Front-End Applications

Home Up

Contents
  1. Objective
  2. Context
  3. Types of Front-Ends
  4. Reporting
  5. Ad-hoc Analysis
  6. Ad-hoc Reports
  7. Planning
  8. Delivery
  9. Microsoft
  10. 'Blue Peter' (Do-it-yourself)
  11. Excel Add-ins
  12. Third-Party Applications
  13. Recommendation
  14. Remember it is Just a Tool

Objective

 

Maximise return on D/W-OLAP investment

 

Context

 

Goal - Decision-Making - Analysis - Front-End  - OLAP - Datawarehouse - Source Data


Types of Front-Ends

  1. Reporting
  2. Ad-hoc analysis
  3. Planning
Reporting
  1. E.I.S. (Executive Information System)
  2. K.P.I.’s (Key Performance Indicators)
  3. Dynamic – connected to OLAP
  4. Disjoint – control over layout
  5. Style – narratives & charts
Ad-hoc Analysis
  1. ‘Slicing & dicing’ cubes - Views
  2. Functionality (drilling, nesting, etc)
  3. ‘lost in a sea of data’
Ad-hoc Reports
  1. Power analysts
  2. Excel-based
  3. Personal spreadsheets that can share
  4. Business critical data still in the cubes
  5. Full functionality
Planning
  1. Strategy to budgets/forecasts
  2. Variance analysis against actuals
  3. Actuals to strategy
  4. Business models (e.g. how many agents to answer the phones?)
  5. Writeback – what-if & splashing
Delivery
  1. Third-party desktop client - why introduce yet another application?
  2. Excel - the front-end that most serious analysts use
  3. Web-browser - the front-end that everyone has
Microsoft
  1. Excel PivotTables & OWC – for straightforward analysis
  2. Data Analyser – forget it
Blue Peter (i.e. Do-it-yourself)
  1. Excel (VBA/MDX)
  2. ASP (HTML/VB/MDX) – risky
  3. Development & support problems
Excel Add-ins
  1. BIXL
  2. IntelligentApps
  3. MIS Plain
  4. O2OLAP
  5. QBEX
  6. VisualOLAP
  7. XLcubed
Third-Party Applications
  1. ProClarity – no disjoint reporting
  2. Crystal Analysis – ditto
  3. PowerPlay – ditto
  4. NovaView – ditto
  5. Business Objects – has disjoint reporting but no writeback
  6. Comshare – very expensive
  7. MIS OnVision - has disjoint reporting & can writeback
Recommendation – XLcubed
  1. Reporting – disjoint, Excel & web-based
  2. Ad-hoc analysis – superb
  3. Ad-hoc reports – the best
  4. Planning – can even do graphical writeback
Remember it is Just a Tool
  1. Know what you want to create, then choose the tool
  2. Create the reports with the evaluation copies before buying
Home Up