Many companies today continue to have trouble making business decisions on the data stored in their operational systems (ERP, CRM, Legacy, etc.) or in PC data sources (MS Excel or Access). This is particularly difficult for IBM® eServer iSeries (AS/400®) shops, as most of the business intelligence tools on the market run on different platforms. Reporting is generally performed through custom programming, spreadsheet manipulation or simple querying tools. Even with the basic reporting you get with these tools, reports can generate other questions which require further detail. Another issue often occurs when users develop their own "shadow IT" solutions, which can generate inconsistent information as different departments report different results based on their own interpretation of calculations such as net sales. This is where having an Enterprise Data Warehouse and On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) Data Marts can help solve some of these problems.

More companies today use the Hyperion Analytic Services (Essbase) OLAP database and Hyperion Analyzer as the basis for their business intelligence solution. SPSS ShowCase has taken this leading analytical solution and integrated it into the IBM® eServer iSeries (AS/400®) environment. It also has integrated a variety of products that together comprise a total business intelligence solution for AS/400® shops. This includes the following products:

• Showcase® Essbase™
• Showcase® Analyzer™
• Showcase® Warehouse Builder™
• Showcase® Enterprise Integration Server™
• Showcase® Planning
• Showcase® Enterprise Reporting™
• Showcase® Query™
• Showcase® Report Writer™

The Analytic Vision team has been implementing successful SPSS Showcase enterprise business intelligence solutions since 1997. We not only can help you utilize the advanced features of these products, but we also have advanced AS/400 knowledge that helps us know the best data cleansing and automation techniques to keep your projects on track, and we have the dimensional modeling skills to develop an enterprise data warehouse that will easily grow and change with your business.

SPSS also offers additional cross-platform solutions in the areas of data mining and web analytics. The key product offerings in this area are:

• OLAP Hub™
• Clementine™
• NetGenisis Web Analytics

Showcase® Essbase™
One of the key areas of our services and expertise revolves around the design, development and automation of Essbase analytical applications. Essbase is a multidimensional (MOLAP) development environment that provides rich functionality, including more than 250 calculation functions, attributes, write-back, procedural logic, and custom-defined functions and macros.

It is our experience that many companies who already have Essbase have implemented a solution that requires manual steps such as loading data from Excel and manually keying in new accounts as they are set up in the general ledger. This is a tedious process that we help companies eliminate by fully automating the extraction and loading of operational data into Essbase data marts. Analytic Vision consultants have the skills required to build more advanced Essbase analytical applications than the traditional consulting firms. Areas of expertise include;

• Advanced formulas and calculations
     • Conditional and cross-dimensional formulas
     • Dynamic formula changes
     • Allocations
• Complex outline design and development
     • Multiple calendar types (retail, annual, fiscal, etc.)
     • Rules-based automation for primary and alternate hierarchies
     • Alias, Alias Combinations and Alias Table automation
     • View/Report hierarchies to reduce report maintenance (Current Month, Current Week, Current YTD)
     • Attributes Dimensions
• Complete automation of the refresh processes
     • Parameter-driven update process
     • Support for full and incremental data loads
     • Substitution Variable Automation
     • Techniques for maximum database uptime
     • Parallel ETL strategies to reduce refresh time
• Advanced Partitioning
     • Composite data marts support multiple subject areas
     • Use for security and improved performance
• Performance Tuning
     • Reductions in data load and calculation times
     • Reduce database size
     • Improve end user retrieval performance

Our Rapid Implementation Methodology allows us to keep our projects focused on your deliverables so that they are on task within budget and on time. Our implementation plans include design and development reviews throughout all phases of the project to ensure that we meet your objectives. We also work to assist you in building your internal capabilities with knowledge transfer between our consultants and your IT staff.

Showcase® Analyzer™
At Analytic Vision we understand that the complete automation of the back-end database refresh processes is only part of the overall development equation. It is important to match the capabilities of the user with how they interact with the data. One method for presenting analytical reports and providing a means for discovery is with Showcase Analyzer. Analyzer allows for the design, development and presentation of analytical reports with Essbase data using traditional Internet browser technologies. Developing an Analyzer front-end application is like developing an intranet website for your users. It is important to understand the overall design of the application, look and feel of the analytical pages, corporate standards, and workflow. Analytic Vision consultants understand how to work with all facets of Analyzer from installation, design, development, deployment, and end-user training of the new application. We also understand how to performance-tune Analyzer reports for optimum performance.

Essbase Spreadsheet Services
One application that we all have readily installed on our PCs is the spreadsheet. For most of us it is Microsoft Excel. Companies that have Essbase and Analyzer installed still use Excel for the most complex analytical requirements. Essbase comes with an Excel Add-in product that enables OLAP functionality within Excel. One of the areas where most Essbase add-in users fear to venture is in the automation and programming of spreadsheets. This includes Visual Basic coding required to access the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provided by Essbase to access and automate the features provided by the add-ins. At Analytic Vision we understand how to program all of the background processes required to fully automate your spreadsheet and provide a user-friendly front-end to your Excel applications. Our team members are experts in the use of Microsoft Excel, Visual Basic and Showcase Essbase.

Third-Party Presentation Tools for Essbase
Analytical Front-end Presentation tools today for Essbase in most companies are limited to Analyzer or the Essbase Excel Add-in. For most companies these tools will completely meet their internal reporting requirements. This changes when your business requirements dictate that analytical data must be provided within web pages alongside of non-analytical content. This could include intranet, extranet, or portal web applications that provide access to analytical data for your employees, customers, vendors, or as part of a worldwide organization. Analytic Vision, as a full service provider, understands that sometimes software vendors cannot provide the total solution, but has other partners who can provide that functionality. As such we partner with companies such as Alphablox to provide premium custom-developed front-end web applications. For more information on our Alphablox or other front-end services visit the Front-End Presentation Services page.

Showcase® Warehouse Builder™
The most complex area of any data warehousing solution is the extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) of source data into the data warehouse and the Essbase data marts. To assist in the development and automation of this critical area, Showcase provides the Warehouse Builder product. Warehouse Builder is a user-friendly SQL-based tool that can automate your ETL processes from the following sources:

• IBM® DB2® for the iSeries and other DB2 databases
• Microsoft® SQL Server™
• Oracle® on either AIX™ or Windows NT®
• Lotus® Domino® on the iSeries
• Microsoft Excel™ and Access™

Warehouse Builder allows you to schedule your ETL jobs on the AS/400, and it offers an easy to use interface with Essbase that allows your team to link your ETL processes directly to the loading of your Essbase databases without the use of ESSCMD or MAXL scripts. If your Essbase process requires the use of ESSCMD or MAXL scripts for some advanced functionality, such as automating the use of Essbase partitions, Analytic Vision can assist with this. Analytic Vision understands the advanced capabilities of SQL, and can help your team better utilize the Warehouse Builder tool in order to eliminate or reduce custom programming.

Essbase Integration Services™
Many Essbase clients today develop custom application programs necessary to perform formatting of operational data and other automation activities required for the refresh of an Essbase multidimensional database. Showcase now offers Essbase Integration Services (EIS) to provide an easy-to-use graphical environment to integrate data or metadata from ERP and CRM applications, relational databases, data warehouses, and legacy transactional systems as well as flat files, spreadsheets, XML documents and web logs. This alternative to Warehouse Builder offers the key benefit of linking your Essbase databases to the supporting relational star-schema data warehouse tables, which provides the ability to drill-through from Essbase cubes to the supporting relational data, whether you are using Analyzer, the Excel Add-in, or a third-party front-end tool. This allows the users the ability to drill from summary GL account balances into the supporting journal entry detail, or from weekly sales into the supporting invoice detail.

Analytic Vision works to fully automate the refresh of the Essbase database application (and the supporting data warehouse) using a combination of custom programming, Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) tools, and Essbase Integration Services. Our automation techniques allow us to develop a parameter/table-driven process that can be executed on a scheduled basis or run on demand utilizing the software you have today.

Showcase Planning
Once companies have implemented a financial data mart with the Showcase suite, a typical next step is to utilize Essbase to assist in the budget process. While Analytic Vision can help your team develop a custom-built solution to fit all of your needs, SPSS offers a user friendly pre-built web-based budgeting and planning solution called Showcase Planning that facilitates collaborative, integrated, event-based planning processes throughout your company for a wide range of financial and operational needs. This product eliminates the need for the complex spreadsheet budget models that so many companies develop.

Analytic Vision is fully trained and experienced in the installation and configuration of Showcase Planning. Our experience with this pre-built planning application will facilitate your implementation and help you focus toward delivering the required budgeting and planning deliverables to your end users.

Showcase® Enterprise Reporting™
Even if you have an OLAP solution, there’s typically still a need for distributing reports throughout the organization. The Showcase Enterprise Reporting solution allows you to schedule and distribute information over your intranet. This provides a central repository of reports, which can be in a variety of formats (PDF, HTML, or Excel), and can be scheduled or run dynamically with prompts over the web. Your users require no software, just appropriate authority to the desired reports. Here is a detailed list of what Enterprise Reporting offers:

• Automate the scheduling and distribution of routine reports and queries generated with either Showcase Report Writer™ or Showcase Query™
• Establish a central, searchable repository for reports and other critical information
• Structure "folders" within this repository to make it easier for business users to locate information
• Notify individuals or groups by e-mail automatically when certain types of reports or other content are updated
• Enable report developers to link several reports on a single page, without requiring them to do programming
• Provide for the creation of personal home pages containing links to frequently needed reports, documents, and even other applications
• Share query and report definitions for both scheduled and dynamic execution
• Publish report templates for modification by others through a web browser
• Extend to select business users the responsibility for keeping repository information current

Analytic Vision has assisted many clients with their strategy and implementation of a successful Enterprise Reporting solution. Between report standards, folder organization, security plans, and advanced tool expertise, there are a variety of areas in which Analytic Vision can help your team quickly implement a cost-effective strategy for distributing your reporting needs.

Clementine™
SPSS is well-known for its leading data-mining product, Clementine. While OLAP products enable users to select subsets of data to do in-depth analysis, the responsibility of spotting trends is on the user. With data mining, however, the computer takes a more active role. The user tells the computer the business goal and the given data factors to consider, and the computer uses advanced techniques to quickly find relationships and trends within these data factors. Data Mining allows a business to analyze large volumes of data based on statistical algorithms. This iterative analysis can uncover underlying patterns and trends within the data set to help in business uses such as decision support, prediction, forecasts, and estimation.

While data mining-tools discover relationships within the data, it is necessary for people with business insight to interpret these patterns and evaluate the results. Often, the people with this required business expertise are not the same people who have the complex statistical understanding. Clementine is a data-mining package that enables the business analyst to perform sophisticated data mining without needing the technical knowledge and experience. Helping to bridge the communication gap between the business analyst and the technical specialist, Clementine enables more informed business decisions based on the newly discovered relationships between data factors.

While Clementine is a powerful tool, it takes some initial training and understanding to best utilize its capabilities. Analytic Vision not only understands the technical use of the product, but has the business experience to help assess areas of the business where data mining is most likely to identify helpful information.

NetGenisis Web Analytics
SPSS also provides a leading web site analysis package to help you understand how customers are utilizing your web site, which helps you quickly improve your web site to best fit your target audience. The web statistics most companies are using to measure online success only provide their decision makers with simple counts, such as "number of hits." While an important foundation, these counts do little to help companies effectively monitor and improve online business. NetGenisis provides the basis for capturing a variety of sophisticated web metrics that allow you to better understand your site’s strengths and weaknesses.

Analytic Vision has the technical experience to help you quickly implement a NetGenisis solution, and the analytical skills to interpret the results and make recommendations on how to adapt your web site design to better fit your audience.

OLAP Hub™
More and more companies are testing the capabilities of the Microsoft business intelligences solutions within the SQL Server database. Specifically companies are discovering how the Analysis Services OLAP database performs. Analytic Vision has done extensive work in this environment, and we have seen excellent performance with this tool. However, Microsoft only provides an Excel pivot table interface at this time for retrieving and interacting with this data. While this is a nice, inexpensive solution, it’s hardly the data presentation tool that you want to roll out to your core end users. For this a company should want a web-based OLAP front-end tool. To fit this need SPSS offers OLAP Hub. This product provides an easy to navigate OLAP tool that requires no client software, and provides powerful reporting and analytical solutions to your end users. This tool includes the following:

• Report Depot, a secure environment for saving, viewing and distributing OLAP Hub reports and other documents
• Relational Router, enabling users to move quickly and easily via a web browser between information in a multidimensional cube and the underlying relational data
• OLAP Hub Scheduler, for scheduling the production of OLAP Hub reports as either HTML or Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files

Although Analytic Vision is well known for our Essbase expertise, we are also one of the few consulting companies who also offer expertise with the Microsoft business intelligence solution of Analysis Services™. We can help you utilize the SQL Server set of business intelligence tools to implement an enterprise data warehouse solution, and then assist you with the delivery of this information to your end users with OLAP Hub.