Business analysis systems (business intelligence, BI)

Quality of managerial decisions depends on completeness and reliability of information available to the manager as well as on manager's intuition. Fragmentation and scattered character of information in corporate management systems (CMS), such as ERP, CRM, SCM, Internet and IAS, complicate information search and analysis.

Business analysis systems (business intelligence, BI) integrate the data contained in the information banks accessible for the managers and present them as reports. This ensures analyzing different situation development scenarios.

Such analysis allows making balanced managerial decisions. Such systems offer substantial advantages to the business by ensuring:

• Possibility to predict the company development
• Deep analysis of markets and clients' requirements
• Freedom in presentation of reports and visual clearness of reports
• Possibility of timely reaction on changing market conditions
• Provision of personalized services to clients

BI platforms are mechanisms for comprehensive multidimensional analysis of information. BI platforms are based on OLAP technologies.

Currently, the market does not demand OLAP technology in its pure form because of the following reasons:

• The client has only cursory idea about use of this technology.
• The client, having attempted to implement OLAP in his enterprise, has faced unsolvable problems of both financial and resource-related nature.
• The tasks that OLAP should have completed remain unsolved.

In connection with these facts, proposals in the BI market started differentiating towards solving specific problems, such as formation of corporate reporting, integration of information systems, planning and budgeting tasks, tasks of strategic company management on the basis of BSC (balanced scorecards), etc.

Current BI market offering is limited to the narrow profile tasks that are impossible to solve without OLAP technology. In so doing, the narrow focus of BI market tasks does not require a radically new approach to functional system integration.

Currently tasks in the following lines enjoy most demand in the BI market:

• Financial management solutions
• Strategic company management solutions

Planning and budgeting tasks as well as formation and presentation of management reports are the main key financial management solutions.

Today, strategic company management solutions are based on formal methodology. This is why implementation of automated systems of this class requires, first of all, that the company has a key efficiency indicator development methodology. Only then automation of data collection, consolidation, calculation and presentation (perspective visualization) processes can be done.

Accounting and management of property complex objects are urgent tasks of the phase of governmental property restructuring and transfer of governmental property to private ownership. It seems that software platforms, that implement OLAP functionality associated with aggregated representation, cartographic visualization of information, and analytical drill-down data sampling, are the most appropriate tools for extraction and comprehensive analysis of property complex objects data for arrangement of efficient management and operative decision making.

Contacts

IBS Integration Solutions Department

Contact person: Sergei Mukhin (Smuhin@ibs.ru)

Phone: +7 (095) 967-8080