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Faster
Time to Answers
Accelerating
Reporting for Oracle® Applications, Siebel® eBusinessApplications
and PeopleSoft®
Introduction
Raw
data is a corporation’s most valuable and underutilized
resource. To staycompetitive in today’s economy, decision
makers need tools that will give them thepower to turn that
data into meaningful business intelligence that they can
accessthemselves, without relying on IT resources. Companies
also need to protect theirreporting investment so that application
upgrades don’t require hundreds of reportsto be rewritten.
Noetix
technology uses metadata to solve these problems and put
companies incontrol of their data. With Noetix, business
users can get answers to theirimportant business questions
when they need them, wherever they need them.
Faster
Time to Answers
Accelerating Reporting for Oracle Applications, Siebel eBusiness
Applications and PeopleSoft©2002 Noetix CorporationCopying
of this document is permitted.This document is provided
for information purposes only and the information contained
herein is subject to changewithout notice. Noetix Corporation
does not provide any warranties covering and specifically
disclaims any liability inconnection with this document.Noetix
and NoetixViews are registered trademarks of Noetix Corporation.
All other product or company names mentionedherein are used
for identification purposes only and are property of their
respective owners.
Faster Time to AnswersExecutive Summary
The amount of data generated by business today is growing
exponentially. Databases that not long ago were measured
in megabytes are now well into the terabyte range.More than
ever, in today’s competitive business environment,
corporate decision makers need tools that can effectively
turn those mountains of data into meaningful business intelligence.What’s
more, these users want immediate answers to their critical
business questions. And they want the information delivered
not only to their desktops, but also to their mobile phones
or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Corporate IT departments,
already overburdened with maintaining and upgrading increasingly
complex applications, aren’ta realistic solution to
this demand for instantaneous information.Noetix technology
translates the underlying complexity of enterprise applications
such asOracle Applications, Siebel eBusiness Applications
and PeopleSoft into familiar termsthat business users can
understand and work with themselves. Noetix bridges the
digitalabyss between the data and the decision maker.Customers
using Noetix realize a significant return on investment
from the reduction ofresources necessary to develop reports.
Noetix also protects a company’s investment by shielding
existing reports from application upgrade changes that often
result in the need to completely rewrite customized reports.Accelerating
Reporting for Oracle Applications, Siebel eBusinessApplications
and PeopleSoft
Achieving Competitive Advantage:
The need for faster access to business information Billions
of dollars have been spent on enterprise applications such
as Oracle Applications,Siebel eBusiness Applications and
PeopleSoft to replace legacy applications, improve efficiencies
and gain greater competitive advantage. Millions more have
been spent installing and customizing these applications
to meet each company’s unique business requirements.
Above and beyond the improved efficiencies, a much greater
potential lies within this substantial investment and remains
largely untapped. According to ForresterResearch, the next
wave of competitive advantage will come from empowering
front line decision makers with the information that lives
within these powerful systems.1Similarly, The Butler Group
believes that business intelligence (BI) arises from thesynergy
between decision makers and the tools they employ. True
BI systems encompass not only the tools and technologies
that support quality decision-making, but also the decision
makers themselves. Once data is taken from a variety of
sources and integratedwith other relevant data, that information
must be delivered to the decision maker in away that can
be meaningfully used and analyzed. When business users can
begin toobtain rapid answers to their questions, business
intelligence becomes a strategicweapon.2A faster-paced market,
a shifting business model, and an investor community that demands
real-time information on a company’s status are only
a few of the concerns faced by today’s executives and
managers. With mergers, acquisitions and new business initiatives,
the need to access vital information only increases. Certainly,
the amount ofdata stored will continue to escalate, along
with the number of users and their increasedrequirements
for use of that data. According to a META Group analyst,
“Enterpriseshaving difficulty coping with three terabytes
of data today need to quickly find solutions for dealing
with 300 terabytes of data tomorrow.” 3To optimally
guide the corporate ship on the right course, one factor
will remain paramount:the need for data. Users will overwhelm
the IT department in their search foranswers to business
questions unless a cost-effective, self-service solution
is available.
The Roadblocks to Information
The primary roadblock to corporate information
is found within the enterprise application itself. In order
to provide the mission-critical transactional performance
essential forenterprise-wide systems, a typical ERP application
can utilize Byzantine data structures that lock down application
information. To construct a report of even average simplicity,a
significant amount of research and analysis is required
to understand the data and construct the relationships necessary
to produce meaningful information. Implementing off-the-shelf
business intelligence solutions doesn’t avoid this
roadblock.Any customizations made to packaged applications
must also be engineered into the corporation’s BI tool.
To bridge this digital abyss (that is, the gap between reporting tools
and an application’s database), most companies hire
outside consultants and pay thousands—even millions—of
dollars to deploy reporting solutions that typically requirethe
time-consuming development of a data warehouse to integrate
the data (Diagram 1).Since application data structures change
with each upgrade or reconfiguration, those same consultants
are again called on for any customization or reengineering
to the reports. With this approach, the IT department remains
the primary information gatekeeper.
Bridging The Digital Abyss:
The high cost of informed decision makingThere
are many software tools that provide connectivity with databases
to extract dataand deliver or present that data to various
devices — from PCs to PDAs to Internetenabledcellular
phones. Most of these tools focus on the delivery and presentation
ofdata in the form of a report, which may include graphs
and charts. Although these toolsprovide connectivity to
database resources, they do little to address the complexity
ofhow data is stored within the database.Understanding what
data means is not a trivial task. For example, a typical
Oracle ERPApplication consists of more than 9,800 tables
that hold various data elements. To gainaccess to the data,
key tables must be sought out and related to each other
in ways thatwill produce information that is meaningful
to the business user. Getting something ascommon as an invoice,
sales order or purchase order may require combining data
from asmany as 20 different tables. Constructing these relationships
is not easy, and many stepsare required to complete a report.
As one Siebel user explained, “The challenge is gettingreporting
to work like you want. The data tables are complicated.”4For
more complex reports, where information must be drawn from
more than oneapplication, resource-intensive research and
analysis is first necessary to understand thesevarious data
structures. Constructing the right relationships to produce
the right reportcan escalate into weeks of work. With this
level of technical expertise necessary toconstruct a report,
it is no surprise that getting quick answers is out of reach
for thetypical decision maker.
D I G I T A L A B Y S S
Metadata — The Foundation for Information
AccessWith an increasing number of people at many levels
of an organization requiring accessto relevant information
for planning and reporting purposes, metadata provides an
idealsolution to easily manage user connections and security,
to map and route requests fordata to the appropriate data
resource, and to insulate users from the complexities of
howthe physical data is stored.To put it simply, metadata
is descriptive information about data. If used for reportingpurposes,
metadata can provide non-technical users a view into corporate
databases,translating technical jargon into familiar, understandable
business terminology.Metadata can include information about
what a specific data item means (context),where it is located
(data mapping), and who can access it (security). One of
the mostfamiliar examples of metadata is the file name used
to save a computer document.Since the location and context
of data are unique to each corporation, the metadata usedmust
be unique as well. Many commercially available BI solutions
provide genericmetadata templates (such as Business Object’s
Rapid Deployment Templates [RDTs]) asa starting point, but
fail to provide tailored metadata that includes the essential
connectivitywith any customizations that might have been
made to the application. Theprimary challenge with generic
metadata templates is cost-effectively mapping them to acustomized
application, and then managing their continued integrity
throughout businessprocess changes, mergers or application
upgrades.The Noetix Enterprise Technology Suite —
Faster, easier, more costeffectiveinformation accessThe
Noetix approach is different. Noetix MetaBuilder™
technology automaticallydeciphers the customized application
and constructs a comprehensive set of metadataunique to
that specific implementation (Diagram 2). Since this approach
to bridging thedigital abyss is quickly accomplished and
easily managed, the Noetix solution yields asubstantial
rate of return. There are other benefits to Noetix technology
as well.The Noetix Enterprise Technology Suite (NETS) provides
a comprehensive softwareplatform for metadata management
and integration, which enables corporations tosimplify access
to application data by translating the technical roadblocks
into familiarbusiness terms, easily understandable by non-technical
users.NoetixViews® — Dynamic Intelligent MetadataNoetix’s
flagship product, NoetixViews, is the cornerstone of NETS.
Upon installation,NoetixViews analyzes the application database,
detects custom configurations, catalogsthe data and creates
a comprehensive library of metadata, also known as “business
views.”With NETS, a user does not have to understand
the complicated relationships necessaryto turn data into
information. Users simply base new reports on views that
automaticallyincorporate the location and context of key
data. Technical knowledge such as how toconstruct table
joins, required when using ad hoc query tools, is not necessary.The
amount of information that can be extracted from a report
is directly proportionalto the richness of data relationships
contained in the view upon which the report isbased. That
is, a decision maker looking for a specific answer to his
or her businessquestion can get better results by using
content-rich views, or metadata that containextensive interrelationships
of the data. NoetixViews provides unequaled “out of
box”content when compared to other solutions.A Simplified
Solution for Multiple Data Source ReportingIn addition to
Oracle Applications, Siebel eBusiness Applications and PeopleSoft,
NETSeasily integrates data from other applications and data
sources into a single point ofinformation access. NETS masks
the location of data and the data access details involved,simplifying
the process for the end user. Single-password entry provides
the userwith a seamless login to multiple data sources.For
IT, NETS centralizes administration and securely manages
data access to all corporatedata sources. Database administrators
gain granular control over who can accessspecific data and
are provided with monitoring tools that greatly assist in
optimizingperformance.Access Information from Anywhere —
With AnythingFrom executives and managers to analysts and
casual users, NETS quickly provides acost-effective reporting
solution to empower employees, vendors and customers withdata-driven
decision making. To create, modify or run a report, a user
can simply accessNETS through a Web browser connected to
a corporate intranet or extranet, or theInternet. Since
reports are stored centrally, users can also access the
information fromother devices as well, such as mobile phones,
wireless devices or personal digital assistants.NETS automatically
translates reports to the destination and delivers the informationappropriate
to the device. No report modification is required. This
approachgreatly simplifies the maintenance and management
of reports by allowing a report to bewritten once, and its
results viewed anywhere.Each report within NETS is assigned
a unique URL, which allows users to easily run thereport
within a corporate portal, bookmark a favorite report, send
the link via email, orembed links within online documents.
When the user needs to view the report, thelogin is authenticated
and the information securely delivered.
The Open Reporting Solution
Whatever the reporting tool, NETS’ ability to quickly
bridge the digital abyss can speedthe implementation of
most reporting and analytical tools, including Business
Objects,Brio and Cognos. NETS also provides full support
for Oracle Discoverer as well,providing the highly praised
End User Layer (EUL) Generator option which quicklypopulates
Discoverer’s EUL with extensive content specific to
your Oracle Applications.For business users, the ability
of NETS to dynamically integrate with Microsoft Excelgreatly
improves the usability of this popular reporting tool. Users
can easily embed thereport logic within an Excel workbook
and refresh data in real time5, preserving existingreport
formats. No export of data is necessary. With NETS, access
to business informationdata is only a click away.Noetix
AnswerPoint — Immediate answers to business questionsLeveraging
the power behind NoetixViews, NETS provides hundreds of
click-on,customizable reports covering an extensive collection
of business concerns and quicklyanswering the most common
questions. Instead of calling IT, users can easily modifyNoetix
AnswerPoint reports to fit their individual requirements.
For every question areport answers, the opportunity is presented
for the user to drill down further by applyingfilters or
parameters. Results can be easily distributed or saved for
future use.Unlike other pre-built reports, Noetix AnswerPoint
reports are automatically customizedto your application
upon installation, providing near-immediate usability and
informationaccess for most users. NETS automatically bridges
the digital abyss without costlydevelopment.The Result —
Faster Time to Answers for Noetix CustomersLone Star Steel
CompanyManufacturer of energy, industrial, and automotive
componentsLone Star operates in an extremely price-sensitive
market. To help the company staycompetitive, real-time data
is essential for adjusting manufacturing processes on the
flybased on orders, inventory and factory capacity. Custom
reports were difficult to constructdue to the large number
of customized tables, and a batching process led todiscrepancies
when the same report was run by different users. IT was
overburdenedwith requests for new reports and wanted a new
solution. When Lone Star chose Noetix,the company had moved
to Oracle Applications and needed 200 new custom reports
assoon as possible. NETS was able to easily provide these,
including the difficult crossfunctionalreports required
to draw data from inventory, purchasing and general ledger.NETS
saved Lone Star thousands of dollars in consulting costs
that would otherwisehave been required to develop custom
reports. NETS also delivered all the reports rightto the
users, who can easily modify them to meet their needs.
Franke
International manufacturer of food service equipmentEight
months after installing Oracle Applications, Franke still
needed a reporting solutionthat provided accurate reports
and could be easily used by non-technical users.After evaluating
several solutions, Franke selected NETS. The solution was
implementedin days, and provided more than 300 financial
end users with immediate access toinformation residing in
their Oracle Applications. Report development costs weresignificantly
lower and less time consuming than if the company had hired
consultants togenerate each custom report.
Florida Rock
Provider of concrete and concrete productsFlorida Rock had
used NoetixViews since 1998 and wanted a comprehensive solutionthat
would make custom reports available to more users without
increasing the burdenon its IT department. By upgrading
to NETS, Florida Rock could use NoetixAnswerPoint as an
effective tool for end users, regardless of their level
of technicalexpertise. NETS also enabled IT to easily manage
reports derived from multiple disparatedata sources by centralizing
management and security of the various systems.
Matsushita
Producer of electronic and electric productsMatsushita
had been using Oracle Discoverer and had experienced difficulty
in creatingcustom reports. Users found Oracle’s table
field names confusing, and reliable reportswere cumbersome
and time-consuming to create. Matsushita was also preparing
for an11i upgrade, and had not yet developed its report
migration strategy. By installingNETS prior to the upgrade,
Matsushita estimates that it will save more than $1.2 millionover
the next three years by avoiding consulting costs required
to regenerate customreports and develop new ones.The Payoff
— Over 75% Return on InvestmentCompanies that choose
NETS typically see a return on investment of more than 75%within
the first six months in report generation alone. By bridging
the digital abyssbetween application data and end user information,
NETS greatly reduces the coststypically associated with
creating new reports. With NETS, decision makers are empoweredto
answer their own business questions and IT’s role
as information gatekeeper isminimized.
Protecting the Report Investment
Upgrading an enterprise application can drastically damage
existing customized reports.With each new version of an
application come new data structures, which break existingreport
connections and require extensive re-work to restore report
integrity. Hiringconsultants or diverting IT resources to
reengineer the reports adds significantly to thecost of
application upgrades. The additional time involved in getting
the reports up andrunning again may also disrupt the flow
of information to decision makers. At best, thisreport migration
can be inconvenient to the end users. At worst, the delay
can affectimportant business decisions because critical
information is not available when it isneeded.Companies
utilizing NETS for reporting protect their investment in
custom reportsfrom these changes. With NETS, changes to
the data structure can be detected byregenerating the views.
Low Total Cost of Ownership
The largest cost component of any software is managing and
maintaining the solution.By providing IT with a centralized
platform to manage metadata and user access, NETSlowers
the cost of providing application information to an increasing
number of usersand simplifies upgrades, auditing and security
management. For companies utilizingNETS, providing new users,
partners and customers with information is more costeffective.And
for the decision maker, access to information is easier,
without extensivetraining normally required to create custom
reports.The maintenance cost of NETS is also extremely low
because the user componentsrequire no client-side software.
The implementation and maintenance costs are the samewhether
there are ten users accessing data or 10,000. Once NETS
is installed within adepartment or corporation, anyone with
access to the Internet can begin answering theirown questions.For
more information on the Noetix solution or for a no-obligation
cost savings quote, visitwww.noetix.com, or call (Toll-free)
866-4NOETIX. |
