Business Enlightener(BI for SMEs)

Background:

For smaller businesses Microsoft Excel is a de-facto Business Intelligence tool. Where data is displayed, managed, modified and viewed in a most easy way. But BI protagonist can’t call Microsoft Excel a BI solution. In our opinion SMEs feels that BI tool is costly due to –

High Licensing cost and its maintenance fees. [From top notch BI organizations].
High cost of implementation and lack of qualified professionals who are cost effective and have ability to do remote BI implementation.
High cost of maintenance. (Need to keep qualified resources on Reporting and Dashboarding and cost of retaining them).

Due to the reasons cited above, SMEs feel that BI is not their cup of tea and is mainly profitable for larger companies. While trying to sell licenses to smaller organizations service providers generally suggest Open Source BI due to cost effectiveness. We have seen that the free offerings of open source BI is basic and can’t match with the capabilities of the some top notch BI tools.
Our opinion is once a right BI solution is implemented then Businesses automatically understand the value of it and are not hesitant to do more investment. Therefore the job of a BI implementation company is to suggest a tool which should give SMEs –

Best of reporting and Dashboarding features.
Safe investment (Hundreds of tool exist in the market, there is no guarantee of their survival in future)
Cost effectiveness for current implementation.
Scope of expansion at will.

BDI Systems core team has 9 years of exposure in the field of Business Intelligence esp. with BusinessObjects tool which is most widely deployed BI product in the world. We have evaluated many open source BI and other top notch tools and finally came with the concept of Business Enlightener. We didn’t want to create our own tool and confuse businesses further, we wanted to use the best product available in the market and use it is a cost effective way for organizations to implement BI so that investments are secured.

Introduction:

Business Enlightener is a BI Solution aiming towards showing the real value of BI to SMEs. This portal based solution which internally uses Crystal Reports and Xcelsius ( they both are packaged with Crystal Reports 2008 Visual Advantage License) and thus integrates with Crystal Reports SDKs and Xcelsius is a great product for SMEs and can be implemented at much lesser cost as compared to any other solution in the market.
Business Enlightener has following details:-

A Reporting & Dashboard package to monitor business KPIs.
Snapshot of performance parameters for Executives, enabling them to take information based decisions instantly.
Packaged with following Products & Services:
- Crystal Reports 2008 Visual Advantage (Crystal Reports 2008 + Xcelsius 2008 Engage)
A set of Dashboards & Reports tailored for the organization
Secured portal with access control, to view the Reports & Dashboards and do ‘what-if’ analysis.
Works on MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle databases simultaneously. One can access reports coming out with different data sources of an organization.
Standard Reporting and Dashboarding, specially designed for SAP Business One customers – Planned in Phase II.
Low cost package, Targeted at SMEs, Expandable, can be implemented from offshore.

Crystal Reports is the de-facto standard for the Enterprise (Canned) reporting and Crystal Xcelsius is the de-facto Dashboarding tool in the world, with maximum deployments and belonging to one of the largest company SAP. Therefore Investing in Business Enlightener becomes safe for any customer. Even if they upgrade their BI in future and buy licenses of either BusinessObjects Edge or BusinessObjects Enterprise their efforts on Reports and dashboards are safe.

Architecture of Business Enlightener

This product is a combination of skills of product development (Java/J2EE based Skills), Business Objects SDKs skills (esp. Crystal Reports SDKs), Business Objects implementation Skills (CR and Dashboarding) and understanding of BI needs of Businesses where they have data comings from different types of data sources.

BDI Systems being unique in a way, a company formed by Ex- R&D professional of Business Objects, having skills on product development, Business Objects SDKs, Business Objects implementation and strong know-how in Java/J2EE, could achieve in ideating it and coming with this version in a short time span.

architecture of business enlightner, the cost effective bi solution for smes.affordable bi product portal with integrated xcelsius and crystal reports along with custom made bi dashbords

Business Enlightener Architecture Diagram 1.0

As showed in the architecture diagram, the portal application is developed using latest framework (Struts 2) in J2EE. Ajax based UI and Hibernate to manage database calls.

Connection Manager is the class which manages connections with different data sources. Connection manager knows what all reports are using a particular connection. We can take the source data from different databases and show them in portal using different reports and dashboards.

Using Crystal Reports stand alone license, a developer can create different reports and save them in a machine. These .rpt files can be easily imported in the Enlightener Portal by a simple right click.

Similarly using Xcelisus tool, dashboards can be made on the live data source and those SWF files can be put in the portal by a simple right click and add dashboard files. These dashboards are live and can fetch and show a new data after refresh. See Business Enlightener in action in some screen shots.

Business enlightner Screenshots. Cost effective bi solution for small and medium scale companies.Admin panel tools and options.Screenshot of admin panel showing key BI features and options in the BI tool

The administrative Login to Business Enlightener showing Key features

Cost effective bi products sample dashbord screenshots.Business enlightner dashbord in action an affordable bi portal service offered to small and medium scale companies

Business Enlightener with a dashboard in action

The Portal provides all basic operations which makes the solution more useful:-
1. Intuitive GUI - Easy, smooth and intuitive navigation. One can view dashboard/ reports in entire browser.
2. User Management – This feature helps administrator to create as many users as per your business needs.
3. Role Management – This feature helps in controlling who can access what and helps in maintaining role based security.
4. Privilege Settings – Who can exactly see which reports and dashboards? Using this features administrators can control at the level of reports and dashboards being seen by a particular user.
5. User List – Lists all the users in the organization who can access their BI portal.

Cost effective BI solution.Screenshot of user listings with bi portal access, bi solution with user access control at various levels

Screen shot showing User List

6. New DB Connections - Users can create as many database connections as they want. The portal can support any number of reports and dashboards and any number of databases.

Screenshot creating new db connection for the bi tool business enlightner.low cost bi solution supporting unlimited db connections

Screen Shot Showing New DB Connections Screen

7. DB Connections – This gives the details of all database connections to Administrative User. It has following features for each connections:-
a. Edit Connection
b. Delete Connection
c. Associated Reports - It shows all reports associated with this DB connection.
d. Testing a Connection.

DB connections screen of the bi portal tool.customise and edit db connections get associated bi reports with each of the db connections

Associated bi reports with each db connections of the bi portal tool

Screen Shot showing Associated Reports for a DB Connection.

8. Crystal Reports – The portal consumes .rpt files and shows crystal reports with its LOVs.

BI portal tool with crystal reports support.low priced bi solution suporting crystal reports.works on .rpt files and produces crystal reports list of values

BI tool working with crystal report lov, affordable, slexible, expandable and variety od data source supporting bi tool

Screen Shot showing Crystal Reports LOV in action

9. Xcelsius Dashboards – The portal has capability to show SWF files. The models can be generated on Microsoft Excel or on live data source. When a user refreshes these SWF files, they can see the refreshed data. Using XML connectors we can create live dashboard models. Data can come from any data source or SAP BusinessOne data source.

bi tool with swf support showing xcelsius dashbords.supports modelling through excel or live data source and supports live dashbords through xml connect.cost effective bi tool supporting any data source or sap business one data source

Screen Shots showing dashboard in action (full view and only dashboard view)

another xcelsius dahbord made in the bi portal tool.bi tool supporting swf files

Another dashboard in action

live dashbord in the bi tool business enlightner.connected dashbord made of xcelsius visualisation tool from within business enlightner, the cost effective open source bi portal tool.sales and profit dashbord with pie chart column chart and line chart

Live Dashboard (Connected dashboard) showing Xcelisus in action.

Target Customer Base: ALL SMEs.

1. All SAP Business One Customer – Extremely useful for them since it gives the “WOW” factor to your investment in SAP B1. In some B1 packages, Crystal Reports and Xcelsius licenses are already provided to customers. This makes overall solution a bit cost effective.
2. All customers who want to taste BI in a cautious way with limited budget.
3. All existing CR users who wants to upgrade to Crystal Reports Server.
4. All customers who feel that only Open Source BI can be cost effective.
5. All customers who wants BI from SAP but feels that they can’t invest in Edge Series due to price constraints.

Limitations:

No Scheduling - Prompts can’t be scheduled and due to lack of Crystal reports Server, Scheduling feature are not provided in this portal.
No Ad-Hoc features – Introducing WEBI will make the offering costly. Customer who wants WEBI (AD Hoc querying) needs to buy 5 CAL Edge Series (Basic version).
NO Business Objects Infoview or Platform – here we are consuming only one Crystal Reports Visual Advantage 2008 license and giving our own portal.

Advantages:

Very Low License cost gives Businesses access to SAP Products.
Crystal Reports is the most used Reporting standard in the world.
Xcelsius Dashboards is most deployed Dashboarding tool. There are many organizations who are writing many components on top of this tool to enhance its offerings.
BDI Systems has capability to take requirements and create reports and dashboards remotely as well. This saves huge cost on travel and stay.
Capability of BDI Systems to understand requirements fast and project some report templates and dashboard templates to customers.

Solution Packages Available:

1. Portal Application with one Live Report and Dashboard on single data source and user training to maintain it.
2. Portal application with 3 Live Reports and 3 dashboards on multiple data sources and user training to maintain it.
3. Portal application with 5 Crystal Reports and One Dashboard.
4. Portal application with 5 Crystal Reports and 5 dashboards.
5. Any combination of dashboards and reports and any number of data sources.

Note: Customization or Integration of our portal with other portals is taken as a T&M based contract.

ABOUT BDI Systems

BDI Systems is a young organization, started by Bharat Thakur and run by ex-SAP BusinessObjects senior R&D Professionals.

We have strong development capabilities using Flex/Java/J2EE/C++/.Net based technologies. In past we have developed products with complex architecture and are developing on SAAS based WEB Solution for Telecom Infrastructure Company.

We are best-in-class for implementation of BusinessObjects Tools, integrating them with SAP and creating advanced dash-boards using Xcelisus.
We have developed more than 10 Xcelisus Components. We offer professional services and consultancy on entire BusinessObjects suite of products

For more details contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it