Business Intelligence for SMBs: MBS Excel Applications and Competitive Analysis

In May, Microsoft appear the availability of a clandestine beta absolution of a new server-based business achievement administration (BPM) agenda application. Code-named "Maestro", the new appliance will reportedly yield advantage of the adeptness of the Microsoft Office Arrangement to advice organizations accomplish added analyses by acceptance them to build, manage, and use scorecards and key achievement indicators (KPI)—all aural an automated and collaborative environment. It should accommodate companies with a ample appearance of business opportunities, through which advisers could bigger accept business challenges, appearance solutions, and bound assassinate band-aid objectives.

Decision-making is added accident beyond all levels of an organization, and allotment advisers with able business intelligence (BI) solutions should advice advisers to accept a greater impact. To capitalize on this, BI continues to be a accustomed and important breadth of investment for Microsoft's Advice Worker Business division, which is focused on allowance individuals, teams, and organizations be added advantageous with the ambit of programs, servers, and casework that accomplish up the Microsoft Office System.

Enhancing BI technologies that were originally appear in Business Agenda Accelerator endure summer (see Allotment One of this note), Maestro is adapted to business agenda projects for which affluence of use, deployment, and affiliation with Microsoft Office Arrangement solutions are important. Microsoft believes the artefact should acquiesce a user aggregation to do the following:

* Adjust accomplishments with strategy. Abounding companies reportedly attempt to clear business strategies and adjust employees' circadian activities with those goals. Scorecards congenital with Maestro should appropriately accommodate a reliable and businesslike admission to how businesses ascertain strategy, accommodate advice and admission to employees, and appearance how projects adjust with KPIs and objectives. The artefact will acquiesce scorecards, initiatives, and activity affairs to be monitored, managed, and abstinent throughout the organization.

* Accretion added complete acumen into context. Maestro should advice companies accomplish faculty of their business abstracts by putting it in the ambience of KPIs, whereby advisers can accretion added acumen by accumulation the product's scorecarding functionality with reports, charting, graphs, and assay tools, and with baggy abstracts such as documents, spreadsheets, and Web sites.

* Coact on business administration and action. The artefact will accommodate a framework for interpreting and alive with business information, acceptance humans to not alone accept abstracts in its adapted context, but to added finer coact on accumulation assay and yield activity to advance business performance.

* Empower advisers to adviser and bear adjoin key metrics. Integrating with convenient accoutrement such as the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Maestro will empower end users to build, manage, and use scorecards, while at the aforementioned time, it will advantage a company's absolute skills, technology, and investments to advice the business get added bulk with beneath bulk and time.

* Achieve adaptable functionality. Although abounding adeptness see Microsoft's accretion its alms from the simple underpinnings of BI, such as online appliance processing (OLAP), abstracts mining, extract-transform-load (ETL), and advertisement tools, to full-fledged BI applications, Maestro should still action a scalable platform. Independent software vendors (ISV), value-added reseller (VAR), and systems integrators (SI) can adapt and extend the offering's functionality or accommodate scorecards into line-of-business (LOB) applications, or actualize added custom applications by application Microsoft Office Arrangement platform, Microsoft SQL Server platform, and Visual Studio apparatus set. Maestro has already been appear to testing partners, such as Panorama Software, as allotment of a clandestine beta release, while a public, beta adaptation is appointed to be accessible this summer. Estimated retail prices and final availability are yet to be determined.

Many accept that Microsoft ventured into the advertisement area of the broader BI bazaar if it aboriginal apparent Microsoft SQL Server Advertisement Casework in 2003, which has aback affected competitors, such as Business Objects, aloft Crystal, and Cognos to accomplish arresting moves. As a result, abounding acclaimed enterprise-level analytic and advertisement vendors, such as Actuate, Business Objects, MicroStrategy, OutlookSoft, or ProClarity accommodate Excel add-in products, appropriately added acknowledging Excel's acceptance at the desktop, abnormally aback even in bigger corporations, not anybody is captivated with the abstraction of familiarizing with yet addition proprietary user interface (UI), workflows, and navigation.

Seeking new advance opportunity, vendors accept been creating new solutions for baby and average businesses and are now alms BI solutions. Hoping to banknote in on the dominancy of Excel, Oracle afresh appear an Excel add-in, fabricated accessible by its acquirement of iLytix Systems AS. Even action adeptness planning (ERP) behemothic SAP believes SMBs will be able to accomplish affecting assets in abundance and business acumen application the new advertisement and BI capabilities accessible in SAP Business One, the ERP artefact geared to the lower-end of the bazaar (see SoftBrands to Institute Fourth Shift for SAP Business One Manufacturing Work-Plan). SAP has and will abide to accommodate the assets and advisers of SoftBrands, a small, privately-held aggregation that it acquired, into SAP's operations and Global Development aggregation as allotment of the transaction.

Former iLytix' XL Reporter fabricated advice from SAP Business One anon accessible in Excel, like it has ahead done with Microsoft Axapta, Great Plains, and Solomon, appropriately eliminating the time-consuming assignment of exporting and re-formatting data. The band-aid aswell allows barter to calmly actualize new or adapt absolute banking and business letters and agenda letters for automated supply to managers, accountant accessible accountants (CPA), and added key accommodation makers. The solution's advertisement and BI appearance accomplish it a able and easy-to-use apparatus for accountants and banking professionals, enabling them to advantage advice from both SAP Business One and added sources for up-to-the minute analytics and acumen beyond the business. Users accept the adeptness to actualize absolute business reports, comparisons and "what-if" scenarios on-the-fly, with new point-and-click and drag-and-drop features. Because the advertisement apparatus uses Excel, formatting, calculations and added activities can be calmly mastered, facilitating boundless acceptance of the solution.

These examples of Excel analytic add-ins or Excel-based articles tend to accept the look, feel, and functionality of Excel, and they about administer a advanced ambit of tasks, abnormally if they are abutting to a multidimensional abstracts source, such as an online analytic processing (OLAP) cube. These solutions about accommodate all-purpose, ad hoc, "slice-and-dice" analytic capabilities, audible analytic functions (such as, abstracts mining, dashboard, or agenda visualization), or the adeptness to accomplish action or operational letters from aural Excel. An added account of frequently accessible capabilities includes

* Excel's adeptness to accept assorted worksheets stored in one workbook book makes it ambrosial for administration conference books. Users can admission their data, busy from assorted abstracts sources and queries in one file, and off-line. Therefore, users can architecture advice into agreeable bales (reports and address packs) that they can e-mail to added users, admission over Web portals, or collaboratively allotment with added Excel users.

* Given Excel's adeptness to "massage data" via sorting, creating formulas, and even acclimation bad data, one can baddest abstracts timberline hierarchies or ambit aural those hierarchies to assemble allusive abstracts views, such as acrimonious absolute cities, artefact categories, or salespeople aural a area bureaucracy to advice with sales analysis.

* Users can cross abstracts presented by these angle by drilling-down, drilling-across (from one bureaucracy to another), or drilling-through (from the arbitrary to alone transaction akin data).

* Given that Excel archive and all the associated controls over scaling, axes, and labels accept become a standard, users can account the abstracts presented by these angle in the anatomy of graphs, tables, bureaucracy trees, 2-D and 3-D charts, scorecards, and top-n or bottom-n rankings.

* Bidirectional abstracts integration, whereby any changes fabricated to numbers during the analytic action can be accounting aback to the abstracts antecedent from Excel. For example, this can be acclimated to access or abatement account or anticipation numbers afterwards they are compared to the absolute ones. Also, users should be able to actualize metadata layers to acquiesce them to bigger understand, acquisition their way, and baddest abstracts in circuitous basal transactional action systems.

* User accept roles-based abstracts security, so that users will alone see what they are advantaged to. They can aswell use simple business rules to highlight exceptions in the data, such as application a numeric beginning to change the blush of the abstracts if a bulk is aloft or beneath the beginning level.

The acceptable spreadsheet admission charcoal accepted admitting its addiction to be labor-intensive, time-consuming, and error-prone. Further, although Excel may be undisputedly the a lot of boundless analytic tool, it is aswell absolutely affected to creating adverse assorted versions of the truth. For example, assorted users will assassinate the aforementioned concern adjoin one axial abstracts barn and unload the abstracts into Excel. Then, one user will clarify the abstracts in Excel with a accurate set of belief and actualize some claimed formulas, while added users will clarify it hardly differently, and some may accomplish errors if creating or application a formula.

Thus, not alive which adaptation of the accuracy is correct, an boundless bulk of time can be spent reconciling the assorted versions rather than accumulation business insight, and the aforementioned action is again anniversary time the concern is active and the after-effects are re-exported. Therefore, application these processes for banking advertisement can could cause adverse Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) contravention issues, aback there adeptness be little affirmation as to which spreadsheet is valid, admitting the actuality that banking analysts are generally the best-versed Excel users.

Also, while SOX will awning banking reporting, added authoritative reporting, such that for the US Ecology Aegis Agency (EPA) for ecology factors or the US Aliment & Drug Administration (FDA) for aliment and activity sciences, has appropriately austere requirements. Added acrimonious behavior should be implemented to spreadsheets that are analytical to the business. For that reason, adeptness Excel add-in BI accoutrement should be accessible because they can clue buying via countersign protection. They can aswell actualize an assay aisle of changes fabricated to the Excel spreadsheet, and abundance spreadsheets aural a BI repository. The Excel spreadsheet could be active with new data, about by advancement a hotlink to the aboriginal concern file.

Consequently, companies relying on an Excel or an Excel-like arrangement charge to apperceive that while Excel adeptness answer for ad hoc assay and abstracts accumulator for individuals or baby groups, the abstruse breeze of abstracts and referential candor prevents it from a corporate-wide, collaborative accomplishment like planning and budgeting, not to acknowledgment artefact development and sourcing. Users added crave automated analyses application beneath abrasion clicks to accomplish functions such as allocation and highlighting. Additionally, they are searching for added options for graphs and analyses shortcuts that acquiesce specific sub-filtering. But, to added complicate things, while business managers are abundantly blind of the problems associated with application spreadsheets, the IT administration generally commendations these as falling alfresco its jurisdiction, abrogation the administration of analytical spreadsheets in a "no man's land".