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Archive for the ‘Business Intelligence’ Category

Create a linked Scorecard with Mobile Entrée 3.0

by on March 21st, 2012

I recently started to develop some scorecards in PerformancePoint and deploy them using Mobile Entrée 3.0 version for our sales team to enable demos of Mobile Entrée 3.0. I wanted to show how PerformancePoint scorecards work in Mobile Entrée 3.0 and in particular how you can link scorecards. An earlier post shows some of the features with PerformancePoint and Mobile Entrée here.

The main thing which helps you build more useful scorecards in Dashboard Designer is the ability to filter data, but since we don’t have it in Mobile Entrée we can still mimic it. It is important to note that it is possible to filter with Excel pivot tables in Mobile Entrée, but just not yet with PerformancePoint content. The ability to link scorecards and drill through from one scorecard into another is a way to enable some types of filters. Not being able to link filters with Scorecards in Mobile Entrée makes it difficult to select details which you might want to view in a scorecard. For example, you might have sales figures for sales managers and have a scorecard just for them. There is a work-around to get your scorecard to mimic a filter by enabling a scorecard to link to another scorecard. This allows you to view high level sales information on your mobile and then view down to detailed data without adding filters.

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Posted in Business Intelligence, Mobile | No Comments »

ETL better and faster

by on March 19th, 2012

Having been in consulting for over 18 years, I am often asked by business owners or senior management how they can deliver solutions that are faster and better. They also want world-class products that captivate the customer, in addition to better predictability in the solutions delivered. I have found a way to have repeatable success with my clients by utilizing frameworks and templates that I have refined over the years. My method has led to many clients with an end product that has exceeded their expectations.


I am part of the Microsoft BI Practice and am currently delivering a framework to Perficient branches so they can do more with less. In the next few weeks, I will release a framework and template to a pilot branch. It will have an example built off of Adventure Works that has the following functionality for a SSIS/ETL project.

1)      SSIS BI Management Reporting
2)      Error Handling
3)      Logging for End-to-End traceability
4)      Auditing
5)      Configuration
6)      Test Driven Development (TDD)
7)      SSIS Template Project
8)      Enterprise Perficient SSIS database that contains above information for all of an enterprises’ SSIS projects. Currently, SQL Server 2012’s SSIS database is being reviewed to see what other information can be leveraged.  A future release of this framework will have ties into the metrics captured by 2012’s SSIS.
9)      A working example of the above functionality
10)   Supporting Documentation



With consistent delivery through templates, frameworks, and documentation, we will make solutions together that are more focused on the business problem, more powerful for the clients to manage in their IT asset portfolio, and have a lower cost for delivery. That is the win – win in the IT consulting world.


Andrew Holowaty
Lead Technical Consultant
MCDBA, MCSD, MCAD, PMP, MBA

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Posted in Business Intelligence, News and Events | No Comments »

Blended value with SQL Server and your BI team

by on March 7th, 2012

As a follow up to the EIM Awareness with SQL Server blog post I previously created, I’d like to dig into the potential impact of the “…increasing EIM maturity level…” I referenced.

Whether you manage a consulting practice or a BICC, you’re always struggling with providing the right balance of value to your clients. In our business technical expertise is a must, but it’s never enough. To make the largest impact possible, you have to help your clients understand the entire (i.e. Enterprise) landscape of Business Intelligence. So what does that landscape look like?

The diagram below maps the value of technical/strategic expertise across project types as the projects become more/less technical. But keep in mind, our next example will add a technical component that will increase the strategic complexity of the platform (which is the whole point of this post).

Removing specific technologies and simply looking across project types, our landscape looks like the above sliding scale of expertise. Most project expertise will be technical in nature, but some certainly needs to be strategic. Why? You may ask. Because when the business complains about data quality and you recommend DQS from SQL Server 2012 you need to know that you are not only adding a technical component, you are expanding the EIM footprint of your solution, as well as suggesting that the business take on a new set of responsibilities.
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Ad-hoc reporting with SQL Server 2012

by on March 5th, 2012

As the virtual launch of SQL Server 2012 draws near, I receive more and more requests for demos. This doesn’t really surprise me however considering the new enhancements really do show well. So in an effort to spread the mindshare here is a nice overview of the ad-hoc reporting capabilities of PowerPivot and Power View.

PowerPivot and Power View

Feel free to request a live showing!

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Doing ETL right…

by on March 5th, 2012

Have you ever been responsible for ETL and your end user(s) report that the numbers are not right?  Do you have a methodology or a process to go back and verify the numbers are what they are?  When you are building ETL, are you writing audits logs that capture metrics that are important to the business?  Investing some time upfront can save hours, days, and/or weeks on traceability of tracking issues.  It can make your job much easier when there are issues with reporting accuracy.  Let’s take a look at where and what you should track to ensure what goes into ETL is what is coming out.

Soup to nuts, the above is what an Enterprise ETL system could look like.  Being an Architect of designing systems for Fortune 500 companies for over 18 years, I can assure you this is not everything and there could be more or less to your implementation.  The key in the above diagram is recording the source and destination metrics of the different logical steps that happen in the transformation of enterprise data each step of the way.  Examples of the types of metrics you can record based on the ETL Batch slice are:

  1. Record counts
  2. Aggregation of metric counts
  3. Fact table dimensional attributes
  4. Custom table to record business processes

Having a methodology of defending your ETL collateral is a must when reporting is critical to the business and there are claims the numbers are inaccurate.  I hope the above has given you food for thought if you are not recording what is going into ETL and what is coming out.  Check out my other post for an example of reporting that you can implement to visualize how the source and destinations can match.

Andrew works in the Microsoft BI practice for Duane Schafer and is currently creating solutions for the healthcare and software industries.

Posted in Business Intelligence | No Comments »

2012 Microsoft Self-Service BI

by on January 4th, 2012

Expanding on “Microsoft BI –No More Excuses”, I recently updated Denali SQL 2012 (Community Technology Preview CTP3) on my demo machine to work with Microsoft’s latest Self-Service BI (SSBI) tools. The result is a MS 2012 Denali SSBI demo and presentation available now from Perficient’s National MS BI team. Below are the highlights of the full blog post here, with specifics to be expanded in future blogs.

SQL 2012 Breaks SSBI Barriers

2012 MS SSBI has broadened all BI possibilities.  Denali (SQL 2012) breaks any remaining barriers for business and IT to coexist hand in hand for BI or SSBI solutions. It builds on existing BI stack strengths & embraces new territories:

  • SQL 2012 One BI Semantic Model: 2012 SSBI enables BI possibilities throughout your organization—from traditional BI content contribution accessing a variety of data sources easily, to extending BI visualization in support of business case analysis and strategy. Denali’s new semantic BI model allows a free-flow of BI development in all directions, from/to business or IT, and the new tabular model structures of SQL 2012 support a breakthrough for SSBI in 2012.
  • SQL 2012 SSBI is Enterprise-BI Capable. PowerPivot for SharePoint supports PowerPivot queries and the SharePoint component provides specific PowerPivot services, infrastructure, dashboards, web parts, content types, and library templates. SQL Server adds PowerPivot data processing to a SharePoint farm and SharePoint Central Administration provides service administration and oversight for PowerPivot processing in the farm, for IT-managed BI.
  • Power View Breakthrough Visualization: The new Power View visualization analysis reporting tool is a simple and effective mix of business-perspective functionality:
SQL 2012 Power View SSBI

Smart and powerful querying, with zero configuration for filteringPower View conveys business ideas supported by data analysis into a visual story that translates to strategic ideas and tactical decisions for opportunities, business decisions and transactions (revenues, cost-reductions or strategies).

SSBI is a serious catalyst for new organizational BI.

  • Through identification, self-analysis, self-reporting, and presenting BI-sourced data information, a business case often tells the story for decisions and actions. PowerPivot and Power View enable this process. Existing BI and reporting integrate seamlessly with new SQL 2012 Denali SSBI functionalities. Denali’s new semantic BI model allows a free-flow of BI development in all directions, from/to business or IT, and the new tabular model structures of SQL 2012 support a breakthrough for SSBI in 2012.

Strengths of SQL 2012 SSBI:

  • Faster to develop than traditional (multidimensional) BI
  • Less expensive to use in terms of time, resources and skill requirement
  • Great for prototypes on larger multidimensional solutions & reporting
  • Easier to update in terms of having the flexible data model (i.e. PowerPivot) with an application interface (i.e Excel Pivot table, Charts and visualization)
  • Ability for final logic customization via Excel or PowerPivot business logic
  • New interactive visualization with SQL 2012 new Power View analysis tool which operates off PowerPivot data (via SharePoint 2010, SSRS & Silverlight)

Next Steps:

  • Understand the varied benefits and options for SQL 2012 SSBI by getting in tune with SSBI from different role perspectives, including:
    • Businesses requiring robust POC solutions quickly and inexpensively
    • SharePoint Users who collaborate and report business information to analyze with colleagues
    • Database professionals and IT pros partnering with business, and providing monitoring, security and data management control
    • Excel users who analyze multidimensional data in workbooks and PivotTables, to create reporting, visual analysis & BI for business decisions
    • Business people who independently create custom-logic calculation models and are learning Microsoft PowerPivot for this purpose.
    • Anyone requiring a new standard for business case visual presentation with interactive data analysis using Power View.
  • Review the SQL 2012 SSBI possibilities, and then assess your next steps based on need. I am happy to demo SQL 2012 SSBI to provide details or continue your understanding and explore options. Contact me or any member of the Perficient National BI team for a SQL 2012 SSBI demo or other SQL 2012 Denali or BI solution information.

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