Business Intelligence Challenge – Understanding Requirements, System Object Analysis

In the earlier discussion we had looked at understanding BI requirements through User Object Analysis, now let us look at another aspect.

The uniqueness in building BI systems when compared to other systems is that BI systems are built over the data collected by transaction (source) systems for effective data analysis. In principle a BI system should enable any kind of analysis on the data from source(s), but in many cases we pull only required elements initially to the data warehouse based on predefined analysis and get the BI system up. The requirements for a BI system is to define the scope in terms of what business processes, its scenarios and data that are of immediate need and get them available for analysis.

Even though many system owners or functional experts provide the details of the transaction system, there are still many data elements and relationship that are not reachable through the inputs from the business. We must have experienced new scenarios pointed out by the business like ‘this data element should not be updated’, ‘we need the value to be populated based on a certain flag’, such things emerge during the testing phase or in the production, such surprises occur not because that the requirements keep changing but due to lack of understanding of the clear scenarios based on the data present in the source system.

The means of understanding the business process and the system functions of a source system by looking at its data elements and their values is called ‘System Object Analysis’.

Following are the steps in ‘System Object Analysis’
1. Collect all tables from the source system, physical structure metadata like table name, column name, data type etc
2. Define the descriptions in terms of kind of data each of these tables store
3. Group the tables based on the functions through description understanding or through naming conventions present among the tables.Certain tables or groups can get eliminated here by interaction with the users. Also a table can belong to multiple groups
4. Reverse engineering the underlying data model would be useful as well
5. Perform data profiling for each of tables
6. Understand the domain values, their significance in terms when such value can occur and the relationship between tables
7. Determine the different scenarios on how the data has arrived into this table
8. Determine the fact, dimension and the attributes of dimensions within each functional area/group
9. Now with the clear details on each group and the facts-dimensions that they contribute, prepare certain questions that a business can get answered within and across the functional area (groups). Validate the questions and possibly collect more questions from Business.
10. Present to the business on what can be done on the system, prioritize and prepare the implementation plan

Based on the analysis of the tables, the Group or Functional defined initially can undergo changes in terms of the table list within a group or even a new group can come up. During the above steps regular interaction with the business users happens and the requirements of the BI system gets defined.

Benefits of System Object Analysis

Ensures complete understanding of the process by which data gets modified in the source system enabling to deliver more than what the business needs
Helps group, prioritize requirements and build case for the dependency and prepare roll out plan
Means to trigger the requirements definition from user through an interactive process, gets us raise many questions to the business about their system and process

Many a times the requirement defined by the business is to build an ad-hoc query environment for a transaction system, so System Object Analysis which enables the users navigate the requirements through the inputs from the technical team becomes almost mandatory for building an effective BI system.

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Introduction of External Business Component (EBC)

In almost all the implementation of Siebel Application we come across the requirement as – “Bring the data from the external source and display” well for that in Siebel the solution is External Business Component (EBC) and Virtual Business Component (VBC). In this Blog the content is specific to EBC, so let me give the defination of EBC first then the process of creating it –

Defination:

EBC is a method used when there is a need to display data which is external to siebel. The external schema is imported into siebel tables using a wizard. Once the exteranal schema is imported, to display this data in an applet, the configuartion is going to be the ame as creating a BC, an Applet,a View etc.

Steps of Creating:

1. get the DDL file for your external table.
here is how a sample ddl file will look like:

CREATE TABLE TPMS.EBC_VEC
(
demo1 VARCHAR2(20),
demo2 VARCHAR2(20),
demo3 NUMBER(10)
)

2. Use siebel object creation wizard to create this table.
File –> New Object –> External Table Schema Import

3. The wizard will ask for following inputs:

i. Select Project this table will be part of from the list -
ii. Select the database where external table resides – Enter the database, for this example it is Oracle Server Enterprise Edition
iii. Specify full path of the file where table definition resides -
iv. Specify a 3 digit batch code for this import – eg 001
v. Click on Next and then click on Finish

4. This will create your External table. with a name like EX_001_0000001. The names of External tables begin with “EX_” the next 3 characters are batch codes and the rest is just a serial number.

* The Type field will be “External” for this table.
* You will also have to map one of the table columns to the Siebel’s Id field. to do this: go to the desired table column and in the “System Field Mapping” column select “Id”

5. Changes to be made in cfg file now follow the below steps

• create an entry for a new datasource under [DataSources] section

TPMS = TPMS

• add a new section [TPMS] to describe the datasource params:

[TPMS]
Docked = TRUE
ConnectString = VECDEV
TableOwner = TPMS_INT
DLL = abc.dll
SqlStyle = OracleCBO
DSUserName = vecdev
DSPassword = vecdev

• Now that you have defined the Datasource in cfg file, go back to siebel tools and add the datasource to your external table. Go to your external table, and go to the Data Source and add a new record:
  Name = TPMS
• External table is now ready for use in a EBC.

Use siebel object wizard to create a BC based on this table. Once the BC is created, change the Data Source property of the BC to “TPMS” .You are now ready to use this BC in a applet/view.

In the above process the description is about an external data source called TPMS and we are fetching the  data from TPMS to Siebel.

But what if we come across a bit more complex requirement … suppose the data is in siebel but it should not be modified from the front end or from the back end (unless and untill one has right to do so) just like an external data source schema. Or let me put it as can we make EBC on the same database we are working i.e. Siebel Database???

The answer and solution is the same Yes we can create an EBC based on the same database but for that we need to create a different DSN and then follow the steps given above.

Please feel free to put comments/questions/ideas

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To Build or Buy? – The Answer is ROI

For Business Intelligence project managers, sponsors and decision makers, things are getting lot more interesting (and complicated) with the advent of packaged BI Applications. Packaged BI is not new but this domain has been getting a big push in recent years from all the major enterprise application vendors.

The logic behind Packaged BI looks sound and bullet-proof. It goes like this – The enterprise applications vendors understand the business aspects very well and have handled complexity of a high order. The collective experience over many years have been distilled into creating specific BI solutions (Financials, Supply Chain, Operations, Sales etc.) and these come packaged with data models, pre-built ETL jobs, standardized reports and high-end predictive analytics. For an example, take a look at this blog describing the packaged BI Applications from Oracle.

So what’s the problem – Why can’t everybody buy packaged BI applications and live happily ever after?

It appears that the choice is not so simple. Packaged BI has certain drawbacks some of which are outlined below:

Packaged BI imposes a certain way of capturing business entities and metrics (euphemistically termed best practices), which might go against an organization’s way of doing things.
The pre-packaged data integration jobs (ETL) stays relevant only for a plain-vanilla implementation of enterprise apps.
Customization done to transaction systems would involve customization to pre-packaged ETL jobs and reports that involves considerable effort and is error-prone.
Packaged BI apps come with embedded ETL and Reporting tools that might be different from the already chosen enterprise standard tools.
From my own experience, I have seen that the packaged BI comes with so many entities and attributes for each domain that it appears “bloated” for companies taking a first step into performing analytics for that particular domain.

Ultimately, the current situation is such that, BI decision makers are grappling with the question of “Build or Buy” – Should I build the BI application from scratch or buy one of those packaged applications? One way to overcome this problem is to build a strong ROI (Return on Investment) framework for BI initiatives in your organization. ROI is computed by dividing the Net Present Value of cash flows over a time horizon by the initial investment. The details of ROI computation and Hexaware’s proprietary tool for financial assessments in BI will be the discussed in subsequent blogs. For now, let’s assume that you have computed the ROI for a Build solution and also for a Packaged BI solution. Once this is done, the choice becomes a little clear – If the ROI for Packaged BI solution is better than expected and the organization can manage the typical pains of implementing a packaged solution, then consider the “Buy” option, else look for a “Build” option.

Now here comes the little twist In my experience, I have seen customers looking at a shorter time-horizon where the ROI of a build solution is typically higher and then move onto a buy solution with a longer time-frame in mind. The extra advantage of this approach is that the organization understands its analytical needs much better before implementing a Packaged BI solution. So it is strictly not a “Build vs Buy” question but can also be a “Build and Buy” scenario.

Thanks for reading. Please do share your thoughts.

End Point in the Business Intelligence Value Chain

An interesting aspect of Business Intelligence is the fact that there
are many end-points possible in a BI Value Chain. Let me explain
a bit here and build a case for creating “Reference Architectures”
in the BI domain.

In my view, there are typically 5 different configurations for the
BI Value Chain that leads to 5 possible end-points. They are:

End Point 1: Reporting and Ad-hoc Analysis

This is the most common type of enterprise BI Landscape.
The objective here is to provide business users with standardized
reports and ad-hoc analysis capabilities to analyze the business.
With that objective in mind, data warehouses and/or data
marts are created as data repositories and semantic layers
for analysis flexibility.

End Point 2: Data Hub or Master Data Repository

This is a scenario where the objective is to consolidate data
and create master data repositories. The consumption of this
master data is typically left to individual consumers to figure
it out for themselves. The complexity in this type of configuration
is more in terms of data quality and governance mechanisms
around the data hub, as the business value increases only if more
systems utilize the data hub.

End Point 3: Source Systems

This configuration indicates a fairly mature landscape where the
feedback loop from the analytical systems to the operational
ones is in place. The concept of Operational BI is built on this
foundation where the data from transaction systems go
through the analytical layers, gets enriched and reaches
its place of origination with the intent of helping business
make better informed transactional decisions.

End Point 4: Data Mining models

This is a configuration that helps organizations
compete on analytics. Integrated, subject oriented, cleansed data
that is taken out of data warehouses / marts are fed into
data mining models in a seamless fashion. The results obtained
from the data mining exercise are used to optimize business
decisions.

End Point 5: Simulations

Here is a configuration that I haven’t seen in practice but have
a strong feeling would be the future of BI. I have some
experience in working with Simulation tools (Powersim,
Promodel to name a few) where the idea is to create a model
of the business with appropriate leads, lags, dependencies
etc. The starting criteria (set of initial parameters) would
typically be fed by a business analyst and the output of
the model would indicate the state of business (or specific
business area being modeled) after a period of time. Given
this context, I think it would be more powerful to have
the simulation models being fed with data from analytical
systems in an automated fashion. Presuming that the simulation
models are built correctly by experts in that particular area,
the output tends to be a better illustration of the future
state of the business than compared to “gut feel” extrapolation.

Outlined above are the 5 different configurations of BI systems.
The logical next step from the technology standpoint is
to publish reference architectures for each of these configurations.
This would help organizations get an idea of the components
involved once they decide on a particular configuration
for their business.

Reference Architectures and Simulations in BI environments
are areas that will be explored more in the subsequent posts.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day!

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Business Intelligence Challenge – Understanding Requirements, User Object Analysis

Let us start with the Law of (BI) Requirements“Requirements can not be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another”. The thought is that in all customer environments the requirements for a BI system are always available in some form or the other. We need to find the ‘base object form’ of the requirement and build upon it for further improvement.

In general data in every transaction system gets analyzed and reported in one way or the other. The BI system is built only to improve that process of analysis to a much easier and sophisticated way. Typical requirements ‘understanding’ has been through the means of Questionnaires, Interviews and Joint Discussions, these kinds of requirements gathering could miss out understanding certain things that the user needs because we might not ask the right questions or the user is not in a good mood during the discussion or the user might just provide details on what he can remember at that point of time. When we are talking about users in thousands and located across globe it becomes much bigger challenge.

The solution to cover all aspects of requirements understanding from a user perspective is by analysis of the objects that a user ‘creates or uses’ in his day today activities, we can call this ‘User Object Analysis’.

A ‘User Object’ is any artifact that a user is creating as part of his data preparation, analysis and reporting, this object could be an Excel, PowerPoint slide, Access database, a Word Document, a notepad or an e-mail.

Following are the steps in ‘User Object Analysis’

• Collect all the ‘Objects’ from all users, the objects collected can go across years, but the key is to collect all of them which the user feels as relevant and applicable
• Convert all of the content in each of the ‘User object’ into a relational structure, the conversion process would involve mapping the data in the Objects to its metadata like the business names/elements, tables-columns, username, depart etc
• Analysis of this collected metadata gives a wider view, enables questioning, makes us understand the needs of the users and enables us to define improvements or provide another perspective to the existing ones
• Prepare and submit the ‘User Object Analysis’ report highlighting the needs of each user (or user clusters) to get user confirmation

Benefits of User Object Analysis

• An effective means to understand the needs of a user based on what he does as a daily routine
• An easy way for the user as he has to just read thru final report for approval and need not work in providing inputs through questionnaire or discussions
• Easily managed for users in large numbers or multiple locations
• A good base for us to define improvements for the existing process of analysis
• Platform to consolidate the needs across multiple users and carve out the user clusters who perform same kind of analysis
• Enables us to think through the business process and improves business understanding

Next time let us discuss about another perspective to Requirements Understanding called ‘System Object Analysis’.

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