Data Analysis Nirvana: Excel 2013
Business Intelligence Features
Tom Jones – President, Iridium Technology LLC
Introduction – Iridium Technology
• “Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.”
• Founded in 2009
• 8-member team 100% focused on legal BI
 BI solutions for ADERANT and ELITE clients
 Tuning of existing BI solutions
 Custom dashboards/reports
• 45 clients in all regions
• Client firm size 85 – 2300 timekeepers
Iridium BI: Module Overview
• Iridium BI consists of
dashboards
5
cubes and associated
Planning
• Expense data can be loaded from multiple sources
Agenda Recap – Part 1
• Part 1 (December 2013)
 Mini-Demos: slicers, timelines, tables, Quick Explore,
etc.
 Ad-hoc querying of cubes
 Publishing your results through dashboards
 “Grab Bag” topics
 Calculated member and dimensions
 Pivot table tips and tricks
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Agenda – Part 2
• (More!) Ad-hoc querying
• (More!) Tips and Tricks
• Internal Data Model
• PowerPivot (including MDX Designer)
• Dashboarding with Power View
• Other BI Dashboard Options
• (More!) “Grab Bag” topics
• Disclaimer: not all examples are legal-specific
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
References
• Google “Excel 2013 BI features”
Become Microsoft Office Certified
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
(More!) Ad-hoc Queries
(More!) Tips and Tricks
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Working with Cubes – Part 2
• Quick recap
• Excel is your primary tool
• Having fun with charts
• Working with data outside the cube
• Period calculations
• Member properties
• Taking it to go
• Working with the GL Cube
Demo: Ad-hoc Querying
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
“Grab Bag” BI Topics (1)
• Latency
• Cube Customization (zero compromises)
• Power users love the cubes plus Excel
• You can do this!
 BI 101 Series
 Query of the Day (“QOTD”) program
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Internal Data Model
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Internal Data Model
• Internal Data Model is a
new in-memory Analytics
Engine in Excel 2013.
• Each Excel Workbook has
one
• Combine disparate data
sources and analyze them
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Connecting a PivotTable to the Data Model
• The Data Model is a fully-functioning Analytics Cube
that can be queried using a PivotTable
Demo: Internal Data Model
PowerPivot
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
PowerPivot
• New in Excel 2013 – requires Excel 2013 Professional
Plus
• This is the ‘Data Model’ – same engine, more userfriendly
• Can handle data sets of up to 100 million rows (given
a 64-bit operating system and enough memory)
• Visualizations of Relationships between data sets
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Relationships in Diagram View
• Visualize Relationships – especially useful when many
disparate data sets are brought together
• Drag-and-drop to create ties
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
Demo: PowerPivot
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Cool Features in PowerPivot
• Standalone Charts – for those that like
visualizations better than rows of numbers
• MDX Query Designer – for those experienced
with MDX
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Standalone PivotChart
• Great for abstracting the data at a glance
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
MDX Query Designer
• For Expert users – a miniature SQL Server
Management Studio
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Dashboarding with Power View
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Dashboarding with Power View
• Extremely interactive Dashboard within Excel
• Uses the Silverlight framework – can be deployed to a
server
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Interactive Dashboard in Excel
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
Demo: Power View
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Limitations of Excel Power View
• Power View in Excel cannot connect to multidimensional models (cubes)
• Microsoft does not have any updates on the
roadmap or timeframe with enabling
connections to multidimensional model
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Other BI Dashboard Options
• Iridium offers a complete set of SSRS-based
dashboards as part of Iridium BI
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
Demo: Iridium
BI Dashboards
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
“Grab Bag” BI Topics (2)
• Dashboard customization
• All cubes are not equal
• 30-day trials
• How to check references (not only for BI projects)
Business Intelligence for Law Firms. Period.
© 2014 Iridium Technology LLC
Questions?
• Slide deck is available through ILTA
• tom.jones@iridium-technology.com
• www.iridium-technology.com
• LinkedIn
• Thank you!
Call Iridium any time – Free Consultations