On business intelligence efforts, the importance of Tallan's project-focused people is emphasized because the finished product, be it a report, an analytical tool or a KPI on a dashboard, is only as good as the numbers in the data behind it.
One of the best ways to illustrate this is by borrowing a metaphor from Ralph Kimball, often called the grandfather of data warehousing. He described the delivery of business intelligence in terms of a restaurant in which you have the back of the house, where the food is prepared, and the front of the house, where the customers sit and enjoy their meal.
To be successful, the right food has to be delivered to the right customer in a consumable format. To achieve that goal it is critical that the teams on both sides of the house understand their own roles in the process and each other.
Tallan's successful project delivery comes from our ability to bridge that gap between the business and IT. Even when our consultants find themselves in the heat of the kitchen they remain keenly aware of how their role impacts the finished product. Being project-focused means we look at the solution as a whole, always keeping the finished product in mind.
Data mining offers a new way to look at data. Up until recently it's mostly been available to statisticians with PhDs. Now every knowledge worker in your organization can take advantage of data mining to unearth insight.
SQL Server Analysis Services cubes can be layered on top of any relational data warehouse platform opening up reports, dashboards, analytics and data mining to all levels of your organization. This allows you to get more value out of your investment in Oracle, DB2, Teradata and/or SAP with cost-effective, user-friendly tools like Microsoft Excel and SharePoint.
Operational employees on the front lines can leverage BI to better serve customers or ensure the production line is running efficiently. These BI consumers require very focused and timely information requiring minimal interpretation. Embedding BI into your line of business applications creates an opportunity for the most populous team in your organization to help you compete.
You depend on your line of business and ERP applications to provide structure to your processes and help operate your business. In doing so you're collecting mounds of data but there's a limit to the reporting these applications offer. Interfacing with your operational data via analytical and data mining tools can present that data in a new light and reveal never before seen insight.
It's never a straight path from here to there, but knowing what's around each turn can make it a much easier journey. Tallan's practical data management guidance covers departmental point solutions and large Enterprise Data Warehouse initiatives. These best practices are applicable to both Microsoft and non-Microsoft based platforms and help your company answer key questions such as:
Retention - How much data should we keep and for how long? How granularly should we track historical changes?
Reliability - How can we ensure we're maintaining the trust of our end-users and adhering to our SLAs?
Scalability - What preventative planning can we do to avoid performance problems? What performance tuning opportunities do we have if we run into problems?
Usability - What are the unique data needs of the strategic, tactical and operational levels of your organization? How do we effectively present information to each of them?
Clarity - Will our existing process/project management methodologies keep everyone aligned and both IT and the business on the same page?
Designing solutions on the Microsoft Business Intelligence suite means understanding what comes in the box and what does not. To achieve the goals of your Data Management Strategy we rely on a supporting cast of operational and metadata frameworks. Operational Framework -
The Process Control Environment provides an auditing mechanism to capture statistics and report on activity within your data migration processes.
Proactive Maintenance & Tuning are preventative best practices to help the operational processes run efficiently cycle after cycle. Metadata Framework -
A Metadata Repository can articulate rules, formulas, calculations and definitions for business users. It can also articulate technical details such as lineage, heritage, scheduling and security. Traditionally these details are captured in project documentation. However, since the data warehouse is an asset that grows over many projects that traditional documentation is not effective long-term.
Developing a business intelligence solution requires a proficiency in a number of tools, languages and technologies:
ETL Development on SQL Server Integration Services
OLAP Cube Development on SQL Server Analysis Services
Dashboard design and development leveraging SharePoint and PerformancePoint
Customization and deployment of reporting solutions for consumption by internal staff and external partners/vendors in both desktop and mobile formats. Tallan consultants receive proprietary, internal training along with access to external materials to help keep their skills sharp. With each of our consultants comes the collective experience of our entire field to help overcome any challenges that may arise.
Technology is complex and there are times when a fresh pair of eyes looking at the problem can make all the difference. There are also times when it helps to retain an expert with a deep understanding of the product with the issue and a proven approach to getting to the root cause.
SQL Server 2000 is almost ten years old and database technologies have come a long way in the last decade. Working with the SQL Server suite over the years as its matured has left us with insight on how to migrate:
DTS to SSIS - Data Transformation Services packages to SQL Server Integration Services packages
Analysis Services 2000 to Analysis Services 2005/2008
SQL Server 2000 RDBMS to SQL Server 2005/2008 RDBMS |