Business Intelligence (BI) Analysis, Design and Development

Our Understanding of BI

TCS Computer Services provide analysis, design and development services to ensure that your Business Intelligence System can deliver and is used effectively in your organisation.

TCS has been keeping pace with this area of software development since 1968.

What is Business Intelligence?

The term "Business Intelligence" (BI) has been used since the '60s and we understand that it is an umbrella term which refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information in order to support better business decision making. more Þ less Ý

How can BI help my Business?

The answer to this question comes with understanding your goals for BI.  This is a question of "What are my BI goals?". This is the question that TCS starts with when working on a BI strategy with our Clients. more Þ less Ý

We therefore work on the simple principle of "if it matters, monitor and measure it".  This is what we aim to achieve for our clients.

What is under our BI Umbrella?

TCS can offer a broad range of services that fit under the BI umbrella and with our Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status and Certified Professionals you can be confident that we have the necessary skills and experience to deliver.

Our BI Skills

TCS is able to offer a wide range of services in order to delivering effective BI including:

At TCS we have a firm commitment to high standards and regular targeted training is seen as imperative for maintaining those standards.  Our staff receive regular training in the latest Microsoft Database and BI technologies and are qualified to "Microsoft System Architect" which incorporates Business Intelligence training.

Our BI Experience

Our experience with the above skills has been gained through training and on a broad range of BI developments and we have been able to utilise these skills in all our clients.  We have:

Adopting a BI Platform

We are aware that it isn't necessarily just the use of technology that creates "Business Intelligence", so our "BI" offering extends beyond just the technology used, to the consultative skills of:

Over the decades we have been working to design and install effective BI solutions we have adopted a reusable and robust methodology.  When working with you, TCS will use this methodology to ensure that your BI project, whatever the size, will successfully meet your goals.

First, Overcome the Barriers

"Will my average user have to become an IT wizard to use BI?"  In a recent Gartner research paper describing barriers to adopting BI, the #1 barrier was the perception that "users lack necessary skills". 

Perhaps this is a common misconception.  We know from our experience, that with the right knowledge transfer during and post implementation, average users can gain the skills necessary to adopt the use of BI; in fact they very likely already have the skills to do it, but the BI 'label' makes it sound a lot more difficult than it actually is.  So, "No", the average user does not have to become an IT wizard.

Next on the list was "Total Cost of Ownership too high". It is often the case that setup and preparation time becomes prohibitive before benefits are realised, especially when you consider the licence cost of SAP BW, Business Objects, Oracle Apps or MS MOSS+PPS and then add on top of that the £1k+ fee rates charged by "specialist consultants" for at least 12 months to implement it!  There has to be a cheaper way, and of course, there is and that is the incremental way.

An Incremental Approach

Surely incrementally adoption doesn't work or will end up costing more or be less flexible? Not necessarily.

In order to get somewhere, you need to know where you currently are.  If you don't find out, your journey to BI nirvana will take a lot longer.

TCS can help you identify what you have, what you don't have, pull all that knowledge together into a coherent framework and fill in the gaps with suitable tools and enhancements.  You'll then know where you are and will have learnt a lot along the short journey it took to make one or two incremental steps towards Early Wins and discover the benefits available to justify costs.

By implementing BI in an incremental approach, you don't have to invest heavily upfront in technologies that may not yet be fully understood or utilised.  Good ROI is realised by implementing a basic BI approach, you can use those returns as the investment for your next BI step.

TCS will be happy to have taken you on that journey.

Set Realistic BI Goals

Once you know where you are, you need to know where you want to get to.  What are your BI goals this year, next year and in coming years?

This raises many more questions; who needs the information?, what information?, where can I get it from?, who has the information?, what format is it in?  However, you do not need to concern yourself with these details.  When working with TCS we can investigate and compile data from many sources and in many formats.  You can then focus on the goals you want to achieve, i.e. "I need a Consolidated P&L report across all international business units, converted into GBP updated daily and available on the Board of Directors' desktops" or "I need KPIs that tell me which products are ahead, on or behind target in which geographic regions and for which sales people".  These are the BI Goals you can set and we can score for you.

Utilising your existing BI

Our Data Validation Service allows us to analyse your existing reporting; either in a particular department or company wide as necessary.  We then compile our findings into a coherent and concise report of where your company is on the BI Adoption scale.

We can then recommend a number of short, medium and long term strategies to help you move from your current position on the BI Adoption scale to one where you feel more comfortable and fits your budget and strategic IT Platform direction.

You are also in a position then to determine our suitability for your business.

Filling the Gaps

Once we know your existing reporting coverage, we can then discuss where gaps occur and how to fill them in order to gain a more complete coverage of information for decision making.  Gaps can occur in all areas of reporting, from financial to staffing and often the data that can fill those gaps is available from existing data sources.  Data can also reside in other sources and we can integrate those sources so that they can be used to fill some of the gaps.  For example, compiling a consolidated P&L View for a single client or for a group of business units in the same format.

Often gaps in reporting can also be filled by existing reports that may not be visible to one department. TCS can conduct a company wide investigation in order to identify data sources and aspects of reporting that are important and meaningful and discuss how the complete set can be targeted, published and made searchable in order to make them available to a wider audience where appropriate.  We will determine whether this can be done using any existing infrastructure and any potential investment needed in additional technologies.

Timescales for completing this kind of investigation vary depending upon the size of your organisation, the existing infrastructure and your staff's availability to help identify existing reports. Our experience in this area suggests that a minimum of 2 weeks investment is necessary to get a thorough picture and a further 2 weeks to compile the information in to a meaningful report.

Scaling

Building a scalable system is a priority for any reporting system, as are extendibility and accuracy. As the number of users grows the system should scale to accommodate those users without any additional overhead for compiling or distributing the data. 

Bringing all the reports together so that there is only one version is important for maintaining consistency and reducing the overhead of maintenance. 

TCS specialises in ensuring that when your business grows, you have a centralised, coherent reporting system as this is easier to extend and maintain than a number of disparate decentralised reporting systems.

Future Migration

TCS recognise that requirements move on and that there are particular tools for particular jobs.  That is why we created iCube.NET (part of iSuite.NET), to help our clients get hands on with BI Reporting.  Once they have grown comfortable with the new sharing, communication and collaboration approach to BI reporting we help them to capture all the knowledge that they have grow whilst using our BI tools and format that knowledge into the requirements analysis for their next step to BI nirvana.

What we also find is that the underlying query and data integration and extraction routines help form the building blocks for the next step, hence increasing the success of our BI implementation.

Where do we fit with Microsoft BI?

Our efforts are concentrated on developing and delivering BI solutions using the Microsoft Platform of technologies.  These include:

However, we recognise that some of these technologies come with a high licence cost and, therefore, TCS are able to offer, through iSuite.NET, a more cost effective solution that is tailored to your requirements yet based upon the underlying Microsoft Platform.

We do this by offering alternatives to the costly PerformancePoint Server, Excel Services and SharePoint Server platform that fits into the top half of the Microsoft BI licence stack.

Our alternatives are not as feature rich as PPS or MOSS, but are able to be integrated with your existing Intranet and IT infrastructure.

BI Price Comparison

We thought the Microsoft diagram below looked a little like a juicy burger.  The burger on the left shows what Microsoft offers in their BI licence stack.  The bottom bun (BI Platform) is the layer that all companies which have invested in the Microsoft Server and Data Platform are likely to have, i.e. Microsoft SQL Server, Analysis Services and Integration Services.  The "meat" is where the data is compiled into meaningful information and this is performed by Excel and PerformancePoint Server.  The top bun is the delivery layer, i.e. the reports, dashboards and scorecards that are delivered via SharePoint Server.

It is the top bun that a lot of companies have not adopted and yet more still have not yet considered PerformancePoint Server.  This is where the licence and consultative costs of BI lay; introducing the top two layers.

The TCS burger offers a similar yet cheaper capability, but instead of SharePoint and PerformancePoint server, we offer you iSuite.NET which can be integrated into your existing intranet.

Sample licence costs are below and this is where the real difference starts to emerge.

iSuite.NET's "Route 80/20" to BI Nirvana

For a company that wants to move to a BI platform the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of that platform is a critical factor in determining whether that move can be made in one step or whether a more measured incremental move needs to be taken.

When you consider the costs of a purely Microsoft platform above, the TCS incremental step using iSuite.NET is a cost effective alternative solution.  We take an 80/20 approach.  We can deliver up to 80% of the ROI for as little as 20% of the cost of a one-stop solution.  Rather than throwing costly technology at the problem, we first consider how existing technology can be used to deliver a BI platform and then fill the gaps with effective integration and delivery solutions.

You can then be free to spend the other 80% to save the final 20% if it is justified, but we're so confident that the savings will be so apparent that we're willing to bet that you won't need to take that final step for a few years.

Where do we fit with other Suppliers' BI?

As a general rule we do not work with other systems, preferring to concentrate on developing BI capabilities using the Microsoft Platform and our own alternative: iSuite.NET.  So, how does the cost and functionality of other BI systems compare?

Cognos (IBM)

Licence price depends on the number of people using the system and the roles they play, but expect to be paying in the region of £500-£750 per user without any report consultancy or development, let alone the cost of establishing the data warehouse or meta data required.

Hyperion (Oracle)

Hyperion has a module-based pricing scheme. The cost of Hyperion is related to how many modules you wish to implement and which modules your environment requires.  Expect to be paying in the region of £200-£500 per head plus 30% annual support fees plus consultancy and development.

Business Objects and Crystal (SAP)

Under the Business Objects program, each product license, upgrade and service is assigned a point value. You can mix and match product licenses, upgrades and services to accumulate points, however, no prices are freely available without contacting a reseller.

WebFocus (Information Builders)

This company offers a complex and uninspiring product which they claim is the most secure and flexible in the market, yet they do not make it clear on their website how much the various modules of their product costs.

MicroStrategy (MicroStrategy)

MicroStrategy offer a single solution with optional modules and user interface formats to present BI data captured by their Intelligence Server.  They clearly claim to be a world leader in Business Intelligence services and of course, there are no clear prices on their website.

What does the TCS approach cost?

As you saw from the figures above, each of the systems that are offered naturally all claim to be "the best" and no doubt the price of their implementation reflects that claim.

The TCS "Route 80/20" to BI nirvana can cost significantly less than going for broke with a one-stop solution yet still give you the consolidated view of information that you need without all the gimmicks of complete self service and mobile delivery.

TCS's solutions concentrate on:

No Fuss. No wasted gimmicks. No high fees.

We have developed a methodology for guiding our clients from a state of disparate reporting to a unified and consistent state.  We use this methodology to assess your current position and then identify any gaps in your BI capabilities.  We will then work with you to determine how these gaps should be filled and how the existing and new BI capabilities should be targeted and deployed.

The cost of this approach varies from as little as £5k for a complete analysis and report of all your BI capabilities, to £50k+ for the analysis, identification, consolidation, design, development and support of an enterprise wide BI portal.

Our daily rates vary upon our staff's experience.  We will always take your lead on how you would like the "Route 80/20" resourced; for instance utilising experienced staff for the critical tasks of analysing your business and designing a solution to then using cheaper staff for development and support.

Case Studies

TCS are able to offer development, integration and support services over many different scenarios, click here to view several case studies describing the benefits of our development and support contracts.

What Next?