Business Intelligence and Tools

Unit 13

Unit 13

Business Intelligence Issues and Challenges

Structure 13.1 Introduction Objectives 13.2 Critical Challenges for Business Intelligence success Cross-Organisational Partnership Business Sponsors Dedicated Business Representation Availability of Skilled Team Members Business Intelligence Application Development methodology Planning the BI Projects Business Analysis and Data Standardisation Affect of Dirty Data on Business profitability Importance of Meta-Data Silver Bullet Syndrome 13.3 Customer Pain Points 13.4 Creating Cost Effective Enterprise friendly BI solution 13.5 Summary 13.6 Terminal Question 13.7 Answers 13.8 Case Study 13.9 Glossary

13.1 Introduction
By now you must be familiar with the history of Business Intelligence, the opportunity in BI and application of Dashboards and OLAP in BI.. Business Intelligence (BI) is not a product or a system. It is a continuously growing plan, vision and architecture which always seek to support an organisations operations and direction with its well planned business aims. There are many challenges that the organisations face while using BI. There are 10 critical challenges that the organisation should understand and address for the success of BI. Successful BI brings greater gain which is the true sign of business success. A BI project team lacking the BI application implementation experience will fail to deliver the required results in the first
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iteration. In BI projects, the business analysis issues are related to the source data, which is spread around the organisation in different data stores and in different formats. The Customer Pain Point drives the customer business. It helps to identify the customer problem, the need that the business addresses. The business objectives of any BI project should be tied to the financial consequences such as the lost revenue and the reduced profit. In this unit you will learn about customer pain points and the methods to develop cost effective enterprise friendly BI solutions. Learning Objectives After studying this unit, you will be able to: Analyse the critical challenges of BI success. Identify customer pain points. Develop cost effective BI solutions that are enterprise friendly.

13.2 Critical Challenges for Business Intelligence Success

In this section we will discuss the challenges and issues faced in the path of BI success. There is lot of information readily available to those who require it but is not in a consistent format. Obtaining the required data quickly and accurately to make decisions is the biggest challenge and the solution to this is Business Intelligence. There are many challenges that organisations face. There are 10 critical challenges that organisations should understand and address for the success of BI. The BI projects fail because of the following: Failure to identify BI projects as cross-organisational business initiatives, and to recognise that they vary from the typical standalone solutions. Unengaged business supporters or supporters who have little or no power in the enterprise. Unavailable or unwilling business representation. Lack of skilled and readily available staff, or sub-optimal staff employment. No software release idea, that is, no iterative development method. No work breakdown arrangement, that is, no methodology.
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No business analysis or standardisation activities. No regard for the impact of dirty data on business gain. No understanding of the requirement for and use of meta-data. Too much reliance on different methods and tools. (Silver bullet syndrome)

With BI, the business success is realised through fast, easy access to actionable data. This access is best achieved through suitable and correct insight into business conditions and customers, finances and markets. Successful BI is never an accident, the organisations attain it when they do the following: Make good decisions with better speed and confidence. Streamline the operations. Reduce the product development cycles. Maximise the value from the existing product lines and predict new opportunities. Create better and more focused marketing as well as better relationships with the customers and the suppliers alike. We will discuss the challenges which organisations face while implementing Business Intelligence.

13.2.1 Cross-Organisational Partnership Any business plan including a decision-support project was traditionally focused on a particular goal that was restricted to a set of products or a region of business. Due to this narrow focus, organisations were not able to analyse the affect of the project on the business operations as a whole. As the organisations became more customer-focused, these initiatives began to combine customer information with product information. It is vital to realise that it is not manufacturing plants and the product managers, but customers and markets that, drive the business. It is best to rectify any of the customer issues before the customer realises that the problem even existed. The enterprises have a better chance of attaining high customer loyalty if the customers pay when their problem is solved, and not when the product is shipped. Earlier, integration used to occur in regional or departmental databases, with no cross-regional collaboration. The enterprise data warehouses were the
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next step in the evolution towards cross-organisational integration of information for the decision-support purposes such as sales reporting, Key Performance Indicators1 (KPIs) and trends analysis. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) followed, bringing the promise of increased sales and profitability through personalisation and customisation. BI is the next step in attaining holistic cross-organisational observation. It has the potential to deliver huge payback, but demands unique collaboration. Where BI is concerned, association is not limited to the departments within the organisation, as this needs the integration of knowledge about the customers, the competition, the market conditions, the vendors, the partners, the products and the employees at all levels. To succeed at BI, an enterprise should care for a cross-organisational collaborative culture in which everyone grasps and works towards the planned vision. Next we will understand how the role of business sponsors impact BI. 13.2.2 Business Sponsors Strong business sponsors actually believe in the importance of the BI project. They campaign for it by removing political roadblocks. Without a helpful and dedicated business sponsor, a BI project will struggle for support within the organisation and will usually fail. Business sponsors set up proper objectives for the BI application, making sure that they support the strategic idea. The sponsors also support the business case assessment which helps in setting up the project scope. If the scope is too big, the sponsors can prioritise the deliverables. For most BI projects, the business sponsors also begin a data-quality campaign in the affected departments. This is a task for the business sponsors because it is the business users who have to identify the data. Finally, the business sponsors run a project review session at particular checkpoints to ensure that the BI application functionality maps properly to the strategic business aims, and also on the Return On Investment2 (ROI) which can be objectively measured.

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a business metric which is used to assess the factors that are important to the success of an organisation. The KPIs differ per organisation; business KPIs may be net revenue or a customer loyalty metric, while the government might consider unemployment rates. 2 The monetary benefits derived from money spent on developing or revising a system.

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13.2.3 Dedicated Business Representation In this topic, we will see how the various aspects of a business affect business intelligence success. The basic focus of the BI projects is technical-oriented rather than business-oriented. The reason for this is that most of the BI projects are run by IT project managers with minimal business knowledge. These managers do not tend to involve in business communities. Therefore, it is not surprising that most of the projects fail to deliver the expected business profits. It is vital to note that around 20% of businessmen use BI applications 80% of the time. Therefore, it is important to recognise the main business and technical representatives at the starting of a BI project in order to keep them motivated throughout the project. A BI project team should have involved the stakeholders from the following areas: Business Executives: They are the visionaries who are aware of the organisational strategies. They have to help make main project decisions and have to be solicited for deciding the projects direction at different stages. Finance Department: This department is responsible for accounting and can give insight into the organisations efficiencies and development areas. Marketing Personnel: They have to be involved during all the phases of the project because they are the key users of the BI applications. Sales and Customer Support Representatives: They must have direct customer contact and need to able to present the customers view during a BI project. The customers can help recognise the final aims of the BI system. Acceptance of the products or the service strategies matters the most. The main business partners have to give a different view of the customer and solicit the information at the start of an ongoing basis. IT Personnel: They support the operational systems and gives awareness about the accumulation of BI requests from the various groups. In addition to giving technical expertise, the IT staff in the BI project team should analyse and give BI-related requests. Operations Managers and Staff: They can make planned business decisions which will link between the strategic and the operational data which makes it important during some key phases of the BI project.
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13.2.4 Availability of Skilled Team Members Now that you know the role various aspects of a business plays in BI projects, let us discuss the need for skilled team members in BI projects. BI projects vary considerably from one another because at their outset, they lack concrete, well-defined deliverables. In addition, the business and the technical skills necessary to implement a BI application are relatively different from the other operational Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) projects. For example, while the operational projects normally focus on a specific area of the business, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), CRM or supply chain management (SCM), a BI project integrates analyses and delivers the information obtained from almost every area of the business. The necessary technical expertise differs as well, for example, a database administrators focus is the efficient retrieval of data using OLTP systems. By contrast, where BI systems are concerned, it is important to focus on data storage in addition to data retrieval. A BI project team lacking the BI application implementation experience will fail to deliver the required results in the first iteration. Since, most of the BI projects have aggressive timelines and short delivery cycles, an inexperienced and unskilled team will be a risk and it must be avoided. The mandatory skills required for BI projects include the following: BI business analysts who can do the cause-and-effect analysis to create the business process models for valuating the decision alternatives. These individuals should be able to perform the what-if analysis by following the proven BI methodology. The KPI experts skilled in creating the balanced scorecards. These experts must be able to recognise the KPIs that can meet the business needs, calculate and report them and monitor the performance. They should also iteratively re-evaluate the KPI effectiveness and should also integrate these KPIs into the balanced scorecard. The Balanced scorecard experts always develop and fine-tune the scorecards. Measuring this success in a dynamic business environment requires a useful toolset. With a balanced scorecard, an organisations idea and strategy can be translated to objectives, targets, metrics and incentives to meet the objectives and targets.
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Data warehouse architects with the experience in developing the BIrelated logical and physical data models, includes both the star schemas and the OLAP. Preferably, these people may also have experience with technologies such as statistical tools and data mining algorithms. Cube developers and the implementers with experience in applying BI specific data models, OLAP servers and queries. These individuals should be able to create and deploy complex and intelligent cubes to conduct the multi-dimensional OLAP analysis for different users. Personalisation experts experienced in developing Web-based generic BI applications that may not only meet the reporting needs of many users, but also give a personalised view to each user.

13.2.5 Business Intelligence Application Development Methodology You know that for BI projects to succeed, the team must stick to a plan which has clearly defined methodologies, objectives and milestones. Unlike other undertakings, the BI projects are not limited to a set of departmental requirements. Rather, their idea is to give cross-organisational applications. Therefore, the BI methodologies and deliverables vary. Like any project, the BI answers some of the basic questions such as the following: What will be delivered? What are the benefits and expected ROI? What is the total cost? When will it be delivered? Who will do it?

The answers jointly define the BI project as follows: The project deliverables will map aims to the strategic business targets. These deliverables should be measured in business terms. For example, to boost the sales by 20%, the sales data combined with pipeline data should be available to the sales teams within three days of the months end. Project scope should align the deliverables with the BI application deployment phases and timelines. Unlike the traditional OLTP applications, the number of transactions the system can perform cannot be measures in the BI project scope. Transactions basically signify an organisations processes, which in turn represent the functions. Since BI projects are dataSikkim Manipal University Page No.: 271

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intensive, and not function intensive, their scope should be measured by the data they will convert to the target BI databases, and on how quickly this data can be available. Focus on the data is required because almost 80% of the effort in a typical BI project is spent on data-related activities. ROI for a BI project should be derived from the project deliverables. The project sponsors should measure the usefulness of the delivered BI applications after the completion of each phase to decide if the project is delivering the promised ROI. If it is not, then improvements should be made. 13.2.6 Planning BI Projects In this topic we will understand why BI projects tend to hit the unknowns more often than OLTP projects? OLTP projects relate the processes of an organisation, which in turn signify the functions. On the other hand the BI projects provide data which will be converted into information, which in turn is converted into action. Therefore, the BI project planning is not a one-time activity, but an iterative process in which the resources, timelines, scope, deliverables and plans are constantly adjusted. Figure 13.1 depicts the planning processes in BI project. The planning processes are plan, execute, monitor and enhance.

Execute

Plan

Monitor

Enhance

Figure 13.1: BI Project Planning Process

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Although it is an iterative process, the primary project plan should be created with as much detail as possible. Figure 13.2 shows the BI planning activities.
Determine Project requirements

Determine Conditions of Source files and databases

Determine or revise cost estimates

Determine or revise risk assessment

Identify critical success factors

Prepare project charter

Create high-level project plan

Kick off project

Figure 13.2: BI Project Planning Activities

BI project planning activities include the following: Determine Project Requirements: According to this, the existing high level data, functionality and infrastructure requirement should be reviewed and revised to include more detail and remove ambiguity. Determine the Condition of Source Files and Databases: Before
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finishing the project plan, the operational data stores should be reviewed to account for any issues that may come up during the data analysis phase. Determine or Revise Cost Estimates: During this activity, the organisation performs detailed analysis to determine purchase and maintenance cost estimates for hardware, software, network equipment, business analysts, IT staff members, implementation, training and consultants. Determine or Revise Risk Assessment: The enterprise should perform a thorough risk assessment to exactly decide and rank the BI project risks which is based on the severity and the likelihood of their occurrence. Identify Critical Success Factors: In this activity, the organisation should determine what conditions should exist for the project to be successful. The factors include supportive business sponsors, realistic time frames and the availability of resources. Prepare Project Charter: This is a complete Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which has to be prepared by the project team. The MoU should be approved by the business sponsors and the key business representatives. Creating a High-Level Project Plan: These are complete breakdown of tasks, resources, timelines, task dependencies and resource dependencies mapped on to a calendar. Project Kick-off: On completing the plan, the project is kicked off in an orientation session where all the team members, business representatives and BI sponsors are present.

Next we will discuss about the importance of data standardisation. 13.2.7 Business Analysis and Data Standardisation BI projects are data-intensive and data out is as vital as data in. It is important to scrutinise the source data. In most of the BI projects, the business analysis issues are related to the source data, which is spread around the organisation in different data stores and in different formats. Some of the issues as listed as follows: Recognising Information Needs: Most of the business analysts face challenges when it comes to recognising business issues related to the
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BI application aims. They must evaluate how addressing these issues can help in obtaining answers to business questions like Why is there a reduction in the sales revenue in the fourth quarter on the West Coast? Once these issues are identified, business analysts can easily decide on the related data requirements, and these requirements can help identify the data sources for the necessary data. Data Merge and Standardisation: The major challenge faced by every BI project is the teams ability to understand the scope, the effort and the importance of making the required data available for knowledge workers. This data consists of fragments in different internal systems and must be combined into a common data warehouse which is not a small task. The data requirements normally extend beyond internal sources, to private and external data. Therefore, the data merge and the standardisation activities should be planned and started at the beginning of the BI project.

13.2.8 Affect of Dirty Data on Business Profitability You now know the data requirements in BI projects. In this topic, you will learn how dirty data poses a challenge to BI. Inaccurate and inconsistent data costs the enterprises millions. It is important to recognise which data is crucial and then find out how to clean it. Any dirty data must be recognised. A data-cleansing plan should be developed and also implemented. The business objectives of any BI project should be tied to the financial consequences such as the lost revenue and the reduced profit. The financial consequences are basically the result of a business problem related to the inaccuracies in the reports due to the dependence on invalid, inaccurate or inconsistent data. However, most of the BI projects fail to tie financial consequences to dirty data through the monetary expressions such as losing Rupees ten crore in the quarterly revenue due to the enterprises inability to up-sell. Even the best of BI applications become worthless if driven by dirty data. Therefore, it is crucial for every BI project to employ knowledgeable business analysts who can understand the meaning of the source data and also ensure its quality. Underestimating the data-cleansing process is one of the main reasons for the BI failure. The inexperienced BI project managers often support their estimates on the number of technical data conversions necessary. The
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project managers fail to take into account the vast number of transformations necessary to enforce the business data domain rules and the business data integrity rules. There are some big organisations with many old file structures. Here, the ratio of a particular data transformation effort can be predicted to be as high as 85% effort in data cleansing and only 15% in implementing the technical data conversion rules. Therefore, even if the estimates appear to be realistic at the beginning of a project, data-cleansing efforts have to be factored in. Note that the full-time involvement of the right business representatives is necessary for data cleansing activity. 13.2.9 Importance of Meta-Data You are now familiar with the affects of dirty data and the need to cleanse data before even starting a BI project. Now we will learn about meta-data. Clean data is useless to knowledge workers if they cannot understand the context of the data. Valid business data will be meaningless unless tied to its meaning. Hence, it is important for all the BI applications to create and also to handle the meaning of each data element. This data is known as the meta-data. The management of meta-data is an important activity in BI projects. Meta-data explains an organisation in terms of its business activities and the business objects on which it has to be performed. It helps transform the business data into information which is important for every BI environment. For example, what is the meaning of profit? Will every business person understand profit in the same way? Does profit have only one calculation? Are there are any different interpretations of profit and are all interpretations correct? If there are many legitimate versions of profit, then multiple data elements should be created, each with its own exclusive name, definition, content rules and relationships. All this data is called metadata. Meta-data helps business executives navigate the BI target databases and also helps IT personnel manage the BI applications. There are two types of meta-data. They are the following: Technical meta-data which gives information about the BI applications and databases, and also helps the IT staff in managing these applications. Business meta-data gives business users with information on the data stored in the BI applications and databases.
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Both types are important for BI success and have to be mapped to each other and kept in the meta-data repositories. 13.2.10 Silver Bullet Syndrome Earlier in the unit, we familiarised with the term Silver Bullet syndrome. Let us now discuss it in detail. There is neither a single technology nor a technique which can determine all the challenges to achieve the aim of a successful BI environment. That is, there is no silver bullet. The BI projects have a huge scope and cover the several environments and technologies. The BI environment consists of the following: Tool for Extracting, Transforming and Loading the data from different source systems into the targeted BI data warehouse. Data warehouse which stores the historical and the current business data, as well as an OLAP server gives the analytic services. Front-end BI applications used to give querying, reporting and analytic functions to the organisations knowledge workers.

In most organisations, the BI components are implemented in many different phases and by the project teams. Each team uses the product that satisfies most of its functional requirements. More tools can create bigger complexity and increased interoperability issues, and also needs more administration involvement. The BI project teams should always consciously attempt for the lowest possible number of tools which will allow different BI activities to map to the same overall roadmap. Activity 1: Suppose you have been given a BI project to implement. Note down the activities you would do in order to plan the BI project? Self Assessment Questions 1. There are 9 critical challenges in BI. State true or false. 2. ROI stands for __________. 3. KPI stands for Key _____________ Indicators. 4. There five types of meta-data. State true or false. 5. KPI experts are skilled in creating the _________________.

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13.3 Customer Pain Points

You have learned the various critical BI challenges. You know that BI growth and the need for BI is driven by factors like increasing business speed, change, competitiveness and regulatory requirements. Many organisations face one or more pain points which necessitate the adoption of the BI solutions. Customer Pain Points drive the customer business. It helps to identify the customer problems and the needs that the business addresses. Some of the customer pain points are as follows: Sufficient Data but Lack of Insight: When there are lots of data being collected in the operational systems then the organisation loses insight into the data related to the market, customer and product which could have helped the employees to run the business more effectively. Absence of the Big Picture: Many types of data exist in finance, sales, manufacturing and other departments, but the organisation lacks a complete and consistent view of the data to assess the overall business performance. Having After-the-Fact Insight: Decision-makers obtain the data when it is too late to make changes. This makes the organisation unable to take advantage of the upcoming opportunities and work around risks on time. Exporting, Formatting, Analysing and Reporting: The lack of quality BI foundation leads the employee in the organisation to export data into spreadsheets or desktop databases. Here, the report is combined, formatted, analysed and created based on data. The employee simply cuts and pastes the reports for presentations to management and then repeats the process every time the management wants an update.

The other pain points lie in the following areas: Integration and interoperability with the other systems like customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning which pose a problem. The poor quality of data that diminishes the value of the BI initiatives. Spreadsheets which are still the largely used BI tool. Misunderstanding or ignoring the data produced by the BI tool because most of the users do not know how to analyse it.
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When there are too many reporting and analysis tools which can be used.

13.4 Creating Cost Effective Enterprise Friendly BI solution

You already know that selecting the right BI solution is important. The BI tools give a wide variety of functionality varying from the simple reports to drill-down analytical solutions aimed at particular industries and operational environments. While selecting a Business Intelligence solution, firms will have to answer two main questions and they are the following: 1. What kind of data has to be analysed and from where does it have to come from? There are many packaged application and database vendors which include some BI functionality in their core product. If there is plan to source all the data from the same application or database then there may not be a need to buy these additional products. Yet this strategy may limit the analytical range. 2. Who will do the analysis and how do they have to obtain the results? Previously, the report or analysis requests used to be sent to the IT department, who would then program codes and then create the report. Today, the BI is on the front lines of business and the tools would then be used by executives or sales and marketing professionals. As a result, firms have to know the technical capabilities of the end user upfront. In order to construct a Business Intelligence solution, the enterprises will have to consider new investments and upgrades to the present technology to set out the BI technology stack. The technology stack is planned to highlight the different layers of the technology that can be affected by a BI project, from the hardware hosting the data at the bottom of the stack to the portal product used to provide data to the users at the top. Starting from the bottom, this seven-layer stack consists of the following: 1. Storage and Computation of Hardware: To apply BI, organisations have to invest or upgrade their data storage infrastructure. This includes Storage Area Networks (SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS), Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM), and the silo-style tape libraries. The trend over the next few years is for the storage resources to be combined into a single, policy-managed and enterprise-wide storage pool.
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2. Applications and Data Sources: To develop a useful BI solution, source data will have to be cleansed and organised. The challenge is that source data may come from any number of applications, mostly using proprietary data formats and application-specific data structures. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and other applications are the some of the common sources of data. The trend for the next few years is for the applications to standardise the data format using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema and influence the BI specific standards like XML for Analysis. 3. Data Integration: Middleware allows different systems supporting different communication protocols, interfaces, object models, and data formats to communicate. The firms will have to invest in the connectors to allow the data from the source applications to be integrated with the BI repository. Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) tools will pull the data from the multiple sources, and then load the data into a data warehouse. Again, the trend in data integration and Enterprise Application Integration is towards the standardisation through XML and web services. 4. Relational Databases and Data Warehouses: Firms will require a data warehouse to store and organise the tactical or historical information in a relational database. Organising the data in this way allows the user to extract and assemble specific data elements from a complete dataset to perform a range of analyses. 5. OLAP Applications and Analytic Engines: Online Analytic Processing (OLAP) applications give a layer of separation between the storage repository and the end user's analytic application of choice. Its role is to carry out special analytical functions which will require high-performance processing power and more specialised analytical skills. 6. Analytic Applications: Analytic applications are the programs which are used to run queries against the data to perform either slide-anddice analysis of historical data or the more predictive analyses, often referred to as drill-down analysis. For example, a customer intelligence application can allow a historical analysis of all customer orders and the payment history. Otherwise, the users could drill down to understand how changing a price may affect the future sales in a specific region.
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7. Information Presentation and Delivery Products: Query results can be returned to the user in a number of ways. Many tools provide presentation through the analytic application itself and offer the dashboard formats to combine multiple queries. Also, enterprises can purchase packaged or custom reporting products, such as Crystal Reports. An important trend in the BI presentation is leveraging XML to deliver analyses through a portal or any other Internet-enabled interface, such as a personal digital assistant (PDA). Activity 2: SDF Manufacturing Company faces problems like delay in business operations. Because of the problems, the organisation opted for BI tools. List the various pain points which led the company to use BI tools Self Assessment Questions 6. ________________ drives the customer business. 7. There are eight factors in the BI technology stack. State true or false. 8. ________________which are still the largely used BI tool 9. SAN stands for____________________. 10. OLAP stands for __________________.

13.5 Summary
Organisational business success is realised through fast, easy access to actionable data. The BI projects have to give data, which will be converted into information, which in turn is converted into action. BI growth and need is driven by the factors like increasing the business speed, change, competitiveness and the regulatory requirements. Business Intelligence solution, the enterprises will have to consider new investments and upgrades to the present technology to set out the BI technology stack. The BI applications when applied efficiently and properly will have tremendous payoff. This can help an enterprise increase the business agility, decrease the operating costs and also improve the customer loyalty and acquisition. Mostly, the improvements bring a host of tangible profits for the better customer satisfaction, more revenue and profits, cost savings and bigger market share. The Bottom line for a successful BI project is a valid,
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often dramatic, improvement to any organisation. As many complex factors go into the successful BI project, by paying attention to the 10 critical issues and challenges for BI success, the enterprise will have a great chance to complete and deliver the features and the benefits agreed upon at the starting of the project The 10 critical issues and challenges are CrossOrganisational Partnership, Business Sponsors, Dedicated Business Representation, Availability of Skilled Team Members, Business Intelligence Application Development methodology, Planning the BI Projects, Business Analysis and Data Standardisation, Affect of Dirty Data on Business profitability, Importance of Meta-Data and Silver Bullet Syndrome. Customer Pain Points drive the customer business and helps to identify the customer problems and the needs that the business addresses. The enterprises will have to consider new investments and upgrades to the present technology to set out the BI technology stack. The technology stack is planned to highlight the different layers of the technology that can be affected by a BI project.

13.6 Terminal Questions

1. List the 10 critical challenges faced by BI. 2. Explain the impact of dirty data on business profitability. 3. Explain Silver Bullet Syndrome. 4. What are the customer pain points? 5. What are the steps to creating cost effective enterprise friendly BI solutions?

13.7 Answers
Answers to Self Assessment Questions 1. False 2. Return On Investment 3. Performance 4. False 5. Balanced Scorecard 6. Customer Pain Point 7. False
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8. Spreadsheets 9. Storage Area Networks 10. Online Analytic Processing Answers to Terminal Questions 1. Refer section 13.2 2. Refer section 13.2.8 3. Refer section 13.2.10 4. Refer section 13.3 5. Refer section 13.4

13.8 Case Study

XZB Software Company is a multi-national company and has to develop a BI project for a Phuket based car manufacturing company. The requirements were obtained from the client. Problems faced by the client were the following: The client had many transactions and the huge data obtained had to exported, analysed and reported. The clients faced many irregularities because of this. The clients business speed was slowing down. Hence their value in the market was slowing down. They wanted a tool which would help them overcome their problem and improve their business. XZB Company came up with a BI solution tool which would help them overcome the problem that their client faced. Question: List the various customer pain points that the client faced and how they overcame those pain points.

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13.9 Glossary
Term Enterprise Description A business organisation. The entire organisation, including all of its subsidiaries. It indicates a large corporation or government agency, but it may also refer to a company of any size with many systems and users to manage A legal document which outlines the terms and details of an agreement between parties, including each parties requirements and responsibilities. A high-speed special-purpose network or subnetwork that interconnects the different kinds of data storage devices with the associated data servers on behalf of a larger network of users Any small mobile hand-held device that provides computational and information storage and retrieval capabilities for the personal or the business use. It is often used to keep schedule calendars and address book information handy

Memorandum of Understanding Storage Area Networks

Personal Digital Assistant

References 1. Managing Frontiers in Competitive Intelligence by Craig S. Fleisher, David L. Blenkhorn. 2. Effective Business Intelligence Systems by Robert J. Thierauf. 3. Business Information at Work by Michael Lowe

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