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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Business Reporting Tools
I want to hear from you... In your opinion, what is the best tool or software on the market for reporting and analytics of structured business data/information?
Tying the business architecture output to an accepted best-practice systems engineering approach defines a complete life cycle. Business architecture from a SOA perspective may offer to simplify outputs as service definition inputs.
The best analytical and reporting tool according to me is QlikView, which has very friendly user dash boards and can provide all kind of analysis which is required in an organisation.
Analytics, look at your customer, 9/10 are Excel users? Mine were. I used SSAS and Excel 2007, it worked extremely well. For full lifecycle business analytics, finding a product that can speak the language of an ERP is job one. I have found that many times the promises made are kept albeit at a huge cost. I have taken the "Best Tool for the Hob approach." When asked to consolidate our HR data from an Oracle/MySQL/Flat file system(s), the best tool for me was SSIS/SSRS/SSAS 2005. The price was right, the tools easy to use configure and deploy, the end users were very happy.
SAS is a very good tool for analytics... especially when your working with actuaries/statisticians and other types who have a strong command of their business and ability to create equations/formulas... it essentially allows the end user (power user) to create a process by themselves (without iterations from IT support programmers) before it is productionized.
If you are dealing with complex data but an established data hierarchy/business model then something like PoleStar from Business Objects allows users to navigate a predefined pathway of analysis.... this kills two birds with one stone... it sets up the map of possible "roads of analysis" of data and also displays where the boundaries are... such that new users get up to speed much faster than with a traditional tool that does not provide visual guidance... in defining data boundaries it also forces users to ask intelligent questions which can be used as feedback to creating new branches of analysis and thus expanding the scope of analysis.
Posts
Minitab or JUMP
ReplyDeleteCognos
ReplyDeleteTying the business architecture output to an accepted best-practice systems engineering approach defines a complete life cycle. Business architecture from a SOA perspective may offer to simplify outputs as service definition inputs.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteThe best analytical and reporting tool according to me is QlikView, which has very friendly user dash boards and can provide all kind of analysis which is required in an organisation.
Regards
Kunal Jain
Analytics, look at your customer, 9/10 are Excel users? Mine were. I used SSAS and Excel 2007, it worked extremely well.
ReplyDeleteFor full lifecycle business analytics, finding a product that can speak the language of an ERP is job one. I have found that many times the promises made are kept albeit at a huge cost. I have taken the "Best Tool for the Hob approach." When asked to consolidate our HR data from an Oracle/MySQL/Flat file system(s), the best tool for me was SSIS/SSRS/SSAS 2005. The price was right, the tools easy to use configure and deploy, the end users were very happy.
That was supposed to be "Best Tool For The Job" sorry!
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to BI, the I stands for something smart the management wants the users to do.
ReplyDeleteClasic BI seems to be more corporate wide templated reporting rather than a smart tools for adhoc analisys (Excel for instance).
Somewhere in between there is a huge gap and we have found that QlikView is a very good tool for playing with data. And this is what smart users want
SAS is a very good tool for analytics... especially when your working with actuaries/statisticians and other types who have a strong command of their business and ability to create equations/formulas... it essentially allows the end user (power user) to create a process by themselves (without iterations from IT support programmers) before it is productionized.
ReplyDeleteIf you are dealing with complex data but an established data hierarchy/business model then something like PoleStar from Business Objects allows users to navigate a predefined pathway of analysis.... this kills two birds with one stone... it sets up the map of possible "roads of analysis" of data and also displays where the boundaries are... such that new users get up to speed much faster than with a traditional tool that does not provide visual guidance... in defining data boundaries it also forces users to ask intelligent questions which can be used as feedback to creating new branches of analysis and thus expanding the scope of analysis.
BIRT - Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool, www.birt-exchange.com
ReplyDelete