Which Version of the Truth?

Is your Business Intelligence really intelligent?

For years corporate executives have made strategic decisions based on information from multiple reports that IT compiled by summarizing sets of frequently conflicting data. Business intelligence systems promise to change that by pulling data from all internal systems plus external sources and presenting one version of the truth. The result provides decision makers with answers to highly strategic questions.

Just one problem! Rarely is the truth in plain sight.

Real and valuable business information must be mined from disparate and “dirty” data that resides in multiple incompatible applications and databases across your company. Today’s business intelligence applications are incredible tools for helping an organization leverage their key data. But beware: getting to the truth is not just about buying and deploying new software tools. Instead it involves a significant upfront and ongoing effort to institute and maintain good corporate data practices and ensure data integrity. Otherwise the old pattern continues: “garbage in garbage out”.

Visionet Systems can help you:

• Define your corporate data standards
• Develop a Master Data Management plan
• Create a centralized data terms repository (metadata repository)
• Promote interdepartmental standards cooperation
• Develop a Risk Assessment Plan
• Promote corporate data governance
• Perform unbiased evaluations of new BI tools and platforms
• Develop and deploy effective decision support applications including:
• Multidimensional analysis and online analytical processing (OLAP)
• Click-stream analysis
• Data mining
• Forecasting
• Balanced scorecard preparation
• Visualization
• Querying, reporting, and charting (including just-in-time and agent-based alerts)
• Geospatial analysis
• Knowledge management
• Enterprise portal implementation
• Digital dashboard design and realization

Comprehensive Methodology

Visionet’s comprehensive BI methodology ensures that your organization gets the One Version of Truth through its utilization of three parallel development tracks. Each track manages one of the three key aspects of a successful BI initiative.

Fig.1 – Visionet’s BI Methodology

The ETL Track

The fanciest OLAP tools in the world will not provide major benefits if the BI target databases are not designed properly or if they are populated with dirty data.

Visionet utilizes its proprietary VisiDataBridge® to expedite the ETL development track. VisiDataBridge® is an out-of-the-box, open architecture solution for data mapping across diverse systems. It allows hundreds of in/outbound data formats to co-exist and function concurrently. Users do not need to pay a per transaction fee or lock themselves into a proprietary data hub. The tool can be installed and made functional in a very short time. Once configured, it significantly reduces the data errors and eliminates clean-up activities via its robust, built-in rules engine. Its Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) permits easy information exchange.

Fig.2 - VisiDataBridge Architecture

The Application Track

The Application track delivers front end applications that provide easy access to business data and value-added information. These include tools for multidimensional analysis, online analytical processing (OLAP), data mining, forecasting, visualization, querying, reporting and charting (including just-in-time and agent-based alerts), geospatial analysis, knowledge management, enterprise portal implementation and digital dashboard realization.

The Application Track team is staffed with our subject matter experts, "power users," and programmers who can effectively use OLAP tools, and have experience building client/server-based decision-support applications. Some of the enabling tools and technologies Visionet utilizes include Oracle Hyperion BI Suite, Cognos, Data Objects, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS).

The Metadata Repository Track

The purpose of this development track is to design, build, and populate a metadata repository with powerful reporting and querying capabilities.

Metadata can be viewed as a semantic (interpretive) layer of the BI decision-support environment. It describes the data and serves as a navigation tool for the business users in the BI decision-support environment. Without metadata, business people would have a difficult time understanding and using the transformed data in the BI target databases. It also helps the technicians manage the BI target databases as well as the BI applications.

Visionet understands the importance of metadata and utilizes proven business analysis, design and construction practices to develop and deploy effective metadata interfaces and applications powered by a central metadata repository.