Data Warehousing for Business Intelligence

Course 4: Business Intelligence Concepts, Tools, and Applications

Module 2 Bonus Materials

the authoritative textbook Business Intelligence and Analytics: Systems for Decision Support, 10th edition, 2015 by
Sharda, R., Delen, D., and Turban, E. See the optional text book link under course overview to purchase (US$4 for
one chapter, US$10 for all three; the regular price for students is $15 per digital chapter).

Excerpts from SHARDA, RAMESH; DELEN, DURSUN; TURBAN, EFRAIM, BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
AND ANALYTICS: SYSTEMS FOR DECISION SUPPORT, 10th Edition, © 2015. Used by permission of Pearson
Education, Inc., New York, NY. All Rights Reserved.

The nature of the report changes significantly based on whom the report is created for. Most of the research in
effective reporting is dedicated to internal reports that inform stakeholders and decision makers within the
organization. There are also external reports between businesses and the government (e.g., for tax purposes or
for regular filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission). These formal reports are mostly standardized
and periodically filed either nationally or internationally. Standard Business Reporting, which is a collection of
international programs instigated by a number of governments, aims to reduce the regulatory burden for
business by simplifying and standardizing reporting requirements. The idea is to make business the epicenter
when it comes to managing business-to-government reporting obligations. Businesses conduct their own
financial administration; the facts they record and decisions they make should drive their reporting. The
government should be able to receive and process this information without imposing undue constraints on how
businesses administer their finances.

A business report is a written document that contains information regarding business matters. Business
reporting (also called enterprise reporting) is an essential part of the larger drive toward improved managerial
decision making and organizational knowledge management. Primary characteristics of a good business report
include clarity, brevity, completeness, and correctness.

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Source: this slide is from MicroStrategy

While reports can be distributed in print form or via e-mail, they are typically accessed via a corporate intranet.
There are a wide variety of business reports, which for managerial purposes can be grouped into three major
categories:
 Standard reports: Answer the questions: What happened? When did it happen? Example: Monthly or
quarterly financial rep
-term
decisions.
 Ad hoc reports: Answer the questions: How many? How often? Where? Example: Custom reports that
describe the number of hospital patients for every diagnosis code for each day of the week. At their
best, ad hoc reports let you ask the questions and request a couple of custom reports to find the
answers.
 Query drilldown (or OLAP): Answers the questions: Where exactly is the problem? How do I find the
answers? Example: Sort and explore data about different types of cell phone users and their calling
behaviors. Query drilldown allows for a little bit of discovery. OLAP lets you manipulate the data
yourself to find out how many, what color and where.
 Metric management reports involve outcome-oriented metrics based on service level agreements
and/or key performance indicators.
 Dashboard-type reports present a range of performance indicators on one page, with both
static/predefined elements and customizable widgets and views. Balanced scorecard reports present

learning/growth perspectives.
 Dashboard-type reports present a range of performance indicators on one page, with both
static/predefined elements and customizable widgets and views. Balanced scorecard reports present
al, customer, business process, and
learning/growth perspectives. Metric management reports involve outcome-oriented metrics based
on service level agreements and/or key performance indicators. Can be used as part of business
performance management.

The cyclic process of management, involves these steps: data acquisition leads to information generation
which leads to decision making which leads to business process management. Perhaps the most critical task in
this cyclic process is the reporting (i.e., information generation) converting data from different sources into
actionable information.

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A business report is a written document that contains information regarding business matters. Business
reporting (also called enterprise reporting) is an essential part of the larger drive toward improved managerial
decision making and organizational knowledge management. The foundation of these reports is various
sources of data coming from both inside and outside the organization. Creation of these reports involves ETL
(extract, transform, and load) procedures in coordination with a data warehouse and then using one or more
reporting tools. While reports can be distributed in print form or via e-mail, they are typically accessed via a
corporate intranet. Primary characteristics of a good business report include clarity, brevity, completeness, and
correctness.

The central idea of business reporting is to tell a story. Everyone who has data to analyze has stories to
for manufacturing defects, selling a new idea in a way that
captures the imagination of your target audience, or informing colleagues about a particular customer
service improvement program. Stories bring life to data and facts. They can help you make sense and
order out of a disparate collection of facts. They make it easier to remember key points and can paint a
vivid picture of what the future can look like. Stories also create interactivity people put themselves
into stories and can relate to the situation. People will be much more engaged and receptive if
information is presented to them in a story format.

http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/reporting/components.html (accessed February 2013)

• OLTP (online transaction processing). A system that measures some aspect of the real world as events
(e.g., transactions) and records them into enterprise databases. Examples include ERP systems, POS
systems, Web servers, RFID readers, handheld inventory readers, card readers, and so forth.
• Data supply. A system that takes recorded events/transactions and delivers them reliably to the
reporting system. The data access can be push or pull, depending on whether or not it is responsible for
initiating the delivery process. It can also be polled (or batched) if the data are transferred periodically,
or triggered (or online) if data are transferred in case of a specific event.
• ETL (extract, transform, and load). This is the intermediate step where these recorded
transactions/events are checked for quality, put into the appropriate format, and inserted into the
desired data format.
• Data storage. This is the storage area for the data and metadata. It could be a flat file or a spreadsheet,
but it is usually a relational database management system (RDBMS) set up as a data mart, data
warehouse, or operational data store (ODS); it often employs online analytical processing (OLAP)
functions like cubes.
 Business logic. The explicit steps for how the recorded transactions/events are to be converted into
metrics, scorecards, and dashboards.
 Publication. The system that builds the various reports and hosts them (for users) or disseminates
them (to users). These systems may also provide notification, annotation, collaboration, and other
services.
 Assurance. A good business reporting system is expected to offer a quality service to its users. This
includes determining if and when the right information is to be delivered to the right people in the right

See more information in web resources below:

 Beautiful Reports: The non-Designer Guide to Designing Business Documents