Releasing the power of your data
Our mission is to optimize the resources spent on Business Intelligence solutions as well as increasing data quality and reliability.
Agenda
 BI builders – who are we
 Common headaches in BI
 Xpert BI – Enabling bottom up approach
 Xpert BI philosophy and methodology
 Target markets
 Xpert BI Transformation- sneak peak
Our mission is to optimize the resources spent on Business
Intelligence solutions as well as increasing data quality
and reliability.
 Software development company
 Product: Xpert BI
 Local company and local owners
 Estimated growth of 200% in 2013
 Strategy to sell the product through partners (e.g.Sysco)
 High focus on product quality, reliability and respond to
market needs.
Product background
 A dedicated software company (BI Builders AS) is founded in
2011 in co-operation with Avito AS to develop the product
Xpert BI.
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Supported by Innovasjon Norge and industry partner: GDF SUEZ E&P Norge
Development efforts started May 2011
 Releases
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Xpert BI Extraction
XpertBI Transformation
Next: change data, master data integration...
Q2 2012
Q1 2013
 Patent Pending on core functionality of the product
Common headaches in BI
 Excel for storage and reporting
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Poor data management
Poor traceability/documentation
Poor changeability
People/resource demanding
Poor reusability
 Unusable application reports
 Reports running slow
 Not the right reports
 Difficult to find the right reports
 Modifications are difficult, time consuming and costly
 Inflexible/Outdated data warehouse
 Application specific
 Implementation time of change requests exceeds time between each change
 Poor integration across business reporting areas
 Nobody/just a few of the initial developers are available – change is impossible
Xpert BI – as easy as it gets
 A developer tool that simplifies the
development of a Business Intelligence
solution
 Implementation instead of
development
 Data load is configurable and
requires no scripts nor coding
 Easy to use interface, makes the data
load process person-independent
 Enables reusability of import logic
Xpert BI
Adding value
in the data load and
transformation process
Xpert BI – enabling bottom up
Traditional approach
Targeting only relevant data for output means that any future
requirements, that may need data that was not included in the original
design, will need to be added to the ETL routines. Due to nature of tight
dependency between the routines developed, this often leads to a
need for fundamental re-design and development. As a result this
increases the time and costs involved.
Robert J Davenport (2008)
Bottom-up approach means that future requirements can easily be
incorporated into the warehouse structure. But - Being an emergent
technology approach, it suffers from a limited availability of tools.
Xpert BI is a tool that
makes a bottom-up approach feasible
Robert J Davenport (2008)
Scenario
 Common HR/Finance/Project reporting scenario:
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ERP system (e.g. SAP)
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Standardized reports does not meet reporting needs
Difficult/Impossible to do ad-hoc data analysis
Time-consuming and expensive to create new reports or to change reports
 Result
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Reports are created by a manual “copy-paste” method in excel. This is a non value-adding activity which
needs to be done every day/week/month
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No control of data quality
Wasted resources
Person dependant
Valuable information is available in the ERP system but not accessible by the user which can lead to
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poor decision making
Analysis of the wrong data
Not able to see the whole picture
 Xpert BI
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Extracts the valuable data into an understandable data model in a data warehouse
Data is extracted, controlled and qualified once, and used by multiple users on an ongoing basis
Users are able to do ad-hoc reporting
BI developers are able to implement new user requirements
Xpert BI – Philosophy and methodology
1.
Analyze the data source to utilize the full information potential
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Set up data model, and evaluate useful data
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Idealizing data source with use of XpertBI Extraction
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Implement extraction routines of data based upon the idealized
model and usage of XpertBI methodology
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4.
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Bulk load, parallel processing, automatic dependency control
Implement business logic and calculations and create star model
using Xpert BI Transformation (Q1 2013) methodology to get
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Dynamic, always up to date documentation of the entire BI solution
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Automatic object dependency analysis
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Flexible scheduling and data update options
Free choice of visualization and end user layer
Xpert BI Extraction – technical functionality
 Table and column alias
 Surrogate keys (PK and FK)
 Incremental load
 Table filters
 Relationship analysis
 Automatic “Repair” scripts to implement changes
Xpert BI simplifies the “ETL” process
“ETL” includes: Extract data, transform data, document the process
and maintain the solution
 Xpert BI is both a tool and methodology
 Use less resources both in development and operation
 Create durable solutions
 Data is qualified at the initial data load
 Flexible - easy to add/remove tables and fields
 Control of data updates
Creating affordable sustainable BI solutions
• Development: Experience so far shows that implementation
time will be reduced significantly to traditional approach.
• Production: Less resources will be spent on operation,
maintenance and implementation of change requests due
to structure and documentation of the solution
• Need for other integration tools can be reduced.
• Xpert BI gives partners and customers an incredible
competitive advantage.
Xpert BI - Target Markets
 Completely new and highly competitive approach for BI
Development
 Our initial primary markets:
 Local businesses
 SMB, Large and Enterprise
 Future
 Everyone - bottom up BI through reusable interfaces
 International marketing and sales
Xpert BI Transformation - Sneak Peak
Object dependency (documentation)
Object dependency (icons and execution)
Object dependency (complex)
Defining processing groups
Defining Fact table dependencies
Why Xpert BI
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Why Xpert BI is better than the alternative:
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What is the alternative?
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With Xpert BI as a foundation
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Person dependant architecture and implementation methodologies
Manual coding
Time consuming to implement changes in specification and reporting needs
No, poor or outdated documentation
Data quality issues
Faster implementation of a BI solution. Save up to 90% of the implementation time!
Not person dependent – all developers uses the same tool and methodologies
One standard way to implement all data loads and transformations
Implement changes and/or expansions is fast and easy
Documentation generator – always up to date documentation
Use the full potential of your data
Choose your own visualization on BI (reports, analytics, graphs, scorecards, performance management...)
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Microsoft
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Other vendors
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Excel pivot tables, PowerPivot, Sharepoint, Performance Point, Reporting Services
QlickView, Targit, Business Objects, Tableau, Corporator...
Questions