technology business white paper

Page 1 ... their technology infrastructure to ensure business success. ... By way of example, a company may wish to analyze the total budget cost of introducing a ...
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Technology Business Intelligence: Enabling Proactive Decisions to Support Business Goals White Paper Introduction As we move into the New Economy, corporations must make accurate, reliable and timely decisions about their technology infrastructure to ensure business success. In order to make optimal decisions to meet corporate goals, IT professionals must be able to track, manage and analyze critical information about technology investments. Through analysis of information on technology vendors, costs, contracts, orders, and service requests, it is possible to identify business trends, opportunities and potential problem areas. By way of example, a company may wish to analyze the total budget cost of introducing a new network operating system. Besides refreshing technology, you also have to take into account the cost of retiring the existing technology and terminating and/or upgrading all associated license, service, and maintenance contracts.

What is Business Intelligence? Business Intelligence is a set of concepts, methods and processes to improve business decisions using information from multiple sources and applying experience and assumptions to develop an accurate understanding of business dynamics. It is the gathering, management and analysis of data to produce information that is distributed to people throughout an organization to improve strategic and tactical decisions. During the last ten years, a significant percentage of corporate data has migrated to relational databases. More recently, relational databases have been sold as tools for building Data Warehouses. A Data Warehouse stores tactical information that answers “who?” and “what?” questions about past events. A typical query submitted to a Data Warehouse might be: “What was the total revenue for the eastern region in the third quarter?” With the use of Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence systems have come into favor in business environments. These systems, also called On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems, complement Data Warehouse systems by enabling new uses of the information in the warehouses. While a Data Warehouse stores and manages data, Business Intelligence systems transform Data Warehouse data into strategic information. This is accomplished with several key features, including:







Enables a multi-dimensional view or cube of aggregate warehouse data. Business Intelligence systems store and access the data as arrays of multiple dimensions, each representing a factor that is driving the business. These views may be concurrently navigated and browsed (often known as “slicing and dicing”) until the desired business information is retrieved. Business Intelligence provides analysts, managers, and executives insight into data through fast, consistent, interactive access to a wide variety of possible views of information. Provides calculation-intensive capabilities. Calculations, such as percentage of total and allocations (which use hierarchies from a top-down perspective), and time intelligence are used to transform warehouse information into knowledge. Enables decision-making about future actions. While Business Intelligence systems have the ability to answer “who?” and “what?” questions, it is their ability to answer “what if?” and “why?” that sets them apart from Data Warehouses.

The Value of Technology Business Intelligence There are so many important decisions you have to make with respect to your e-infrastructure. ■ Do you have access to the information you need to justify technology investment decisions? ■ Can you quickly identify potential problem areas within your organization? ■ Can you perform detailed analysis about your technology investment to gain insights on business trends and exceptions, with the touch of a button? In order to make proactive, informed decisions to support your business requirements and gain a competitive edge, you need reliable and timely information about the technology resources. With an e-infrastructure management solution in place, you already track and manage a wealth of valuable information about your technology vendors, materials, contracts, orders, service requests, and financials. However, all this information has to be accessible and easy to analyze in order to drive better, more reliable decisions. Without a Business Intelligence system, the information needed for effective decision making remains hidden, with no easy way to deliver it to managers’ or analysts’ desktops. Specific benefits of implementing Technology Business Intelligence include: ■ Access timely e-infrastructure information on demand ■ Retrieve information in any format ■ Increase business user self-sufficiency ■ Model business problems and perform “what if” scenarios ■ Identify and analyze patterns and trends over time ■ Implement solutions in a quick and cost effective manner ■ Build solutions on a variety of hardware platforms ■ Leverage investment in the technology asset repository ■ Reduce the time IT staff spend on producing and delivering reports, enabling more time for strategic, value-added projects ■ Lower support and service costs by providing a centrally managed, automated reporting solution

How MainControl Can Help MainControl’s MC/EMpower™ is a software suite that manages the entire lifecycle of e-infrastructure assets, from the planning and requisition stages until the retirement stage. Information is available on user requests, procurement, resource status, contractual and legal commitments, lease and maintenance schedules, vendors and suppliers, financial reports, payment and depreciation schedules, and much more.

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MainControl’s Business Intelligence product, MC/EMpower i.advise™ can help you track, manage and analyze the information you need about your technology investment in order to meet corporate goals. With i.advise you can fully leverage information about your vendors, costs, contracts, orders, service requests and more to easily identify business trends, opportunities and potential problem areas. With a click of the mouse, you can access summary information and easily drill down through increasing levels of detail. This convenient access to details enables you to view different dimensions of each measurement to quickly identify problems and take immediate action to resolve them. You can also view and analyze information in chart and graph form and easily change the level of detail and dimensions included to visualize the key factors affecting your technology infrastructure.

i.advise includes the capabilities to monitor resources in costs and/or units, stay current on changes in purchasing trends, measure the impact of an organization’s latest technology deployment or migration, monitor service request rates to determine potential problem sources, and follow an organization’s performance in responding to orders by tracking scheduled deliveries against those which have actually occurred. MainControl offers analysis and reporting capabilities through pre-defined “power cubes” in the areas of asset costs, service management, procurement and financial management. The power cubes are built from data that is extracted from a source relational database or data warehouse and packaged into a heavily indexed data mart. Indexing enables data access by dimensions, categories, and measures. Customized reports are available to provide you additional information for planning and managing your e-infrastructure.

Asset Cost The asset cost cube provides valuable information about costs for technology acquisition and service, including payments to vendors and internal charge back costs. You can review costs, internal cost-recovery rates, and the quantities associated with each from a host of concurrent business perspectives. This analysis offers a unique insight into the way in which expenses are created and distributed. These costs can be analyzed in the context of directly relevant business factors, or “dimensions,” such as vendor, cost center, location, system type, etc. The cube enables you to incrementally build a cost model.

Procurement The procurement management cube enables you to view information about the orders created as part of the procurement process. You can analyze order item counts and quantities, and costs associated with these from a host of concurrent perspectives, which offers insight into procurement details. The cube is presented so that those order items, including the counts, quantities and costs associated with them (“measures”), can be reviewed in the context of directly relevant business factors or “dimensions,” such as order date, desired delivery date, cost center, status, etc. The measures can be reviewed in the context of multiple dimensions concurrently, producing a modle of how factors working in tandem directly impact procurement. You can use the cube to incrementally build a procurement model.

Service Management The service management cube enables you to view information about the problems, questions or enhancement requests that are reported for technology assets and their supplementary service agreements. You can review inquiry counts and planned and actual days those inquiries were open from a host of concurrent perspectives, providing insight into the way in which inquiries are created and distributed.

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The cube is presented so that those inquiries, or averages associated with them (“measures”), can be reviewed in the context of directly relevant business factors or “dimensions,” such as date reported, status, priority, system type, cost center, etc. Those measures can be reviewed in the context of multiple dimensions concurrently. You can use the cube to incrementally build a service inquiry model.

Financial Management The financial management cube enables you to view information about budgeted and actual costs incurred as part of the asset acquisition process. You can analyze actual and budgeted costs and the item quantities and variances associated with these from a host of directly relevant business factors. Business factor options include payment date, cost center, item class, and cost type. This analysis offers insight into what comprises the payment process. There are numerous possible combinations of planned and actual payment views. Views can be constructed that concurrently present business factors that constantly impact each other, but are not normally presented together. You can incrementally build a financial model. The i.advise solution uses technology from Cognos, the premier vendor of Business Intelligence tools, including the Cognos products PowerPlay and Impromptu. The i.advise product offers the following features: ■ Mine the information to the lowest level of detail ■ Slice and dice to display data in any combination ■ Highlight exceptions ■ Convert currency on demand ■ Rank and compare results ■ Analyze trends over time ■ Visualize data graphically ■ Use advanced time dimensions ■ Display graphs and cross tabs in one display ■ View data in 2D and 3D charts The inclusion of a Business Intelligence solution as part of the MC/EMpower management suite will enable decisionmakers to utilize the vast amount of information that is collected, tracked and maintained about their technology resources to drive tangible, effective business decisions.

Summary In order to make effective decisions to support your business requirements, you need reliable and timely information about the technology resources. With an e-infrastructure management solution in place, you already track and manage a wealth of valuable information about your technology investment. In order to leverage this information to drive better, more reliable decisions, you need an easy method for managers to retrieve and analyze this information.

i.advise, part of the i.series suite from MainControl, enables you to quickly and easily access timely information about your technology resources, including inventory information, procurement data, budget/cost information, contract administration and service management activity. You are also able to perform multidimensional analysis of this information, which enables fast, cost effective decisions about changes to your technology infrastructure that will improve the company’s bottom line. Copyright 2000 MainControl, Inc. All rights reserved. MainControl is a registered trademark and MC/EMpower i.series is a trademark of MainControl, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.

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