Adding Intelligence To Information

In today's world of intense com-

petition, information is the

key to success and for survival. Data warehousing, data mining, ERP, supply chain management and customer relationship management,... all these tools lead to only one goal-empowerment through information. However, the large-scale automation that has been taking place since the last two years, while there is no dearth of information, what is lacking is a vision that emerges from the information. In fact, preventing this vision is an overcrowding of information: there is plenty of information but no way of making the best use of it.

Where human intelligence is bogged down, step in business intelligence tools. A business intelligence (BI) tool is an umbrella tool for a set of tools and applications that allow corporate decision makers to gather, organize, distribute and act on critical business information. From a manage-ment's point of view, BI is about taking on the positive, proactive management of the business. Anandan G, Business Manager-Cognos, Enterprise Solutions Division, IIS Infotech, says, "If there are no business intelligence tools available, one should still be able to anticipate each and every angle of a problem.

But this never happens because we all know that decision making is a highly intuitive process. Most of the time, it is guesswork. But if the whole guesstimate can be turned into a reality, it would make the decision all the more effective. There are many relationships that exist between the various data and one would arrive at all of them with the help of business intelligence tools."

The real issue is not about producing information but how to use it to make the best strategy decisions.

In India, the market for BI tools is still in its initial stages. Companies, which had implemented systems like ERP or data warehouses, find that they have vast data and information but no guide map to help them use it to make strategic decisions.

These companies are now going in for BI tools to take advantage of the data they have generated. For instance, Bausch & Lomb, which is in the process of implementing Cognos's 'Powerplay' and 'Administer', is investing about Rs7 lakh on BI tools. Satya Dev Adurthi, Manager IM&T, says, "The tools help us in making decisions faster.

Earlier, somebody would ask the business planning and administrative department, which exists in the company only to generate reports for decision-making processes, to make a report on a particular subject. They would make a report but then one would think of a third angle and the whole process would start all over again. It's much easier with BI tools. Right now we are implementing these tools at our corporate office only but later we plan to implement them at our offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and

Bangalore.

And as references increase, more and more companies which were moving towards ERP or data warehousing would insist on BI tools from the very first day.

However, the best use of these tools is when the IT deployment has reached a certain level of maturity in an organization. Says Anandan, "Although these tools are very simple to use, they are most effective when the data is already in place. As of now, web-based solutions are at an advantageous position because organizations are moving toward ecommerce and intranet."

However, a company doesn't have to implement ERP or data warehousing to start using BI tools since they even work on normal applications.

BI tools are normally confused with data mining because both serve similar functions. However, there are some marked differences. Explains Vivek Marla, Director, Applications Business, Oracle Software India Ltd, "Data mining is typically statistical analysis where users make a request to the system like, 'Which products have grown similar to the growth pattern of product Y?' They can use it for complex statistical analyses like clustering factor analysis, identifying purchasing similarities across customers for segmentation, etc.

BI is a wider umbrella covering key performance indicator (KPI) and its trends, warnings when KPIs go beyond user defined limits, ad hoc querying like 'which are the top 10 customers for product X in the region Y?' Apart from that, BI tools also serve as modeling tools to aid in forecasting, business planning, data mining and also to prepare common reports like balance sheets."

There are various BI tools available in the market today. Cognos has four products in its suite-Powerplay, Scenario, Impromptu and 4Thought. While Impromptu is a simple query tool, PowerPlay is an enterprise wide analytical tool.

It has a web-based version also. Scenario is a datamining tool. Scenario reveals the relation between various sorts of data that is available. Oracle also has a whole set of tools. Oracle Alert allows users to specify situations when they want to be warned with supporting data to help them analyze the problem. Oracle Discoverer is another tool for the middle managers, which can be used for ad hoc querying, inventory analysis, cost analysis, and sales analysis. Says Marla, "Oracle also has a data mining tool called Darwin, which we are in the process of integrating with the other tools." Microsoft is also planning to come out with its own BI tool suite.

The market is just beginning to mushroom and it is difficult to estimate its size. Adds Anandan, "Though it is difficult to decide the size of the market in India, I think it won't be more than Rs8 crore to Rs10 crore. However, the thing to notice is that it has grown about four times in the last two to three years." Marla agrees, "It is largely an untapped market but the fact is that every company needs this tool in different flavors for different levels of hierarchy."

To tap this emerging market, many companies have started bundling BI tools with their ERP packages. For instance, PeopleSoft bundles Cognos with its solution. And, this may become a common feature not only across the ERP segment but also in the data warehousing segment.

GAGANDEEP

KAUR,

Cyber News Service.