10 pg paper Business Intelligence & SAP

Business Intelligence

Final Report

Review all the exercises / assignments you have completed in this course. For example, during the first few weeks you created an info cube and loaded spread sheet data into the cube (ETL exercises). In other words you created a pilot data warehouse. During the remaining weeks the assignments focused on analyzing the data using the available info cubes as source, to create queries, look at the data from different angles and present the data in graphs and charts. The data mining exercises focused on association patterns and the dash board exercises were used for visual display of the key indicators.

You have been using the SAP software (Business Data Warehouse, and Business Objects). SAP has been consolidating all the Business Intelligence software (Analysis for Excel, Dashboards, Datamining, Datawarehouse, Business Objects, Crystal Reports, Business Explorer, etc.) under Business Objects. There are other software vendors who provide similar analytical, data mining, and display tools. Further, two other emerging areas in this domain are: Predictive Analytics, and Big Data.

Part I

Please review at least two other vendors who provide Business Intelligence Tools and compare their strengths and weaknesses with the SAP software. You should focus on the features, integrative aspects in terms of extracting data from production databases, ease of implementation and use, potential benefits to the organization, appropriateness for companies of different size, and value for the money. In addition, discuss whether they can become significant players in the areas of "big data" and "predictive analytics".

Part II

Please write a report on how each assignment / exercise can be used in real organizations and how they can be useful to the management and decision making. If you are responsible to implement a business intelligence project in your organization please explain: 1) how will justify the need for such a BI project and 2) how do you select an appropriate vendor and 3) go about implementing it. Please use an example of an organization you are familiar with to complete this report. Please remember each industry /organization will have different sets of key performance indicators (KPI), that are relevant to that industry. The data warehouse / info cubes should be designed to capture these KPIs.

The report should not exceed ten pages. You are at liberty to refer to any material needed to prepare a good report. The report should be as realistic as possible.