Business Intelligence (BI) allows a business through
applications and practices to gain a better understanding of its commercial
context.By evaluation of historical,
present and future predictions of the organisation BI enables a business to
analyse its data and make business predictions, it is an essential tool if a
business needs to know where it is now and where it will be in the future.
Microsoft provides basic BI tools with SQL Server's OLAP and
BPM features, enhanced by the highly regarded planning tool within Performance
Point Server.However PPS has now been
placed within SharePoint to make it more available and economical to more
customers.For smaller businesses
requiring basic BI information this is a valuable feature, however for more
advanced BI, users need to find a replacement for PPS.
There is a lot of choice within Microsoft Dynamics for BI
applications, and obviously different businesses need different BI tools,
Dynamics World has selected the market leaders and have put them to the test in
the real world.
Not every business needs to progress through all the stages and not every solution provides for this. Given the complexities of BI and what can it do for the myriad of businesses that need to use BI we decided to measure the applications on the criteria that the majority of businesses need to consider when choosing a solution.
How easy is it “pull” data?
How easy is it to perform what-if analyses?
Total installation price versus ROI
How does it deal with multi data sources?
How quickly can the first report be created?
How easy is it to share information in real time?
How easy is to empower different levels of decision maker?
How clean is the presentation with the usability layer?
How many users does it have?
How well does it work with Microsoft Dynamics?
Depending on your type of business and where in the BI Information stack you wish to be, the results will be different.
