Using Microsoft Excel and Business Intelligence to Thrive in Economic Uncertainty

Transcription

1 Using Microsoft Excel and Business Intelligence to Thrive in Economic Uncertainty White Paper Published: March 2009 For the latest information, please see

2 Contents Introduction... 3 The critical success factors for uncertain economic times... 3 Advantages of using Microsoft Excel as a Business Intelligence tool... 3 Improve analytic capabilities... 4 Increase organizational effectiveness... 7 Manage business information more effectively... 8 The advantages of Microsoft Business Intelligence... 9 Conclusion... 9

3 Introduction The current economic situation presents challenges for businesses in every industry and region. Companies must cut costs, save money, and operate smarter as they confront slower sales and overall economic stagnation. But even with these challenges come opportunities. Microsoft s vision for Business Intelligence is to improve organizational effectiveness so that organizations of all sizes can overcome the challenges that arise from economic uncertainty. For example, using Microsoft Excel a familiar and intuitive tool as part of a complete, integrated Business Intelligence environment, you can empower more individuals with access to corporate data, powerful analytical capabilities, and the ability to readily share data. And because Microsoft Excel is both ubiquitous and versatile enough to support all employees within your organization, you enjoy wider adoption and maximize the benefits of Business Intelligence. The result? More employees can analyze, visualize, share, and manage critical business information and make faster, more relevant business decisions decisions that may determine how well you navigate troubled economic waters. The critical success factors for uncertain economic times In an uncertain economy, many companies feel the pinch of reduced business activity. Customer orders wane. Competition revs up. And employees work hard to simply maintain revenues. In the short term, your company may focus on cost cutting, asking employees to eliminate inefficiencies, trim expenses, and save money. Long term, you should find ways to operate smarter and more strategically without compromising on quality or service. Your resources from top-level management to front-line customer service reps must stay as productive and efficient as possible. Your employees must be empowered to generate the valuable insights needed to manage short- and long-term performance. A critical part of your Microsoft Business Intelligence solution, Microsoft Excel supports business insights that drive better, faster, and more relevant decisions so you can survive, even thrive, within an uncertain economy. Advantages of using Microsoft Excel as a Business Intelligence tool Microsoft Excel is widely known for its ability to help you create and format spreadsheets. Often left untapped, however, is the full range of Microsoft Excel s data analysis, visualization, and management functionality. This paper addresses how you can use Microsoft Excel in combination with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services to improve your analytic capabilities, increase organizational effectiveness, and manage business information more effectively so you can leverage Business Intelligence to improve performance throughout your organization.

4 Improve analytic capabilities During difficult economic times, it is important to identify and correct inefficiencies early on, so you can make quick decisions to alter course and improve performance. To sense and react to shifting market dynamics, you need analytical tools that can help you turn data into powerful insights, driving better, faster decision making. And you must be able to use these insights to adapt, change, or alter your future forecasts and plans. Microsoft Excel lets you visualize your data, navigate it quickly, query the most relevant information, and conduct endless what-if analysis so can you confidently chart the best course of action. Uncover patterns with enhanced visualization Microsoft Excel data analysis and visualization tools help you discover patterns, illuminate trends, and highlight exceptions more easily. For example, use conditional formatting including color gradients, heat maps, and performance indicator icons to analyze the performance of a product line or pinpoint a disconnect between supply and demand. Figure 1: Examples of performance indicator icons Leading health insurer, Highmark Inc., experienced firsthand the importance of visualization in making key, data-driven decisions. Highmark realized it needed to improve the service behind its short-term disability program, which handled more than 1,100 employee cases annually. Before implementing any changes, Highmark wanted to understand the impact they d make on customer demand, resources, and service quality. Highmark used visualization tools from Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions to define and compare the impact and cost of future-state solutions, and make sound business decisions. Having a visual representation of our program s processes helped us validate our data, and gave us a higher level of confidence about the decisions that we made, says Maria Hare, corporate health services manager at

5 Highmark. The improvements Highmark made to the program resulted in a 10% reduction in program operating costs, and allowed them to provide a higher level of service to employees making claims. We ve reduced our average processing time from eight days to one, and we have better communication with our employees, says Hare. Navigate data quickly to find answers You can use PivotTables, another data analysis tool comprised of interactive tables that combine and compare large amounts of data and summarize it into useful reports, to navigate around your data quickly. For example, rotate rows or swap out columns to answer different questions from the same data set. You can drag and drop column headings to new locations, and Microsoft Excel crunches the data accordingly. This allows you to easily display multiple results, such as averages, counts, minimums, or maximums. For deeper observations and inferences, you can further manipulate your data, such as identifying trends by displaying total and percentages of total. Figure 2: Sample PivotTable using color gradients To create charts of your data, use PivotCharts. Like PivotTables, PivotCharts are intuitive and interactive simply drag and drop the data onto 3D surface, column, line or radar charts. Use PivotCharts and PivotTables together or separately to get answers to business-critical questions.

6 Figure 3: Example of table formatting and stunning charts used to better communicate analysis As an example, Hercules Offshore, a Houston, Texas-based oil and gas service provider, uses the PivotTables and PivotCharts within its Microsoft Business Intelligence solution to build dynamic views of health- and safety-related data, such as incident response. When you get good reporting through simplified processes that engage the employees, you start to see clearly what is happening in the workplace, cites Rick McClaine, vice president for health, safety, and environment (HSE) of Hercules Offshore. We can see what s happening by crew, by rig, by geographical region, or however we want to analyze the data. Understanding at this level is necessary before you can exercise appropriate leadership, drive accountability, and improve HSE policies. Query the most relevant business data Additionally, you can query and act on the most current business data by building a custom report from SQL Server Analysis Services as did TDC, Denmark's leading provider of landline, mobile, and data communications services. TDC was constantly analyzing, sorting, and filtering large amounts of complex data to improve operations yet still needed the granularity of the individual billing records to track problems and predict future development on distinct products and customers. Using the powerful analytic capabilities of Microsoft Excel, TDC has been able to confidently analyze data, gain greater insights, and improve decision making. We are gaining new knowledge as a company, aggregating information to improve our business knowledge, explains Peter Møllebjerg Andersen, head of analysis at TDC. Employing Analysis Services and performing ad-hoc data mining with SQL Server Query Builder helps us to generate information that we didn t have before. We can deliver knowledge. And wisdom is based on knowledge. With Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions, you get real-time information to the right employees, so they can get their work done faster and more intelligently than ever before. Conduct what-if analysis to create valuable insights Because Microsoft Excel is deeply integrated with Microsoft SQL Server, your employees also benefit from Data Mining Add-Ins, which enable what-if analyses of various strategic

7 decisions. Data Mining Add-Ins are easy-to-use capabilities that power predictive analysis at every desktop, and help employees fully explore patterns in data. Harnessing the highly sophisticated data mining algorithms of Microsoft SQL Server within the familiar Microsoft Excel environment, Data Mining Add-Ins help your employees easily gain valuable insight into complex sets of data with just a few mouse clicks. Data Mining Add-Ins empowered users within the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to perform advanced analysis directly in Microsoft Excel. As Mark Kinkade, CIO at IDOT explains, Ad-hoc data analysis was simply nonexistent before. The Microsoft Business Intelligence solution is now driving critical decisions by providing users with unprecedented data mining and analysis tools. With the Microsoft solution, IDOT can allocate resources more effectively and quantify the decisions we re making. It ll also allow our staff to make better decisions quicker. Increase organizational effectiveness Microsoft Excel also makes sharing spreadsheets and business information easier, so that everyone throughout the organization can make better business decisions. Integration with Excel Services allows you to more securely exchange information with others. Specifically, Excel Services dynamically renders a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as HTML so others can access, navigate, filter, and interact with the information within a Web browser. Figure 4: Excel Services allow you to share and interact with spreadsheets in a Web browser Excel Services help support and distribute sophisticated analysis at the London Stock Exchange. At the Exchange, a primary account manager (PAM) is responsible for gathering internal information on member firms trading trends and patterns to obtain a better understanding of individual customers and the market as a whole. The central element of the Exchange s Business Intelligence solution is a PAM dashboard. As Robin Paine, chief technology officer for the Exchange explains, With Excel Services, our PAMs can create specific, customized views of information by client, which helps them to see the client s level of businesses interaction with the Exchange. Because of Excel Services, these views can be distributed effectively and efficiently across the whole of our PAM community. Excel Services

8 simply replicate the functionality of Excel on the desktop so that it can be used on the dashboard. In addition to Excel Services, Microsoft Excel also helps increase productivity because users are using familiar and intuitive tools to perform Business Intelligence. Without IT support, employees can access corporate data, quickly format spreadsheets, and easily create professional-looking charts with dynamic visual effects. For example, employees at the Children s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found its new Business Intelligence solution easy to use because it s partially based on Microsoft Excel, an application familiar to most employees. Because of that familiarity, our employees can easily extract and use the data they need. They can easily store and share data, as well as collaborate on projects, notes Dr. Bryan Wolf, pathologist-in-chief, chair, and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine for CHOP. Manage business information more effectively With a Business Intelligence solution featuring Microsoft Excel and Excel Services, you not only improve analytic capabilities and increase organizational effectiveness, you can better manage, control, and protect sensitive business information. Excel Services enable you to manage and control spreadsheets on a server to help protect important business information and help ensure that people are working with the most current data. Additionally, Excel s Data Connection Library simplifies data access and makes connections to the backend data your employees need. They don t need to know the details for the data source. One click is all it takes to bring the desired corporate data into the familiar Microsoft Excel environment. Then, users can intuitively produce professional tables and charts knowing the data being presented is accurate and timely. The Data Connection Library also makes it possible to connect to external sources of information and import data from external databases and line-of-business systems. Figure 5: The Data Connection Library imports external information into Excel for further manipulation

9 The advantages of Microsoft Business Intelligence When you combine Excel with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services you ll have a unified and integrated view of all your business data to use as the foundation for your traditional reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP) analysis, key performance indicator (KPI) scorecards, and data mining. Microsoft SQL Server enables you to scale even the most demanding analytical applications with millions of records and thousands of users. With Microsoft Excel as an analytic tool within your Business Intelligence solution, you ll get the most cost-effective, pervasive, and fully integrated solution available. Best value Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions deliver greater value at lower cost than many competitive products making them particularly ideal in difficult economic times. Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions provide a smart, cost-effective approach for leveraging what you already own. And in the long run, Microsoft solutions offer lower support, training, and maintenance costs than competitive solutions. Pervasive deployment To reap the full performance-enhancing benefits of Business Intelligence, you need a solution that is easy to use and familiar to your employees. Business Intelligence doesn t need to be so complex that it shuts out regular business users. Nor does it need to eat up IT resources. Microsoft has removed these barriers to usage, making Business Intelligence accessible to all your employees from line-of-business managers to customer service reps. Because Microsoft Excel is used by almost all employees, your workforce is able to use its powerful analytic capabilities to access information and make more informed decisions. Fully integrated In addition to providing the best value and enabling pervasive deployment, Microsoft Business Intelligence fully integrates all of your Microsoft Office productivity tools including Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft SQL Server. Because all of these products are built on the industry-leading SQL Server, they inherently work together from the beginning not sometime in the future. Joe Gregg, the IT director for Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, explains it this way: The Microsoft Business Intelligence solution was a natural extension to our Microsoft-based environment, so integration was easy and we were able to take advantage of much of the software such as SQL Server and Visio that we already had. Conclusion During periods of economic uncertainty, you want to improve your analytic capabilities, increase organizational effectiveness, and empower your people to make better decisions to reduce costs and operate strategically. Because you probably already own and use much of the Microsoft Business Intelligence solution today, it s cost-effective to deploy and will quickly generate unprecedented value. Using Microsoft Excel in combination with SQL Server Analysis

10 Service as your analytic engine, your information workers will be able to perform powerful analysis with minimal hand-holding from IT, and make more accurate decisions. To learn more, visit us at Legalese The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This white paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Communications Server, Excel, Office, SharePoint, and SQL Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.