves inundated with requests. These requests were often expressed in

business terms that were not easily understood by developers, resulting in iteration after iteration

of each report until the user got exactly what they needed. This created time lags – often as long as

several months – that negatively impacted the activity or process that the information within the

report was supposed to enhance.

Business Units Find a Way: Advanced Ad Hoc Reporting

When point-and-click ad hoc solutions were introduced, they gave non-programmers new hope –

allowing them to build their own reports, without IT intervention. Several power users within each

business unit, who possessed both business savvy and the ability to understand data relationships

from a technical perspective, were given report creation capabilities. At the same time, IT teams

were free to work on other initiatives.

Yet, this approach still resulted in static output, and additional reports were required to answer the

questions raised by the data in previous reports. As a result, the underlying business problem which

prompted the report in the first place was rarely solved.

Additionally, although these tools did not require in-depth programming expertise, they were still

quite technical in nature, with hundreds of features that were confusing to even a technically-astute

business user, often leading to errors and inconsistencies in report information. Industry expert

Ralph Kimball agrees, claiming that, “ad hoc query tools, as powerful as they are, can only be under-

stood and used effectively by a small percentage of the potential data warehouse user population.”

And, although ad hoc reporting solutions freed IT teams from a large percentage of their report

development burden, it forced them to oversee the cumbersome process of installing and

maintaining the software on user desktops.

Next Came OLAP and Cubes

Online analytical processing (OLAP) solutions were the next class of tools that aimed to further

simplify reporting for end users. Data was pre-aggregated and loaded into multidimensional cubes,

allowing users to quickly and easily drill down to more detailed information.

Because OLAP is interactive in nature, users could participate in an investigative session directly from

their desktop computers – drilling down to more detail, or sorting or pivoting, when information

presented a problem that required further examination from a different perspective. No existing

The Evolution of Business Intelligence

knowledge of complex data sources was needed; all information navigation and investigation

could be performed instantaneously and was kept within the context of the cube.

But, OLAP had plenty of problems of its own. First, IT staff found themselves burdened with

requests for reports that included information outside the cube – resulting in the need to create

new cubes or models. Additionally, data contained in cubes was often dated, and did not present a

real-time view. And, like the ad hoc reporting solutions that came before it, IT staff were forced to

install and maintain OLAP software on user PCs.

End users have also been quite vocal about the limitations of OLAP. Nigel Pendse, an independent

industry analyst who specializes in OLAP, conducted a survey of OLAP users. Among the key

problems noted were slow query performance, an inability for user groups to agree on information

needs, dynamic requirements that changed faster than cubes could be built, and the unreliability of

the software itself.

While ad hoc and OLAP solutions went a long way toward making BI capabilities available to more

people, companies still struggled to find end user reporting environments that were simple and

intuitive, yet easy and cost-effective to deploy and manage.

The real challenge? To make reports highly interactive and flexible, and at the same time, easy to

share, deploy, and access.

Guided Ad Hoc Reporting4

Information Builders has broken down the barriers, creating a way for organizations to rapidly and

cost-effectively deploy simple, intuitive end user reporting environments. Guided Ad-Hoc combines

the ease and simplicity of report templates with the availability and accessibility of the Internet, to

make interactive report pages readily available to end users. As a result, they are empowered to

generate their own reports in a familiar and comfortable environment, as quickly and easily as if

they were shopping online.

With Guided Ad Hoc technologies, there is no desktop software to install and maintain, no licenses

to track and manage, and no complex, hard-to-understand features for users to learn and navigate.

Developers can use WebFOCUS to build a Guided Ad Hoc report template with selectable para-

meters, publish it as an HTML page, and make it available via the Internet.

The process is quick and efficient, with reports of moderate complexity often being fully designed,

developed, and deployed in less than 30 minutes. Developers create one single Guided Ad Hoc

template that can be easily manipulated by hundreds or thousands of end users to meet the

broadest range of business information needs. And, best of all, the administration hassles that

comes with traditional ad hoc and OLAP solutions are completely eliminated.

Once a template has been published to the Web, users can then simply make selections from pre-

defined parameters in drop-down menus to determine a report’s content. Columns, sorts, filters,

and measures can all be tailored to meet each user’s particular information needs, then changed

at any time – making the process dynamic and interactive by allowing them to continuously slice,

dice, and filter the view of their data. This presents the possibility of a virtually unlimited number

of different reports to be generated from a single template, without the need for hand coding or

cube construction.

Users can also save their parameter selections as “personal reports,” further increasing reporting

productivity by making it even easier and faster to access the vital information they need to

perform their jobs.

Guided Ad-Hoc: Putting the Power of Reporting in the Hands of End Users


Flexible output options, such as Excel, PDF, or HTML, allow users to view information in the format

that is most relevant and meaningful to them. Or, users can choose to generate reports in Information

Builders’ Active Report format, which enables unhindered offline analysis from any PC or mobile

device. Additionally, users can save their selections as a personal “named” report (i.e. John’s Month-

to-Month Revenue Comparison), then schedule it for regular repeat delivery via e-mail. This signifi-

cantly accelerates decision-making by reducing the amount of time spent finding information.

And, perhaps most importantly, built-in security ensures that only authorized users gain access to

confidential business data based on their role within the organization.

Because this method is so efficient and effective, experts concur that end users will begin using it

more often to meet their critical information needs. In fact, according to Ralph Kimball in his Data

Warehouse Toolkit: “The majority of the user base likely will access data via pre-built parameter-

driven analytic applications.”


WebFOCUS report templates offer a broad range of robust functionality, evident in the following

series of reports. These samples highlight the most basic reports, as well as more sophisticated

ones that incorporate traditional ad hoc and OLAP-style capabilities.

Ranking

Rankings help users learn what is “best” or “worst” about certain aspects of their business. For exam-

ple, a sales manager may want to see which 10 sales representatives are the farthest away from

achieving their quotas, or a human resources manager may want to know who the 20 highest paid

employees are.

With traditional analytical software, rankings could only be applied to different measures or cate-

gories by creating a series of new reports. Considering all the possible dimensions and measures in

an average business scenario, IT teams would need to create a staggering number of reports to

meet end user requirements.

Ad hoc and OLAP solutions should have helped to solve the problem, but the capabilities needed

to perform rankings were buried within large feature sets, making them nearly impossible for the

typical end user to find and utilize.

The report below displays the top 10 selling products for an electronics manufacturer, with the

total dollar value of all sales of these products at the bottom.

WebFOCUS Report templates allow developers to add parameters, so users can instantly filter data

in a variety of ways, or obtain more information as needed. In the report below, users have the option

to filter the data by year, quarter, month, retailer, or manufacturing plant. This not only provides for

greater flexibility and functionality in report content, it allows users to quickly uncover and under-

stand vital patterns and trends in sales.

WebFOCUS Report Templates: How They Work


In addition to filters, dimensions and measures can also be parameterized with WebFOCUS Report

templates. The next report clearly demonstrates the power of Guided Ad Hoc, with additional

dimensions (plant, store, state, etc.) and measures (sales, units, cost of goods sold) being offered

to enable users to further alter report content. With seven possible dimensions, three possible

measures, and five possible filters, this template actually represents 21 potential different reports

that can be filtered over 8,000 different ways.

And, because it is actually just an HTML page, this report template could be deployed to an

unlimited number of users with far less time, effort, and cost than would be required if BI software

were to be installed on each desktop. In fact, one Information Builders customer gave users the

power to generate more than 350,000 different content combinations by deploying just four

WebFOCUS Report templates.

Users also have the ability to select from multiple output formats, so they can render the report in

the way that would be most useful to them – as an HTML page to allow for continued browser-

based viewing, an Excel spreadsheet to enable number manipulation, or Acrobat PDF for optimum

print-readiness.


Trends

Trend reports empower users to compare certain measures across time periods. For example, a

finance manager can compare last month’s travel expenses to this month’s, or a sales director can

compare revenues by quarter in a given year. Even more flexibility can be added by providing the

capability to drill-down to the detailed information behind the trends – allowing the user to

leverage the same type of “slice and dice” functionality that is available in OLAP tools, so they can

see not only what is happening over time, but why.

But, the power of the drill-down capabilities delivered by WebFOCUS Report templates goes even

further, enabling developers to parameterize the drill-down options so users can select the most

appropriate one.

The next three reports convey how easy it is for users to analyze trends with WebFOCUS Report

templates. The first report presents this year’s revenues compared to last year’s, summarized by the

stores that sell the products. The second report shows how users can drill down on any store to see

which product categories they sold, while the third demonstrates how they can then drill even

further on each product category to see the specific products.


Drill on the store name eMart to get to the next report. Drill on the product category Camcorders to get to the

next report.

Users choose their drill-down paths at run time with WebFOCUS Report templates, a capability that

even the most powerful and flexible OLAP solutions can’t provide. In the reports below, information

on sales by manufacturing plant is presented, with drill-down to specific states. Users can then drill

down from state to products.


These parameters govern the report’s drill-down path.

Unlike the last set, this report starts with manufacturing plant

and drills down to state.

State drills to product

In this example, users have an incredible number of options to choose from – 180 different reports

with 480 possible drill-down combinations, resulting in more than 86,000 unique observations from

a single report template. This empowers users to analyze trends and monitor key performance

indicators from nearly any perspective.

As you can see, this approach delivers the lowest-maintenance, highest-deployment, highest-value

business intelligence possible. Simple Web pages, containing Guided Ad Hoc templates are

accessible to any number of users, with no desktop software or cubes required. So, an unlimited

number of business information requirements can be satisfied – quickly, easily, and cost-effectively.


Information Builders’ Guided Ad Hoc solutions have been highly successful in real-world imple-

mentations. Our customers have far surpassed the five percent deployment boundary, achieving

usage levels of as high as 40 to 100 percent among all types of business users. These companies

have gained a true competitive advantage by making vital data available and meaningful to

everyone from executives, managers, and front line workers to customers, suppliers, and other

business partners.

The ease and simplicity of Guided Ad Hoc has made WebFOCUS a leader among today’s BI solutions.

An independent study conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates shows that WebFOCUS has more

than two and a half times the number of BI users as other vendor offerings. Additionally, it consumes

far less time and resources for report development and deployment, and requires little or no end

user training.

The proof also lies in the size and scope of customer deployments – both within the enterprise and

far beyond – using WebFOCUS Report templates. For example, when retail giant Arcadia needed to

expand its BI solution to satisfy the needs of a rapidly growing base of users, it turned to WebFOCUS.

The company was able to reduce the number of reports from the more than 1,000 it had created

using another vendor’s tools to just 100 using WebFOCUS Guided Ad Hoc – while still meeting all

end user requirements.

Another client, a leading financial services firm, was burdened with managing more than 3,000 reports

generated by a competitive BI solution. They were able to cut that number to just 30 reports – a ratio

of 1 to 100 – with WebFOCUS Guided Ad Hoc. And, a large transportation company went from

more than 1,000 reports to just 50 with WebFOCUS Guided Ad Hoc

Other WebFOCUS Guided Ad Hoc successes include:

■ Pershing LLC empowered more than 85,000 investment professionals to generate their own

reports and analyses through an online self-service portal. Users can quickly and easily create

trending reports and analyze stock trade patterns.

■ University of North Carolina at Charlotte relied on WebFOCUS to make self-service reporting

available to more than 3,000 staff members in 20 different departments. Users can rapidly obtain

student information such as enrollment, majors and minors, contact details, or lists of pending

graduates via the Web.

■ Ford Motor Company built their Global Warranty Management System (GWMS) on WebFOCUS

Guided Ad Hoc technologies. Through GWMS, approximately 14,000 dealerships around the

world can obtain customized warranty information. Since its deployment, the application has

reduced warranty-related costs by $40 to 60 million.

Guided Ad Hoc Reporting

Guided Ad Hoc In Action: Real World Successes

12

In Their Own Words

“WebFOCUS is transforming the way we access and deliver information across the organization. We are

empowering users with timely, accurate, and consistent information to help every employee make faster

and better decisions. By doing so, we are ensuring every user’s contribution can have a positive influence

on the business.”

– David Hale, Supply Chain Controler, Arcadia Group

“One of the main reasons our BI environment has been adopted so widely is because it does not require any

special experience or sophistication. If you can order a book or make travel arrangements online, you’ll find

our BI capabilities very easy by comparison.”

– Patrick Yip, Drector, Technology Group, Pershing, LLC.

“WebFOCUS is powerful, and so easy to use that most users can generate reports on their own. Faculty

members can instantly get information about their students or about the student population as a whole.”

– Tami Kuhn, Applications Programmer, UNCC

Experiences like these have been repeated time and time again at companies of all types and

sizes. Businesses across all industries have saved countless hours of developer and end user time,

while boosting business performance by making relevant and timely information easy to access

and analyze.


Customer Deployment Type Number of Users Report Volume Where Known

Administaff Extranet 70,000 users

Major insurer Intranet 15,000 users

Ford Extranet 22,000 users

NYC Dept. of Health Internet Unknown (Public) 20,000 reports/day

Royal Bank Intranet 10,000 users 900,000 reports/month

Sony Extranet 1,750 users

StatsWizard Internet Unknown (Public) 300,000 reports/month

Major U.S. bank Extranet 200,000 users

Guided Ad Hoc Reporting

About Information Builders

14

Information Builders’ award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration

software has been providing innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30

years. WebFOCUS is the world’s most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the

security, scalability, and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity

helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users.

Information Builders subsidiary iWay Software provides state-of-the-art, multi-purpose integration

engines that address all SOA, application, data, and information management requirements. Its

integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Together,

these products give Information Builders’ customers the ability to live up to the company motto:

Your business. No barriers.

Information Builders’ customers include most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government

agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,400

people and has more than 350 business partners.

Corporate Headquarters Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2898 (212) 736-4433 Fax (212) 967-6406 DN7503649.0408

informationbuilders.com [email protected]

Canadian Headquarters 150 York St., Suite 1000, Toronto, ON M5H 3S5 (416) 364-2760 Fax (416) 364-6552

For International Inquiries +1(212) 736-4433

Copyright © 2008 by Information Builders. All rights reserved. [74] All products and product names

mentioned in this publication are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Printed in the U.S.A.

on recycled paper

North America

United States

■ Atlanta,* GA (770) 395-9913■ Baltimore, MD Professional Services:

(703) 247-5565■ Boston,* MA (781) 224-7660■ Channels, (800) 969-4636■ Charlotte, NC Professional Services:

(704) 494-2680■ Chicago,* IL (630) 971-6700■ Cincinnati,* OH (513) 891-2338■ Dallas,* TX (972) 490-1300■ Denver,* CO (303) 770-4440■ Detroit,* MI (248) 641-8820■ Federal Systems,* DC (703) 276-9006■ Hartford, CT (860) 249-7229■ Houston,* TX (713) 952-4800■ Los Angeles,* CA (310) 615-0735■ Minneapolis,* MN (651) 602-9100■ New Jersey* Sales: (973) 593-0022■ New York,* NY Sales: (212) 736-7928

Professional Services: (212) 736-4433, ext. 4443■ Orlando,* FL (407) 804-8000■ Philadelphia,* PA Sales: (610) 940-0790■ Phoenix, AZ (480) 346-1095■ Pittsburgh, PA Sales: (412) 494-9699■ St. Louis,* MO (636) 519-1411■ San Jose,* CA (408) 453-7600■ Seattle, WA (206) 624-9055■ Washington,* DC Sales: (703) 276-9006

Professional Services: (703) 247-5565

Canada

Information Builders (Canada) Inc.■ Calgary (403) 538-5415■ Ottawa (613) 233-0865■ Montreal* (514) 421-1555■ Toronto* (416) 364-2760■ Vancouver (604) 688-2499

Mexico

Information Builders Mexico■ Mexico City 52-55-5062-0660

AustraliaInformation Builders Pty. Ltd.■ Melbourne* 61-3-9631-7900■ Sydney* 61-2-8223-0600

Europe■ Belgium* Information Builders Belgium

Brussels 32-2-7430240■ France* Information Builders France S.A.

Paris 33-14-507-6600■ Germany Information Builders (Deutschland)

Eschborn* 49-6196-77576-0■ Netherlands* Information Builders

(Netherlands) B.V.

Amsterdam 31-20-4563333■ Portugal Information Builders Portugal

Lisbon 351-217-217-400■ Spain Information Builders Iberica S.A.

Barcelona 34-93-344-32-70

Bilbao 34-94-452-50-15

Madrid* 34-91-710-22-75■ Switzerland Information Builders Switzerland AG

Dietlikon 41-44-839-49-49■ United Kingdom* Information Builders (UK) Ltd.

London 44-845-658-8484

Representatives■ Austria Raiffeisen Informatik Consulting GmbH

Vienna 43-12-1136-3870■ Brazil InfoBuild Brazil Ltda.

São Paulo 55-11-3285-1050■ China

InfoBuild China, Inc.

Shanghai 86-21-5080-5432

Rongji Software Technology Co., Ltd.

Beijing 86-10-5873-2031■ Denmark InfoBuild AB

Kista 46-735-24-34-97■ Egypt Al-Hisn Al-Waqi (AHAW)

Riyadh 996-1-4412664■ Ethiopia MKTY IT Services Plc

Addis Ababa 251-11-5501933■ Finland InfoBuild Oy

Vantaa 358-207-580-840■ Greece Applied Science

Athens 30-210-699-8225■ Guatemala IDS de Centroamerica

Guatemala City 502-2361-0506■ Gulf States Al-Hisn Al-Waqi (AHAW)

■ Bahrain ■ Kuwait ■ Oman■ Qatar ■ Yemen ■ United Arab Emirates

Riyadh 966-1-4412664■ India* Amtex Systems Inc.

Chennai 91-44-42177082

■ Israel NESS A.T. Ltd.

Tel Aviv 972-3-5483638■ Italy NessPRO Italy S.p.A.

Genoa 39-010-64201-224

Milan 39-02-2515181

Turin 39-011-5513-211■ Japan K.K. Ashisuto

Osaka 81-6-6373-7113

Tokyo 81-3-5276-5863■ Jordan Al-Hisn Al-Waqi (AHAW)

Riyadh 996-1-4412664■ Malaysia Elite Software Technology Sdn Bhd

Kuala Lumpur 60-3-21165682■ Norway InfoBuild Norway

Oslo 47-23-10-02-80■ Philippines Beacon Frontline Solutions, Inc.

Makati City 63-2-750-1972■ Poland/Central and Eastern Europe InfoBuild SP.J.

Warsaw 48-22-657-00-14■ Russian Federation FOBOS Plus Co., Ltd.

Moscow 7-495-124-0810■ Saudi Arabia Al-Hisn Al-Waqi (AHAW)

Riyadh 996-1-4412664■ Singapore

Automatic Identification Technology Ltd.

Singapore 65-6286-2922■ South Africa Fujitsu Services (Pty.) Ltd.

Johannesburg 27-11-2335911■ South Korea Unitech Infocom Co. Ltd.

Seoul 82-2-2026-3100■ Sweden InfoBuild AB

Kista 46-8-588-370-43■ Taiwan Galaxy Software Services

Taipei 886-2-2586-7890■ Thailand Datapro Computer Systems Co. Ltd.

Bangkok 662-679-1927, ext. 200■ Venezuela InfoServices Consulting

Caracas 58-212-763-1653

Toll-Free Number■ Sales, ISV, VAR, and SI Partner Information

(800) 969-4636

* Training facilities are located at these branches.

Worldwide Offices

the most widely used business intelligence paradigm

Documents