Analytical tools give businesses the big picture

Software Magazine, Spring, 2002 by Elizabeth U. Harding

Agility is key to survival in A today's business world. Part of being agile includes the ability to change course or make adjustments based on performance, both actual and projected. Little wonder then that the business intelligence tools market is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 27%, from $3.6 billion in 2000 to $11.9 billion in 2005, according to International Data Corp., Framingham, Mass. Within the business intelligence tools segment, end-user query and reporting will represent 52% of market revenues by 2005, and online analytical processing (OLAF) will represent 27%, according to IDC.

Today, business intelligence tools are giving companies like AXA Financial and MuseumShop.com quick and more comprehensive views of their performance, without requiring programming expertise.

For example, AXA Financial Inc., New York City, a world-leading financial services organization with about $400 billion in assets under management, was looking for a better way to monitor and reward employee performance. AXA Financial's business group, in charge of national implementation of financial planning, wanted a quick and easy way to see how each of its 18 regions throughout the U.S. was performing. The company developed the Virtual Report Center to do just that.

"We developed the Virtual Report Center as a management tool to help facilitate the periodic review of key metrics," says Eve Giannoutsos, AXA Financial assistant vice president. "We wanted to see these metrics through tabular as well as graphics representations in order to monitor and reward performance."

To build the Virtual Report Center, AXA Financial evaluated analytical software tools. Ease of use was high on the criteria list, as was the ability to integrate with the Hyperion Essbase multidimensional database, an OLAP solution from Hyperion Solutions Corp., Sunnyvale, Calif., which the company was already using.

AXA Financial decided on the Alphablox analytics software tool from Alphablox Corp., Mountain View, Calif. According to Giannoutsos, putting Alphablox at the heart of the Virtual Report Center was essential to providing an easy way for management to get an instant bird's eye view on how regions performed.

Alphablox is component-based and written entirely in Java. Its InLine Analytics infrastructure software, which allows the analysis of key business indicators "in line" with business processes as they are happening, has an open and modular approach to embedding analytics into a Web-based infrastructure.

"The system gives management an immediate graph and tells them which regions are in jeopardy of not meeting their goals," says Giannoutsos. Getting a quick picture of performance by region was very important. Before, we had to deal with a lot of different lengthy reports."

The company started software development of the Virtual Report Center in December 2000 and rolled out the system last March. Although ultimately very successful, Giannoutsos says that there were some hurdles and challenges to overcome.

"We developed the application very quickly in an environment that constantly changes," says Giannoutsos. "This drained development efforts. Also, our data wasn't always as clean and as available as we would have liked."

Another challenge was to define and agree on reports. "We knew what we wanted to report on, but couldn't always put our finger on it," says Giannoutsos. "One way of working this out was to assemble a group of people from various departments. We formed a liaison with the business users in the field, people from IT, and consultants doing software development."

Giannoutsos says the project also had a lot of support from senior management, which contributed to a successful implementation.

AXA Financial is a member of the AXA Group, a global company with operations in 60 countries.

Analyzing Online Marketing Metrics

Analytical tools are not just for traditional businesses. E-tailers can benefit from better and more timely access to accurate information, which in turn can enhance customer service.

For MuseumShop.com, like AXA Financial, finding a reporting and analytical tool that was easy to use was key. The company, headquartered in Arlington, Mass., is the largest online source for museum products from the world's finest museums and cultural institutions. Although the e-tailer already had a robust analytical tool, it was too complex and required too many resources to be useful.

"We were in search of a tool that would be simple to use in terms of how you get to the data, how you are able to utilize the data," says Mitchell Massey, CEO. "We didn't want to keep dedicating a full-time person to a very complex analytical system."

After reviewing a number of tools, Massey says, he opted for Buystream Merchant from Buystream, San Francisco, which gives MuseumShop.com the ability to measure important and complex business processes. Buystream Merchant analyzes and reports on visitors, their online behavior, and the products they buy in real time. While not as robust as the company's previous analytical tool, it was easier to use, Massey says. "It's a matter of balance between how much robustness you need in relationship to the amount of effort to manage the system and the process," says Massey.