Microsoft Business Intelligence

PLATFORM OVERVIEW
M A R C H 1 8 TH, 2 0 0 9

CHUCK RUSSELL
SENIOR PARTNER
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE INC.
CRUSSELL@COLLECTIVEINTELLIGENCE.COM
 Microsoft Business Intelligence

Improving organizations
by providing business
insights to all employees
leading to better, faster,
more relevant decisions

Drive pervasive business performance

Implement a complete and integrated
data delivery solution
Deliver widespread intelligence through
Microsoft Office
Meet enterprise needs with affordable
economics
 Business Intelligence Stakeholders

Analytic
Development
Applications
Tools
and End User
Tools

BI Platform
Content Producers Content Consumers
All Types of Decision Making
 Development
Organic Intentional

Self-Service
Personal Easy discovery of data
Simple, intuitive tools
Ad-hoc
Creative and agile
Scope

Performance Management
Consistent corporate definitions, KPIs
Shared

Corporate policies and processes

Contextual and accountable
 BI Platform Architecture

Analytic Scorecards, Analytics, Planning

Applications (PerformancePoint 2007)

Portal
(SharePoint)

Data Delivery
Report Builder End-user Analysis
SSRS (Excel)

Integrate Analyze Report

(SQL Integration Services) (SQL Analysis Services) (SQL Reporting Services)
Infrastructure
Platform
Data Warehouse, Data Marts,
Operational Data
(SQL Server 2008)

Office SQL
The Microsoft BI Data Delivery Components
SQL Server 2008

Next Generation DBMS

Provides the foundation BI
Services:
1. RDBMS
2. Analysis Services
3. Reporting Services
4. Integration Services
5. Support for Massive Data
Warehouses
6. Etc.. Hey it’s SQL Server.
SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
Unified KPI Framework
Dimensional Experience the
Model manageability of
Enjoy the power a rich centralized
of a combined repository for
metadata model definition and
– the UDM – storage of KPI’s
bridging the that are easily
flexibility of made available
relational for end-user
reporting with consumption via
the performance e.g. BSM, Excel
of the classic SharePoint
OLAP

Business Data Mining

Intelligence Create new
Wizards a breed of
Enable even the predictive
most novice analysis
users to build BI applications
models and through a rich
projects set of data
addressing some mining tools
of the more and predefined
complex BI algorithms
scenarios
SQL Server 2008 Integration Services

Metadata Development
Management Productivity
Impact and Development
Lineage Environment
Analysis from with visual
source debugging
systems to and version
cubes control

Extensible
Enterprise
Architecture
Data
Plug in
Integration
custom
Scalable data
components
integration
written in C#
platform with
or call
parallel
existing
pipeline
business
architecture
logic using
VB.NET
SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

Report Report
authoring management
Visually Manage report
design categorization,
reports & data sources,
layout via security,
the subscriptions
Report via the Report
Designer Manager

Model design
End user Design
report creation semantic
Enable end models that
users to map to real
dynamically business
create their entities via
own Ad-hoc the Model
reports via the Designer
Report Builder
BI Studio & SQL Server Management Studio

Development Facility for:

1. Report Models
2. Reports
3. Dimensional Models and
other Analysis Services
structures
4. SSIS (ETL) Jobs
 Business Abstraction Layers

 Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) - The role of a Unified

Dimensional Model (UDM) is to provide a bridge between the user and the data
sources. A UDM is constructed over one or more physical data sources, and then
the end user issues queries against the UDM using one of a variety of client tools,
such as Microsoft Excel. The UDM:
 Is used in for querying Analysis Services
 Is dimensional, meaning structures like dates are define hierarchically to support OLAP
operations
 Hides Complexity.
 Report Model – Create an abstraction of the underlying data sources; hiding
the navigational aspects of data retrieval from the user. Report models have the
following features:
 Database fields and views can be given logical business names, so knowledge of the
database structure is not required to produce reports.
 Items can be grouped logically.
 Relationships between items can be define
 Model elements can be secured so that users can see only the data that they have
permission to see.
Report Builder

Ad Hoc Query and Reporting

Tool that supports the
creation of reports via the
web.

Report Builder uses the

Report Model(s) that have
been created and published
in order to facilitate end-user
Query and Analysis
Office Excel 2007

Conditional Data Connection

Formatting Library
Spot trends Quickly
and exceptions access the
in your data to most common
better inform data sources
your decisions in your
enterprise for
data analysis

Publish to Pivot Table

SharePoint Against SQL
Server 2007 Server Analysis
Enhanced Sorting Services
and Filtering Analyze data
with new
Sort by cell color PivotTable tools
or filter data by and enhanced
quarter to work support for SQL
with only the data Server Analysis
Services
you need
SharePoint 2007
Publish from Excel Excel Services
The Excel Services Create fully
menu enables interactive
you to specify web based
which items to data-bound
display and how worksheets,
users can work including charts,
with the work- tables, and
sheet. Then save PivotTable views
directly to without any
SharePoint custom coding
Server 2007

Secure Sharing Dashboards

Safeguard Create rich,
sensitive interactive
information by dashboards that
controlling access assemble and
to worksheets. display business
With Excel information from
Services Web- disparate
enabled access, sources, using
you can limit what built in web parts
users can view, such as dynamic
protecting the (KPI) and Office
underlying data Excel 2007
and models spreadsheets
 Performance Point Server 2007

 Full Office experience

 Complete perspective across all functions
 Easy to personalize scorecards, analytics, plans
 Priced for broad deployment
Performance Point Features

Performance
Management

• Integrated with
SharePoint & MS
Office
• Integrates with SQL
Server 2008
• Collaborative
• Analytics - drill
down/up with
visualization
• KPI and Scorecards
• Iterative Monitoring
of Performance
• Provides
Infrastructure for
Enterprise Planning
& Budgeting
What Happened to All those Other Products?

Scorecards
Scorecards

Analytics

Planning
Analytics

Planning

November 06 Mid CY07 2008 - 2010

 Demo Environment

 Windows 2008 Enterprise Server (64bit)

 SQL Server Enterprise 2008 with SQL Server Analysis
Services 2008 (64bit)
 SharePoint 2007 (64bit)
 MS Reporting Services installed at various places in the
‘farm’.
 Authentication performed using Active Directory with
Kerberos for SSO support.
 Adventure Works DW 2008 – Data warehouse in a box.
 I’m coming in remote for ‘speed’…we’ll see how fast.
 Demo Plan

 Personal BI
 Excel Spreadsheets!
 Ad Hoc Querying and other Neat Stuff

 Team BI
 Reporting, Report Distribution
 SharePoint Integration with Reporting Services
 Overview of Analysis Services and Evaluating Data with Excel
 Excel Services within SharePoint

 Enterprise BI
 Collaborative BI Portals
 Performance Point Contoso Slide Deck
 Demo Script

 Go to CIDev Portal and Demo extracting a spreadsheet from Documents/Sales Reporting

 Quickly Open up Analysis Services Model in Visual Studio 2008 to show the model used in the spreadsheet.
 Show them the UDM within the cube that’s created.
 Browse the Cube
 Demonstrate the various types of VS Projects: Reports, SSIS, and Analysis Services, Reporting Model
 Open up the Internet Sales Reporting Model
 Describe it
 Open up the Internet Sales Reporting Package
 Show the more complex report
 Demo full life cycle, round trip, build/deploy.
 Go Back to SharePoint and Demo the Large Report executing from within SharePoint.
 Show the reporting Dashboard
 Show the Collaboration within the Portal
 Show Report Manager
 Consuming Reports without SharePoint
 Scheduling Reports
 Etc.
 Go Back to SharePoint and in the File Viewer Open up Report Builder.
 Create a simple Report
 Save the Report
 Go execute the report in SharePoint
 Go to the Report Center Site
 Describe Layout
 Show Dashboard 1
 Show Reporting Services Example
 Discuss Contoso
Contoso

 Contoso designs and markets bicycles, frames, components

and accessories for mountain, road and touring cycling.
 Contoso follows a Balanced Scorecard Methodology to track
its performance combining scorecards and analytics. Contoso
also uses PerformancePoint for monitoring, analyzing and
planning.

 The persona: Jennifer Adams, Contoso’s CFO.

 Business challenge: margin issues across some product
categories.
 Issues prior to solution
 Limited integration: had to jump from applications to applications
to just get information.
 Misaligned information: when information was found there was no
way to tie it back to corporate efforts and objectives.
 Slow and tedious: identifying issues quickly, performing root-cause
analysis required costly IT and analyst time.
 Contoso Demo Flow

Monitoring
Driving Q&A
Demo scenario accountability
Collaboration
More than just numbers

END

Planning
Affecting the
future
Integration Analytics
Delivery in Office Asking questions
This CFO uses Microsoft®
Office SharePoint™ Server
as a thin and personalized
interface to her corporate
information
 One type of information
that can be managed inside
SharePoint is
PerformancePoint
scorecards.
 This CFO can now consume
very rich analytics

And benefit from a full

fledge scorecard (built here
following the balanced
scorecard methodology)
This CFO can now interact
with very rich analytics
And drill into the data
 As well as get quick
information on KPIs by
simply hovering over them.
 In order to make better
informed decisions, she
needs to review related but
unstructured information.
 She opens the document
library that is related to the
scorecard in order to get a
more complete view of her
business.
She opens the strategy map
that is related to this
scorecard in order to
understand how KPIs relate
to each other.
Now, she wants to know if
there is anything more she
could review in order to
complete her analysis.
The application suggests to
review the finance
scorecard
 The finance scorecard focuses
on finance metrics (revenue,
cost, profit), across multiple
quarters.
The scorecard also display
owners at the KPI level.

She can now assign tasks to

resolve issues based on the
kpi ownership.
If she needs to, she can
filter the scorecard.
 When she does so, the
scorecard and all related
analysis views will be filtered
accordingly, guaranteeing
consistency of information.
 She can also look at the
annotations associated to the KPIs.

Annotations allow her to gain

more context and understand
more than ‘just the numbers’.
She wants to drill thru the
gross profit margin KPI
because it currently shows
some issues.
 The following analytical view
opens, presenting her with multiple
applications to analyze the data.
These applications will help her
understand complex data much
faster.
 She first opens a ‘performance map’.
This application provides a quick view
of the data after 2 dimensions.
Here the size of the box is determined
by ‘sales amt’ and the color of the box
represents ‘% Gross Margin’.
She understands that North America is
selling a lot [their boxes are bigger].
NA doesn’t have margin issues
compared to the other geographies
[NA’s colors are green]
This CFO drills under Europe
 She can see product
categories split across
geographies
Or geographies spilt across
product categories
She can drill up and down
And decompose the data
further moving from the
performance map to the
decomposition tree.
 Decomposition tree is a
great and flexible way to
ask your data very intuitive
questions
 As a first step, she goes
down the product hierarchy

But then switches to a

geographical view to
understand who sells the
most road bikes, which is the
bigger revenue category in
bikes.
She then drills across to
time dimension to
understand when certain
geos sell road bikes
 The data can be analyzed
across any geo

At this point, we are using all available hierarchies in the data (product category, geography
and time).
We can of course go back to
a much simpler view
When users perform this type of
analysis, they assume that they
picked the right metrics to
analyze the data by.
Switching their analysis to a
different metrics is often
challenging.
Switching their analysis to a
different metrics is very
easy using the
decomposition tree
The analysis is now ran the
gross profit margin, but the
CFO didn’t have to go
through all the steps of the
previous analytical path.
The CFO has now being able to
resolve the margin issue.
Holland is the country creating
the problem in Europe: it was a
top 3 in revenue, but the last
performance from a margin
standpoint

The CFO can save and share

this view with the rest of
the organization.
 The analysis can also be
shared in PowerPoint in a
static and dynamic mode.
Going back to the analytical
view, the CFO notices that
the revenue forecast is
wrong
She collaborates with the
owner of the forecast
process in real time
 Who suggests that she
checks her email for a sales
forecast update notification
 The assignment opens in
excel. Notice that the
PerformancePoint™
functionality is available
natively in excel.

The user benefits from the flexible

interface and the PerformancePoint
functionality. Users get the right
amount of information at the given
point in time. Process and security
transpire thru to the end-user
experience.
Notice that the forecast # is
the same as the number in
the scorecard. The
scorecard and the planning
experience are integrated.
The yellow cells are the cells
the user can contribute to.
They represent the business
drivers that determine the
forecast numbers.
 The CFO decides that the
company will only sell 120
road bikes instead of 300.
 The application then runs
centrally stored calculation
and logic.
A new forecasting #
appears.
While this model might work when
you have a few subcategories, it is
not highly scalable if you have
many lines to update to show a new
forecast.
 This is when you can use
‘spreading’ functionality.
Spreading allows end users to set a
bottom line # and have rules and
logic defined in PerformancePoint
run the allocation at the sub-level.
 Here, the CFO simply updates the total
qty of bikes and the calculation engine
spreads the result of centrally defined
logic.
The results could be based on seasonality
or any other calculations defined on the
server.
The CFO can roll up this analysis
to the European forecast and
include an annotation at the cell
level to explain that the new
allocation has been spread.
Annotations are stored centrally
to enforce auditability of the
forecast.
The form can be shared and
submitted.
Comments at the assignment level
can be added to share more
contextual information. Like cell
annotations, they are also stored
centrally to facilitate auditability.
Once refreshed, the new forecast
# is reflected in the scorecard.
Microsoft Business Intelligence
PLATFORM OVERVIEW
M A R C H 1 8 TH, 2 0 0 9

CHUCK RUSSELL
SENIOR PARTNER
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE INC.
CRUSSELL@COLLECTIVEINTELLIGENCE.COM