The QlikView Advantage

Simple and Flexible Business Intelligence for the end-user

Manish Mishra

Executive Director Technology Palaash

Overview
Business Intelligence (BI) software supports two primary functions as part of broader performance management issues faced by organizations BI is focused first on information deli!ery and second on supporting the decision ma"ing though ad-hoc #uery$ analysis and data modeling BI tools for deli!ering reports to decision ma"ers ha!e been widely a!ailable for decades and are becoming functionally commoditized %eli!ery of reports in static form or with !isual cues for #uic"ly understanding performance metrics (or dashboards) is a relati!ely clear-cut tas" for the I& department 'ro!iding an ad-hoc #uery and analysis en!ironment with the flexibility and simplicity demanded by end users$ along with reports and dashboards on the same platform$ howe!er still remains a challenge &oday$ only ()* of management-le!el decision ma"ers are confident that the ma+ority of reports and dashboards de!eloped in their organization deli!er rele!ant data to the right people at the right time In deli!ering data to end users the I& department must anticipate the #ueries that would li"ely be conducted and de!elop data models for data warehouses and related online analytical processing (,-.') cubes accordingly %ata !isualization$ interacti!ity$ and user access administration options further compound the complexity of deli!ering rele!ant and reliable data to the end users 'alaash addresses the need for self-ser!ice #uery$ reporting$ and ad-hoc analytics of organization through /li"0iew /li"0iew1s uni#ue approach to #uery and reporting allows business users to conduct complete ad-hoc analysis and create their own dashboards without the limitation of prebuilt cube data models /li"0iew enables true free-format analysis through a highly interacti!e and !isual user interface on compressed data For I& departments$ /li"0iew pro!ides a self-ser!ice BI solution that frees the de!elopers to manage such administrati!e tas"s as data integration and user access rights management rather than address the constant re#uests from indi!idual BI users &he end-user has increased !isibility into more accurate data in a flexible interface$ whether offline or online$ that supports both decision ma"ing and information deli!ery re#uirements 'alaash1s data modeling and implementation expertise coupled with the new technology paradigm presented by /li"0iew greatly simplifies analysis and reporting$ ma"ing it easier for end users and faster for I& to deploy

Benefiting from QlikView

,rganizations of all sizes around the world ha!e had positi!e experience using /li"0iew Most scenarios in!ol!ed organizations that had inade#uate or nonexistent #uery$ analysis$ and reporting tools and needed to impro!e decision ma"ing capabilities of end users inside and outside the organization Benefits include the following2
Palaash is a registered trade name of Magnus eDesign Systems Pvt. Limited

Speed and ease of implementation and development Implementation of /li"0iew can occur rapidly &he software can be setup in hours /li"0iew production implementation times (including all steps$ from proof of concept to final deployment and training) ranged from 34 days to three months In many cases end users themsel!es ha!e built analytic applications in less than a wee"1s time once they had access to the data model Ease of use and increased support of end-user ad-hoc analysis 5nd users need a simple but powerful way to na!igate through organizational data ,ne of the reasons spreadsheets ha!e remained popular BI tool is their ease of use and flexibility that allows the end user to create his own analytic application without waiting for his re#uests to be implemented by I& department /li"0iew pro!ides intuiti!e and flexible interacti!e interface with added capability to handle large data !olumes that are beyond current spreadsheets capabilities &he result is reduced maintenance costs and impro!ed time to decision and end-user satisfaction &his also drastically reduces the cost of creating$ maintaining and deli!ering reports Eliminating the need to develop OLA cu!es and pre-aggregation of data &his is the single biggest ad!antage of paradigm of in-memory analytics o!er legacy analytics application de!elopment .lthough it is possible to write ad-hoc reports that #uery the detailed le!el of data warehouse it is rarely practiced because of poor #uery performance &o remedy this problem$ I& organizations typically build a data layer optimized for #uery performance &his data layer ta"es one of two forms2 de-normalized star schemas or multidimensional ,-.' cubes &he main aspect in either approach is to build specialized data structure that impro!es #uery performance by aggregating information and performing calculations in ad!ance ,rganizations ha!e in!ested huge amount of time and money to build this performance layer and this is currently the single biggest point of failure of BI initiati!es &he failures ha!e been because of following challenges2 &he re#uirement of building an aggregate layer in ad!ance diminishes the promise of selfser!ice BI 6sers must wait for their I& organizations to build the performance layer before analyzing the data In addition$ users are limited to explore only the specialized data structures if they expect to maintain good #uery performance &he aggregate layer must be re-calculated with updated data I& organizations fre#uently complain that this process can ta"e se!eral hours and$ therefore$ diminishes the freshness of the information Building and maintaining the aggregate layer ta"es a significant amount of I& resources that could be applied to more producti!e acti!ities

/li"0iew circum!ents these problems by loading detailed data into memory where calculations are performed 7on the fly8 at #uery time /li"0iew not only retrie!es data faster$ but it also performs calculations on the #uery results much faster than dis"-based approaches 9ith /li"0iew the end-user

Palaash is a registered trade name of Magnus eDesign Systems Pvt. Limited

can freely explore detailed data in an unfettered manner without the limitations of a cube or aggregate table to recei!e good performance Following diagram gi!es an o!er!iew of time re#uired for de!eloping these aggregation layers across different BI initiati!es of different sizes2
30%

25%
25%

23%

20%

16%
15%

12%
10%

11% 7%

5%
5%

0%
Less than 2 months 25 months 6 11 months 12 17 months 18 24 months 25 48 months 49 months or more

/li"0iew ta"es about one-tenth of time ta"en by traditional approaches by circum!enting the aggregation exercise altogether .nd because there is no pre-aggregation of data the end-user can create dimensions and access associated measures on the fly without rebuilding the data layer "ata #eutrality /li"0iew applications can draw data from !aried data-sources such as text files; excel datasheets$ xml files$ <%BMS systems etc &his allows the organization to be free from any proprietary data format loc" in and in!esting too hea!ily on data con!ersion tools $hat-if analysis 9hat-ifs or simulation is a powerful tool to study the impact of decisions before they are implemented In traditional BI approach pre-aggregation of data in the data layer and performance concerns se!erely limit the possibility of doing meaningful what-if analysis and forecasting /li"0iew on the fly calculation on detailed data allows for creation of what-if analysis with high domain fidelity %assive scala!ility Following testimonial gi!es a good summary of /li"0iew1s scalability2
Palaash is a registered trade name of Magnus eDesign Systems Pvt. Limited

/li"0iew enables us to analyze data !olumes up to the order of two billion records measuring () to 34
.bout @assenArztliche Bundes!ereinigung (@B0)

terabytes #uic"ly and easily > there is simply no other !endor or product with anything li"e the ability to mo!e these large amounts of data 8- 5!a ,bermeyer$ ?ead of .ccounting %epartment$@B0 Bational .ssociation of Statutory ?ealth Insurance 'hysicians or (@B0) is one of ma+or players in CermanyDs national health ser!ice 6mbrella organization for (E regional .ssociations of Statutory ?ealth 'hysicians (.S?I'S)$ which act as clearinghouses for payments by Cerman health insurance system 0oice for physiciansD interests in regulatory matters and preparer of statistical analyses of deli!ered medical ser!ices ?ead#uartered in Berlin$ Cermany

QlikView in Action

Palaash is a registered trade name of Magnus eDesign Systems Pvt. Limited

A!out QlikView
F$F:4 customers .doption in EG countries 3GH$444 users .dding (3 F new customers e!ery day

A!out alaash
'alaash is the Indian offshore arm of its 6@ based parent company 'ro+ect Bro"ers Project Brokers Started in 344) ,ffice in -ondon$ 6nited @ingdom 'referred Business 'artner for /li"0iew in financial domain Specialist in analytics and data !isualization solutions$ focusing on the financial ser!ices !ertical

Palaash ,ffshore arm of 'ro+ect Bro"ers in India ,ffice in Bangalore$ India Implementation partner and reseller for /li"0iew in India Specializing in analytics for BFSI$ Supply Ihain$ &elecom and B', !erticals

Palaash is a registered trade name of Magnus eDesign Systems Pvt. Limited

&ontact 's
Mobile2 J== EGHFE)H33F 5-Mail2 !idyut !ermaKpalaash com Mobile2 JG( GHE(4==HHG 5-Mail2 manish mishraKpalaash com Mobile2 JG( GH=)(3)F(4 5-Mail2 senthilKpalaash com www pro+ectbro"ers co u"

Vidyut Verma
I5,

Manish Mishra
5xecuti!e %irector - &echnology

S. Senthil Kumar
0' > India ,perations www palaash com

Palaash is a registered trade name of Magnus eDesign Systems Pvt. Limited