In our first issue, we described a new way that our customers were using business intelligence. While BI has traditionally been used to analyze historical trends after they have occurred, we detected a growing segment of WebFOCUS customers integrating BI directly into their day-to-day operations. As they did so, they tapped the power of the Internet to do far more than graft a browser front-end onto existing reporting applications. Instead, they were using Internet technology to enable their BI applications to truly scale, so it could extend throughout the enterprise and the customer or business partner ecosystem.

For instance, Administaff, which has doubled its HR outsourcing business over the past five years, turned BI into an operational tool, serving a customer base representing 80,000 workers with live, Web access to current payroll, benefits, and related data.

Over the past 30 years, we've watched the way our customers work with reporting. And as we've learned about the need to extend BI into a day-to-day operational tool, we've picked up a few valuable insights.

First, we saw the importance of integration. Because most reports and analyses draw from multiple sources, integration had to be part of the solution, not an afterthought.

Additionally, while observing how customers like Administaff, RBC Financial Group, and Moneris rely on operational data to deliver reports that were core to their business, we realized that the line between historical and current transaction systems was dissolving.

The result was not a debate between historical or real-time BI. Instead, the solution had to include delivering the right blend to address the business problem. For instance, if you are staffing a call center, you will need near-real-time information to gauge traffic patterns within the last hour, plus historical data to understand whether current activity is an anomaly. At the other end of the spectrum, verifying the accuracy of your company's forecasting process requires historical data to paint the big picture.

Another insight focused on the importance of ease of use. When BI becomes operational, the size of the audience typically rises. As you address larger populations, you have to accommodate people who are not computer experts. Operational use is also likely to increase the number of reports that are developed, maintained, and modified to reflect changing business conditions. Consequently, reporting must become simpler for administrators, developers, and analysts to create and maintain.

WebFOCUS 7 is the product of all of these insights. To have a successful BI system, we understood, you need the right architecture, the right level of integration, and simplicity.Therefore, unlike most BI tools, the Internet is baked into our architecture. That means you can use WebFOCUS 7 to create and distribute reports, regardless of whether the audience is a dozen people inside a workgroup, or tens of thousands outside your company. And, again, unlike our rivals, we have built data integration directly into WebFOCUS, so you don't have to worry about the complexity of juggling multiple best-of-breed tools to populate your reports from multiple data sources, getting the right mix of real-time, near-real-time, and historical information.

We also listened long and hard to the need for making WebFOCUS 7 simple. Unlike most BI vendors, we've extended the concept of ease of use well beyond end users, addressing system administrators, application developers, and report developers as well.

For end users, we provide features such as the ability to tap the full power of Microsoft Excel macros and other programming tools so they can get reports using the systems they already use. For system administrators, we have incorporated consoles that monitor and automatically troubleshoot WebFOCUS performance, eliminating much of the legwork involved with managing report distribution. And for application developers and business analysts, we have provided a simple, visual scripting environment so they can rapidly build, modify, or reuse reports to suit changing business needs.

In 30 years of serving customers, we've learned that there is no such thing as a typical reporting environment. Data sources, competitive requirements, audience sizes, and requirements for timely data for your company will differ from somebody else's. Your BI solution must be flexible, powerful, simple, and scalable enough to address each of these needs. And it must be ready to step up to the plate when you need a tool to help you make the right decisions in the course of everyday operation. Today we announce WebFOCUS 7, the product to address these needs.

Back in November, we looked at the merits of using live production systems for generating WebFOCUS reports. In essence, the conventional wisdom is: just because you can, it doesn't mean you should. There are good reasons why data warehouses emerged for relieving the stress of reporting away from production systems.

But never say never. Sometimes it pays to keep your options open, as long as you are judicious. When Toppan Interamerica upgraded financial reporting in conjunction with installation of a new J.D. Edwards ERP system, it took a dual-pronged approach: use iWay adapters to draw from the DB2/400 production system to populate an offline staging database, or when circumstances merit, take a live feed.

According to IT Manager Jay Verenakis, the goal is providing the right data at the right time. "Some of our reports don't need real-time data so there is no need to tax the system more than we have to," he said. While most reports, such as quarterly financial statements, do not merit live treatment, updates on overdue inventory become especially valuable if reports can be generated before the problem starts piling on unwanted carrying costs. "For these aspects of the business, we want information in real time, not based on yesterday's or last week's data," said Verenakis.

Read the full Toppan Interamerica case study.

Etta Levine is editorial director for Information Builders' Insights and editor in chief of Information Builders Magazine. To provide feedback go to www.informationbuilders.com/insightstalkback

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