business intelligence: drill your data for better business knowledge and decision making

Schmitt & Associates, LLC | www.sna-llc.com 3/07/2011

Business Intelligence:

Drill your Data for better business knowledge and decision making


Would your employees make better decisions if they had better Business Intelligence Tools?

Enhanced Business Knowledge …… Can lead to Better Decision Making

Raw material pricing Impact to product line margin

Negotiating raw material pricing

Security of supply strategies

Production cost/Product line margins Targeted pricing decisions

Product line/SKU pruning

Marketing strategies

Material Supply Chain Controlling stock outs

Optimized inventory costs

Optimized capacity utilization

Minimized production costs

Employee time utilization Improving Productivity

Project management oversight

Charging for company costs

Sales Sales growth strategies

Marketing strategies

Customer Segmentation

Sales team effectiveness


Drilling down in your data base to create Business Intelligence Reporting Tools

Reporting Step by Step:

There is no magic involved!

Sometimes Called a Dashboard

Identify Data Source

Cleanup Data

Extract Data

Merge Data

Process Data

Present Data


Reporting Software Fast Needs teeth Flexible Specialized


Successful Reporting Software

Small Intelligent Flexible Adaptive

Successful


Before Creating a Reporting Tool

Every report has to lead to a decision(Of course, a decision can be:

Everything is fine, no reason to act.)

If you need the report every day: Automate and become efficient

If you need the report every half a year: Do it by hand

The objective is accomplished when the business objective is accomplished


Transparency already brings Improvement

Just to show and make it public:

How much old stuff is in the warehouse How many customers have special deals …….

Helps to take action to improve the situation


Excel is a Very Powerful Reporting Tool

Why consider Excel to drive your Dashboard:

Everybody has it Everybody knows how to use it Has great graphics Has automation (VBA) Can access any data source

Other excel sheets Any database (Oracle, MS SQL, Access, …) Web pages XML Text, Word PowerPoint ….

As any tool, Excel has disadvantages Single User System Hard to manage centrally Versions ….


ExampleTime Reporting for Billing at S&A

This is a real example, but it is used only to show the standard steps of report creation.

The steps are the same for Material Management, Sales Reporting, etc

Show Live ExampleShow Live Example


Step by Step: Identify Data Source(s)

The data is in our Project Management System. Every developer logs hours for projects.

“Data” can be in several systems, but that is not a problem.


Step by Step: Cleanup Data

My team is young:

Sometimes They are not reporting every hour They report to the wrong project There text is wrong


Step by Step: Cleanup Data (2)

Incorrect or incomplete data yields wrong reports Cleanup of data requires work and probably experience A lot of effort in good reporting is required for this step

However, the quality of the data has only to be as good as the decision you want to take For example it might be sufficient to deal only with the

20% of important products Or to get the top 10 materials that block a warehouse …..

(Very often, to be complete or perfect stands in the way of prudent decision making)


Step by Step: Extract Data

Always extract data 1-1

Excel can extract data from anywhere Other reporting tools can do that as well Machines are powerful enough nowadays to

handle all your needs

No excuse not getting to the data


Step by Step: Merge Data

Bring data together from different sources Create Lookup Tables

Bring result into a new worksheet that forms the source for the report.


Step by Step: Process Data

Use Excel to process data

Show Live SampleShow Live Sample

Tool Development Time Comments

Excel (VBA) 1

Crystal reports 1.5 Depending on Database

Web Application 3

SAP 7-10 ABAB/4

Highly subjective estimate of effort to develop reports


Step by Step: Present Data

Graphs can give fast way to evaluate data

A graph should always have:•Header•Description on axis•Parameters


Step by Step: Present Data (2)

Cool is Cool (but not always useful)


Step by Step: Summary Report Cycle

Identify Data Source Cleanup Data Extract Data Merge Data Process Data Present Data

Breaking Reports into steps makes every step easier.

There is no reason, not to have the report you need.

Reports serve a business need.

Sometimes Called a Dashboard


Effort for Report Creation

Report Effort Comment

Simple Graph 2 min

Pivot Table 6 hours Includes getting data from database

Time Reporting 8 hours

Web Application 40 hours Includes Application

Production Schedule 120 hours Interface to SAP, complex requirements


More ExamplesS&A Monitoring System

This is a web application to monitor the performance of our applications

Show LiveSampleShow LiveSample

A good selection of graphs can be found at:

http://webchart.app.s5-tech.com/


Example Production Planning (Simple MRP)


Example

Show Live SampleShow Live Sample

This is a Web Application


Example

Pricing Report (find the margin of products)


Examples

Reports can be automated in Word to be sent to clients for regular updates


Summary: Enhanced Business Knowledge will likely lead to better decision making

Drill your Data - All Reports can be done

View Report Tools as business projects not as IT projects.

The objective is accomplished when the business objective is accomplished

business intelligence: drill your data for better business knowledge and decision making

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