4 PAGES - Literature Review and proposal

Literature Review

Business intelligence is designed to support the decision-making of business personnel (Arnott, Gibson, &Jagielska, 2004, p. 296). Business intelligence systems help the business personnel to understand the trends of the past and the present and planning for future (Negash, 2004). It also helps in analyzing the strategies employed by the competitors (Negash, 2004). Business intelligence helps in extracting the necessary raw data available in the organization’s database and manipulate it in a way for the managerial staff to understand and make decisions (Arnott, Gibson, &Jagielska, 2004, p. 296).

Business intelligence integrates the reporting tools with operational data, which helps to simplify the complex data for the decision-makers to understand easily and reduce the time taken to take a decision (Negash, 2004). Business intelligence system is a set of tools, data warehouses and other software that are integrated to store, extract, transform and report the data of an organization, when required (Koronios&Yeoh, 2009). Business intelligence also provides a feature of developing and delivering actionable information at regular intervals to keep the decision makers posted of the day-to-day market trends (Leblanc, 2015).

Business Intelligence (BI) systems are often confused with the Business Intelligence reporting tools, but in reality Business intelligence tools are a part of the BI systems (Levinson, 2006). In the present competitive business environment, organizations are choosing different components and complexities for their BI systems, but all business intelligence systems require, at a minimum, four components, (a) data warehouses, (b) ETL tools, (c) OLAP techniques and (d) data mining (Olszak&Ziemba, 2006). The four components respective roles in managerial decision-making are, acquiring the data supported by data warehouse component, gathering the acquired data supported by ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) tools, analyzing the gathered data supported by OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) process, and reporting (supported by data-mining component) the data that come from dispersed sources (Cella, Golfarelli&Rizzi, 2004).

The current study is based on the tools that are used to report the data to the managerial staff in a way they can easily understand. The reporting tools are the tools with presentation capabilities, which provide the information in a user acceptance format(Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011).These tools can be classified into five types based on the visualization requirements and business requirements (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011).

1. Online Analytical Processing (OLPA) tools are used in a situation where multidimensional data has to be analyzed in an interactive fashion (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011).

2. Visualization tools are used in a situation where advanced graphical representation is required to present the data for easy understanding and interpretation (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011).

3. Digital dashboard tools are used display metrics in various ways (ex: tables, charts and graphs) with the help of navigable layouts and drill down options (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011).

4. Scorecards are also graphical displays along with which they compare selected metrics with targets, thresholds or forecast (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011).

5. Corporate performance management or Business performance management tool needs a user to specify certain Key Performance Indicators (KPI) based on which the tool will analyze and report the performance of the business (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011).

In the modern World, every organization intends to acquire a single BI tool that has all the above-mentioned capabilities. Many big organizations are providing tools that have all the five capabilities in a single tool and the business personnel has to choose a suitable tool according to their business requirements (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011). Oracle, IBM and Microsoft along with some other Multi-National Companies (MNCs) have purchased various tools from smaller organizations or have developed a new tool to survive in the increasing competition (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011). Below are some of the tools that provide all five capabilities and the reason why I choose to work on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Entity (OBIEE).

1. SAP Business Objects Enterprise (by SAP)

2. OBIEE (by Oracle)

3. Cognos (by IBM)

4. Microstrategy

5. TIBCO Spotfire Decision Site and Analytical Server (by Tibco) (Sabherwal& Fernandez, 2011).

Many organizations choose OBIEE as reporting tool for their organization, as it helps in developing customized reports along with “Out of the Box” (OOTB) reporting with the help of OBIA (Oracle Business Intelligence Apps). OBIEE is easy to understand and learn, and the reports developed using OBIEE and easy to understand and interpretby the managerial staff and other users (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, n.d.). The other main reason for using oracle based reporting tool is the ETL tool that is used for extracting data. The ETL tool developed by Oracle is ODI (Oracle Data Integrator) which uses the principle of ELT (Extract-Load-Transform). The advantage of using ODI compared to other ETL tools is that the data extraction and transformation are done in the same server, which minimizes the time taken for ET process, and it is cost effective, as the process requires only one server (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, n.d.).

Proposal

Action research involves Iterations, and iterations lead to different transformation activities. Both iterations and transformation activities results in efficient execution of the plan. In a few methods only that iterations are generally carried out after which observations as well as reflection will be made to help to make necessary iterations. Our internship will begin by September 9th and ends on December 13th in The Rapids Group Inc. This internship program includes 5 iterations and in each iteration number of activities performed will vary depending the activities am going to perform.

Iteration 1: Orientation

In my first iteration , I will attend an orientation program held by the training manager of the organization , in orientation key members from the different departments will gather to address the major activities taking place in each team and their contribution to the organization success, this will give a brief introduction to the organization framework and their business activities, at the end of the orientation , I met the manager of the HR department and signed on several documents to accept their internship program .

Iteration two: Training/Education

My second iteration mainly focus on the basic understating of the oracle database and SQL language implementation on the oracle database according to their company requirement, my technical advisor will give basic training about the database and SQL language concepts. The Project manager will give a brief orientation about the company SOPs (Standard operating procedures) and client SOP’s they follow to meet the client and regulatory compliance.

Iteration 3: Reviewing and Gathering the Business Requirements.

This iteration mainly focus on the workflow and key components of the project such as is the size of the database and its setup environment , how it’s divided among the different departments, how often it is updated and , what is the authentication level each developer will have , what are the limitation each one will have on accessing the database. What are the usual day to day tasks am going to go and what are the quality control checks our organization will implement to evaluate the quality of the work.

Iteration 4: Back-up and Recovery

Database Backup and recovery options are discussed in this iteration and it mainly focus on the how often we are going to do database backup and recovery and what are the tasks we are going to do while performing database backup and recovery, what are methods we are going to follow during the database backup and recovery . This iteration also focuses on the potential risks we might face and what are appropriate solutions to avoid them.

Iteration 5: Meeting and Analysing

Meeting with the clients and team members to discuss the status of the projects and the problems that we are facing on our day to day work. Team members will give suggestions to overcome the current situations, each key point discussed will be documented by one of my team members along with the resolutions provided by the team and documents also includes outstanding issues , those can't resolved at the current meeting.

A lot of analysts who do not point out everything in regards to the system would end up in trouble. Folks which will be focusing on it system have to have education, as well as because of this , why the actual programmer ought to speak his/her tips obviously for the related persons (MacKrell & McDonald, 2014).

The suggestion attempts to attain aims that are mutually tolerable to help both the Useful resource Hunter as well as Useful resource Company. It’s critical which you recognize the actual aspires as well as objectives on the Useful resource Company (Moursund, 2002).