Analytical Tool/ETL Nicole Cory, Craig Jones, Jennifer Williams, Deborah Wolf Ferris State University

Incorporation of Business Intelligence Enterprise visualization and reporting are imperative Business Intelligence (BI) tools that provide accurate and detailed information and will assist in decision making. The information of day to day operations allow users throughout the entire organization to access and drill down as needed to appropriately manage departments. This type of reporting uses standard OLAP features such as page-by, pivot, sort, filter and drill-up/down to maneuver through various views and relies on the utilized tool. In a business model, a BI tool would give the ability to provide executive management with the ability to provide real time data to monitor the key functional areas of the business. Departmental managers would have measurements that are specific to their departments with the ability to drill through the data thus making better and more informed decisions. This capability could allow organizational department heads to quickly resolve issues that would be delayed that are associated to additional costs in current systems. Operators would also benefit from this technology with the tool to self-monitor goals. By way of scorecards, operators would be able to define in real time whether they are meeting the KPIs set by the departmental leader. As with the departmental reports, operators would also be able to quickly react to changing conditions that are adversely affecting goals. The purpose of this report is to provide information regarding the most appropriate BI tool for this organization. Research for this report will include multiple online inquiries with the organizations of the two presented BI tools. A summary comparison will be provided between two BI tools (Power View and MicroStrategy). There will be an overview of each of their capabilities. Pricing and organizational cost will be identified. Benefits and risks will be defined for each tool. Examples of dashboards will be provided. An overview of systems pertinent information will also be given. Finally, a recommendation will be made regarding the BI tool that offers the best fit for this organization. Power View The new release of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 includes a brand new Business Intelligence (BI) reporting tool called Power View (formerly known as Project Crescent).Power View allows business users to develop report designs through a standard browser. Users are empowered to self-navigate and create reports based on SQL Server models (Microsoft SQL Server, 2012). Power View also offers an easy way to significantly improve decision support within the data warehouse and sustain query performance against very large data sets. Ideal situations include aggregations, filtering, and grouping very large fact tables against star schema designs. Power View is a next-generation BI tool for interactive data exploration, visualization, and presentation. End user reporting and visualization were originally introduced in SQL Server 2005 with the Report Builder tool. The creation of Power View in SQL Server 2012 is an extended version of reporting and visualization capabilities. This BI tool allows self-service reporting allowing

business users to create interactive reports. Power View is somewhat of a natural progression of Report Builder and is not expected to be a replacement. This tool is meant to be an enhancement of Power Pivot and the SQL Server Reporting Services (Microsoft SQL Server, 2012). Microsoft wants Power View to be known for the ability to abstract and visualize large amounts of data to make it easier to understand. Often times large amounts of business data is difficult to absorb and understand in any other way that reporting and visualization. A shared view can be created to clearly show trending data. The Slider feature in Microsofts Power Pivot provides the functionality for users to interact with the data and also see performance trends over time. A user creating a report with Power View is not required to know about security, database names, and table structures, as the tool natively understands the relationships between the objects. Some of Power Views major features include:

Report Design Experiences via a standard web browser Report Visualizations: Charts, Animated Bubble Charts, Multiple Charts, & Slicers Intuitive Report Consumption Experiences via a standard web browser (Microsoft.com) Power View Benefits

This tool is visually rich and interactive. Reports can be created simply with a drag and drop interface. One impressive feature includes the ability to create multiple views of the same report. Typically, traditional reporting tools only allow one view of the same data. The user is also able to navigate between views utilizing a Microsoft Office-style ribbon interface. The view of the data can also be instantly transformed from a bubble chart to a line chart, or a bar chart, as well as various others. This process allows individuals to visualize and better understand the data. The slider is an interactive feature that allows company administrators to visualize Key Performance Indicators and trends. Power Views interface can be easily compared to Microsoft PowerPoint. The familiarity of this type of presentation also makes Power View stand out. In addition, Power View reports can be exported to Power Point, and be preventive as interactive reports which are ideal for large presentations to groups. Power View also allows sorting within charts by measures and categories, multiple measures in charts, highlighting of selected data in reports and charts, synchronization of slicers (Cross Filtering), measure filters, search in filters (convenient for a long list of categories), dragging data fields into canvas (create table) or charts (modify visualization, convert measures to categories (Do Not Summarize), and many other fields (Microsoft.com).

Power View Challenges/Risks 1. Hardware: need at least 2 server-level PCs (each at least quad-core, 16GB RAM recommended). It is not recommended to use 1 production server to host both SQL Server and SharePoint; the user will need at least VM(s). 2. Installation: a) Each Server needs Windows 2008 R2 SP1 3GB DVD; b) 1st Server needs SQL Server 2012 Enterprise or BI Edition 4GB DVD; c) 2nd Server needs SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition 1GB DVD; d) A lot of skill and experience 3. Configurations: Hours or days plus a lot of reading, previous knowledge etc. 4. KPIs may not be fully supported in Power View in SQL Server 2012 5. No desktop version; only available as a web page through a browser. 6. New product; not a large amount of utilization of fi nancial information available (Microsoft SQL Server, 2012) Business Intelligence Overview Power view can be a useful business intelligence tool for organizations already utilizing Microsoft SharePoint technology. Power view is an add-in component of SQL Server 2012 that requires SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition SP1 or later to function. The SQL Server 2012 data warehouse has the capability of housing 6 terabytes of information. The data model acts as a bridge between the complexities of back-end data sources and your perspective of the data. Power view provides several ways to filter data, and the reports can be exported into PowerPoint while maintaining their interactivity (Microsoft, 2012). These reports may also be published to SharePoint.

(Sample Dashboards Power View)

This tool can be a robust business intelligence tool with simple user-friendly report viewing capabilities (Chessman, 2012). Users can create interactive reports without help from IT personnel while the IT department can manage and protect user-created analysis tools without reducing the creativity of reporting and presentation (Chessman, 2012). Power View communicates with a tabular data model by issuing Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) queries (Chessman, 2012). These queries make it easy to retrieve a tabular list of data which, according to one authors testing, tends to perform better than MDX queries when querying a large number of rows (Chessman, 2012). In one article, a large bank used Power View and claimed that, Nontechnical users can analyze data about 402,000 customers in minutes, without help-desk assistance (Microsoft, 2012). Investment There is a limited amount of financial information for this tool as it is new in the market of visualization and reporting. Although, the typical quoted price for the Power View BI tool is approximately $20K. However, if the system is only to be utilized for development it is about $5K. A Visual Studio with MSDN subscription is also required for implementation of this product plus cost of skilled labor. Share Point will also be needed to utilize this tool along with the ability to access a browser to create reports and dashboards. Power View experienced individuals would be the most appropriate for implementation of this tool. Therefore, there may be additional cost associated with hiring outside assistance or training super users within the organization. MicroStrategy MicroStrategy was founded in 1989 by Michael Saylor (current CEO) and Sanju Bansal (COO) who were inspired from a class at MIT. This tool provides enterprise software that includes business intelligence (BI), mobile intelligence, and social intelligence applications. This tool can create BI platforms that provide users the ability to make better business and management decisions through the use of various dashboards and reporting systems. The five most popular styles of BI for MicroStrategy are scorecards and dashboards, reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), advanced and predictive analysis, and mobile applications and alerts. Some of the best known customers of MicroStrategy are Campbells, EBay, Groupon, Guess?, Lowes, Priceline, Yahoo, United Postal Service, LinkedIn, Jabil Circuits, and many more. In 1994, MicroStrategy went public and continued to grow at tremendous rates during the upcoming years. However, in March of 2000 MicroStrategy settled a suit with the SEC for overstating revenues and paid a fine of $350,000 without admitting guilt. This had a negative impact on stocks, dropping them by approximately 62%. Impressively this did not waiver the dedication of this company who continues to grow through the implementation of new applications and investments within their R&D departments.

The following information was found on MicroStrategys 10K form submitted to the SEC. As you can see, MicroStrategy has continued to grow through the continued improvement of their platforms as well as staying ahead of new innovations such as cloud and mobile intelligence.

Business Intelligence Overview Not unlike Power View, MicroStrategy suggests that business dashboards provide an effective tool to measure then monitor business performance. While making available information from various areas of the business in one easy to read and interpret manner; MicroStrategy also provides a quick and accurate means of tracking your key performance indicators (KPI).

(Sample Dashboard MicroStrategy)

There are hundreds of pre-defined scorecards that are available in the analytic modules of this software. There is also an option is to build individual KPIs based on such methodology as the Balanced Scorecard and Six Sigma. Businesses choosing MicroStrategy Wisdom Professional can uncover important information about their followers as well as those of their competitors. This type of business analytics can empower organizations to fine-tune their products or services to reach specific customer types, expand into new markets, and compete more effectively in the marketplace. MicroStrategy Wisdom Professional is available immediately on an annual subscription basis (MicroStrategy, 2012). MicroStrategy Benefits MicroStrategy provides a universal solution for BI. Through the use of their intelligence server, MicroStrategy can be run on Windows, UNIX, or Linux operating systems. It provides a mechanism to create and use reporting scorecards, dashboards, and custom reporting systems across an organization and supply chain. All components of the BI system can be translated and presented in multiple languages. This will be very beneficial for international operations as they will able to use the same platform; therefore, eliminating the need for custom software to bridge between the systems. With 64-bit support more memory can be utilized to create intelligent cubes containing millions of record while still efficiently using the data for reporting. MicroStrategy Wisdom Professional also allows users to analyze a wide array of consumer

data. This includes demographics, brand interests, media interests, activity interests, social connections, location check-ins, and life events. MicroStrategy Wisdom Professional empowers companies to perform specific types of analysis to improve their customer personalization (MicroStrategy, 2012). As a tool with a broad scope, Micro Strategy allows the user to encompass mobile use, social media, and integration with Microsoft and Oracle platforms. It further offers open-source operating systems, databases, web servers, and application servers. Many of the tasks can be performed from just a couple of centralized tools (Desktop/Architect). In addition, this tool offers the ability to create extensive PDF documentation for all components. The reporting tool and document generation capability is highly advanced and easily customizable. MicroStrategy Challenges/Risks 1. Some difficulty with presentation of data. Certain charts, especially 3-D not supported in flash mode. 2. MicroStrategy has a large scope which may be seen as a drawback for small businesses; technically complex tool. 3. Some limitations in the reporting format (although these may be bypassed by using the more robust document creation tools). 4. Associated with high cost; trained MicroStrategy professionals typically command very high prices. 5. Limitation of reporting suite to a single core (not a single CPU), which can severely limits the usability of the product. In addition, as the software giants continue to peruse to verticall y integrate BI systems, independent companies such as MicroStrategy will be pressed to reduce cost. These challenges could reduce support and/or quality of future upgrades. The main reasons for this are package deals as well as reducing the number of service contracts required. However, MicroStrategy has continued to invest in R&D and provide new and improved systems such as mobile and cloud intelligence. It should be expected that MicroStrategy will continue to peruse new and innovative solution keeping their software on the top of the BI platforms. Investment Implementing MicroStrategy will require the purchase of the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server as well as several additional services such as mobile intelligence and cloud services. Also, there will be an annual service contract required to maintain the system. To support the implementation of MicroStrategy, there would be a need to hire contract employees to set up, test, and create reporting structures. It is anticipated that from initial purchase to implementation would be approximately four months. There would also be a need to maintain the contract employees for an additional two months for support, debugging, and continued report creation. After this six month period, two employees will be required to maintain the system. The goal would be to hire from the contract group as they will have the most experience

with the systems. Therefore there would be the added costs of support and multiple license permits. In addition, other financial investments may include an additional core and an additional server in order to allow reasonable departmental server configuration. Conclusion Power View is definitely not the first tool of its type to arrive on the market; however Microsoft has made great gains in ensuring reports are more interactive, enjoyable and easy to develop. Power View represents a change in the mind-set of what reporting means. Now, reporting no longer has to be a function carried out by the IT Department, which often results in a dry, static, and limited view of the data. Reporting can now be about business users having fun while interacting with the data, and learning more about their business at the same time. On the other hand, many organizations typically choose MicroStrategy for its ease-ofuse, sophisticated analytics, and superior data and user scalability. This tool also holds that it allows improved personalization of customer needs. This type of analysis can be invaluable to any organization in improving their financial standing in the market. MicroStrategy claims to provide above average integrated reporting, analysis, and monitoring software compared to that of their competitors and that this ability allows organizations to analyze data that may be stored across their enterprise or in a Cloud setting. This process assists with the ability to make better business decisions. Although, there have been some identified difficulties in supporting certain dashboards in flash view; this could limit share ability of data amongst the organization Microsoft continues to hold that Power View enables users to visually interact with data and drill-down into all charts. It also boasts a dashboard similar to its competitors. However, some argue that with its multiple risks, Power View simply cannot compete on the mass market with its competitors. In short, Power View can provide better business insights and collaboration for casual and experienced users alike. Power View also allows a user to configure reports that connect to Microsoft Excels Power Pivot or SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). This would benefit the company the already interfaces with SQL. In another view, MicroStrategy is a well-established BI visualization and reporting system that has been utilized by many successful organizations over the years. MicroStrategy offers BI in a complete sense that prides itself on the inclusion of customer data trends. Comparison Evaluation The following tool was utilized to determine which BI tool would best meet the expectations of the organization. As presented, each BI tool offers a significant amount of value in each feature. However, Power View falls just ahead of MicroStrategy in the organizational requirements for reporting, visualization, workflow, system requirements, and cost effectiveness.

BI Evaluation Tool
(Evaluated on scale of 1-10 on expectations (1=does not meet/10=meets)

Features Reporting Visualization Analysis Workflow Data Integration Data Support Systems Req. Cost Effective

Power View MicroStrategy

9 10 8 10 8 8 10 10 9 8 10 8 9 8 7 7

Final Recommendation After careful consideration of both BI tools (Power View and MicroStrategy), this review team has determined that Power View would be the best fit for this organization. Though there are some risks associated with Power View, the simplicity of this product will most certainly improve upon the reporting and visualization of data for this organization. Power View is a new innovative tool that will allow the creation of visual and interactive reports that work well with current organizational needs. Even though MicroStrategy is a well established company that has been providing excellent reporting and visualization tools for years, Power View offers a fresh new look on BI and will fit well with this organizations already established use of SQL server. MicroStrategy was also found to have a large scope with a number of unneeded components with added expense. It has been determined that Power View will be the most cost effective tool to implement under the required conditions of this review team.

References Chessman, T. (2012). Introducing Microsoft Power View: an easy-to-use BI tool that helps make sense of data. Retrieved from http://www.sqlmag.com/content1/topic/introducing-microsoft-power-view142663/catpath/sql-server/page/2 Conclusions. Final evaluation of Microstrategy 9. (2011, March 26). Retrieved July 17, 2012, from Dataprix: http://www.dataprix.net/en/blogs/respinosamilla/conclusions-finalevaluation-microstrategy-9 Microsoft SQL Server. (n.d.) Customer solution case study: Fast-growing bank gains customers and maximizes profits with Microsoft BI tools. Retrieved from http://www.valoremconsulting.com/Repository/casestudies/Documents/GreatWesternBank_SQLServer2012_BI_Case-Study.pdf Microsoft SQL Server (2012). Power View SSRS. Retrieved from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh213579.aspx Microstrategy's Pluses and Minuses. (2009, May 17). Retrieved July 17, 2012, from Seeking Alpha: http://seekingalpha.com/article/138021-microstrategy-s-pluses-and-minuses MicroStrategy. (2012). Retrieved July 16, 2012, from http://www.microstrategy.com/ Raju, S. (2012). Microsoft to Launch Mobile CRM Apps for Better Business Experience. Tools Journal, online. Retrieved from www.toolsjournal.com