Chapter 19 - Knowledge Delivery

Unit II
 Topics to Learn

• The business intelligence user types, Standard reports,

Interactive Analysis and Ad Hoc Querying, Parameterized

Reports, automated reports and Self-Service Reporting,

dimensional analysis, Alerts/Notifications, Visualization: Charts,

Graphs, Widgets, Scorecards and Dashboards, Geographic

Visualization, Integrated Analytics, Considerations: Optimizing

the Presentation for the Right Message

 The Business Intelligence User Types
1. Power users

2. Business users

3. Casual users

4. Data aggregators or Information Providers

5. Operational analytics users

6. Extended enterprise users

7. IT users
 1) Power users

• who constitute a community of experienced,

sophisticated analysts who want to use
complex tools and techniques to analyze data
and whose results will inform decision-making
processes
 2) Business users
• Rely on domain-specific reporting and analyses
prepared by power users
• Also rely on their own ad hoc queries and desire
access to raw data for drilling down, direct
interaction with analytics servers, extraction,
and then further manipulation, perhaps using
desktop utility tools
 3) Casual users
• May represent more than one area of the
business
• Rely on rolled-up metrics from across
functions or operational areas summarized
from predesigned reports presented via
scorecards or dashboards
 4) Data aggregators or Information
Providers
• Are businesses that collect industry or society wide data and
enhance and reorganize that data as a way of providing value-
added services to customers and subscribers
• Some examples include
– database marketing services, financial and credit information services,
real estate business information services, audience measurement
services, market research providers, and national statistical agencies,
among others
 5) Operational analytics users
• Indirectly rely on the results of analytics embedded within
operational applications.
• Examples include
– call center representatives whose scripts are adjusted
interactively in relation to customer profiles,
– predicted behavioral predispositions, and real-time
customer responses,
– web site offers and ad placement, or
– users of retail shelf management systems that adjust stock
levels based on demand across multiple regions
 6. Extended enterprise users
• Comprising external parties, customers, regulators,
external business analysts, partners, suppliers, or
anyone with a need for reported information for
tactical decision-making
 7) IT users
• Mostly involved in the development aspects of BI,
and whose use of BI is more for supporting the needs
of other information consumers
Example Usage Demands for Different
Types of BI Users
AN OVERVIEW OF THE TYPICAL METHODS
EMPLOYED FOR DELIVERY AND
PRESENTATION
 Standard Reports
• Presentation of information reflects a relatively basic, two-
dimensional alignment of information, characterized within a grid of
rows and columns.
• Standard, static reports derived from user specifications provide a
consistent view of particular aspects of the business, generated in
batch and typically delivered on a scheduled basis through a
standard (web) interface.
• The columns typically articulate the item or characteristic being
measured, while the rows will generally correspond to the division
and hierarchies for which those measures are provided.
• The intersection of each row and column provides the specific
measure for the column’s characteristic for the row’s item
Example Standard Report for US Housing Characteristics, Taken
from American Fact Finder http://factfinder2.census.gov/
 Contd..
• There are two measures (in the columns)
– the estimate of owner-occupied housing units with a mortgage, and
– the margin of error associated with the measure.

• There are four groups of items being measured:

1. The number of owner-occupied housing units with a
mortgage
2. Value of the houses
3. Mortgage status
4. Household income for the previous 12 months
 Interactive Analysis and Ad Hoc Querying

1. First option involves taking data formatted into a standard

report and downloading it into a framework that allows you to
slice and dice the existing data more freely.
– Example involves extracting data from the report into a desktop
spreadsheet tool that provides organization around hierarchies
2. Second option
– More powerful in enabling finer granularity by allowing more
sophisticated users to execute their own queries into the analytical data
platform.
– Users with an understanding of the data warehouse’s data
inventory and who have some skill at articulating their queries can
either run ad hoc queries directly using SQL or can use tools that help
users describe the data sets they’d like to review.
– These tools reformulate those requests in SQL queries that are executed
directly.
Standard reports Ad hoc queries
Provide knowledge to a broad spectrum Enable greater drill-down and potential
of consumers, even if those consumers for insight.
must have contextual knowledge to However, given the growth of data into
identify the key indicators and take action.
the petabytes coupled with the
complexity and performance impacts of
Rapidly yielding to more organized ad hoc queries
methods for delivering results, through
parameterized reporting, dimensional
analysis, and notification, alerts, and
exception reporting.
 Parameterized Reports and Self-Service
Reporting
• Parameterized reports provide one approach to self-service business
intelligence, or “self-service BI.”
• Self-service BI framework
• tools simplify the different aspects of generating results and reports,
including simplifying:

1. Data discovery process by presenting a palette of data sets that the user can
access and use;
2. Data access methods by masking or virtualizing access to the data to be
queried;
3. Documentation of the “make-up” of the report via collaborative means so
that the results, and more importantly, the process for generating the
results, can be shared with other analysts; and
4. The development of the presentation layer, whether that is simple
row/column reports, or using more sophisticated visualization techniques
 Self-service BI
• Intended to reduce or eliminate the IT bottleneck
• In many environments,
– IT department is responsible for developing reports, and as
the BI program gains more acceptance, there is a greater
demand for IT resources for report development.
• This becomes a bottleneck when the time for
responding to a request exceeds the window of
opportunity for exploiting the actionable knowledge
 Dimensional Analysis
• OLAP environments
– present the data aligned along selected dimensions.
– The presentation layer often provides a palette from which dimensions
can be selected for visualization, and those dimensions can be pivoted
around each other.
– The data can be presented in the same grid format as the standard
report, or can be visualized using graphical components (such as those
we discuss later in this chapter).
– The slicing, dicing, and drill-through provided by the OLAP
presentation provides much greater flexibility for the power user
performing data discovery.
– Alternatively, the business user seeking to drill down into data to
identify anomalous behavior or to look for potential patterns may also
benefit through the use of the OLAP environment.
 Alerts/Notifications
• This method is nicely suited to operational environments in
which notifications can be delivered via different methods.
• Some examples include email, instant messages, direct
messages delivered through (potentially internal) social
networking sites, smartphones, other mobile devices, radio
transmissions, or even visual cues (such as scrolling message
boards, light banks, or visul consoles).
VISUALIZATION: CHARTS, GRAPHS,
WIDGETS
 Line chart
• A line chart maps points on a grid connected by line
segments.
• A line chart can be used to show a series of
connected values, such as a time series.
• An example would be mapping the rise and fall of gas
prices per gallon using the price of a gallon of gas on
the first day of each month for the previous 36
months.
 Bar chart
• A bar chart maps values using rectangles whose
lengths correspond to the charted values.
• charts are good for comparing different values of the
same variable across different contexts.
• An example would be a chart of the average life
expectancy in years across different countries.
 Pie chart
• A pie chart is conveyed as a circle that is broken out
into sectors representing some percentage of a
whole.
• A pie chart is good for showing distributions of values
across a single domain.
• An example is showing the relative percentages of
owner-occupied homes by ethnicity within a Zip code
area.
• The total of all the components always will add up to
100%, and each slice of the pie represents a
percentage of the whole.
 Scatter plot
• A scatter plot graphs points showing a relationship between
two variables.
• Typically one variable is fixed (the dependent variable) and
the other is not (the independent variable).
• In a two-dimensional scatter plot, the x axis represents the
independent variable value and the y axis represents the
dependent variable.
• A scatter plot is used to look for correlation between the
dependent and independent variable.
• An example graphs an individual’s age (the dependent
variable) and the individual’s observed weight (the
independent variable).
 Bubble chart
• . A bubble chart is a variation on a scatter plot in
which a third variable can be represented using the
size of the item in the chart.
• An example would graph the dollar sales volume by
the number of items sold, and the bubbles could
represent the percentage of the overall market
share.
 Gauge
• A gauge is an indicator of magnitude in the context of
critical value ranges.
• A gauge is good for conveying relative status of
critical variables and points that should trigger some
action.
• A traditional example is an automobile’s fuel gauge,
which indicates the relative fullness of the tank, as
well as an area close to the “empty” measure marked
as red to indicate the need for refueling.
Directional indicators (arrows up or down)

These are also indicators that are used for

comparison to prior values.
Often these are represented using three images—
one to indicate improvement,
one to indicate no change, and
one to indicate degradation of the value.
For example, directional indicators can be used as part
of a time series presentation of stock prices to
indicate whether the end of day price is higher, the
same, or lower than the previous day’s price.
 Heat map
• A graph that tiles a two-dimensional space
using tiles of different sizes and colors.
• A heat map is good for displaying many
simultaneous values yet highlighting specific
ones based on their values.
• As an example, a heat map can display the
number of times each particular link on a web
page was clicked, and can highlight the areas
of greatest activity.