Barclay's Implementation Case Study

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

BARCLAY'S IMPLEMENTATION CASE STUDY

Contents

Introduction 3

Microsoft Business Intelligence 3

Business Intelligence in Practice 4

Business Intelligence in Performance Management (Quinn 2010) 7

Key Problem areas in BI Implementation 9

BI Opportunities in Financial Services 11

Barclays Case Study 12

Ridigan 15

Issue 15

Interface Architecture 16

Solution Implementation 17

Benefits 18

Future Trends in Business Intelligence 19

Summary 19

Abbreviations 20

References 20

Introduction

Business Intelligence (BI) is term that encompasses architectures, tools, databases, applications, and methodologies. BI's major objective is to provide interactive access of the data to its users. By analysing historical and current data, analysts get better way of identifying the issues and better directions to resolve them. Analysts can also forecast about the future using this information. The process of BI is transformation of data into appropriate information then the transformation of information to decisions and finally actions.

The term BI was coined by the Gartner Group in the mid 1990s.The concept started much earlier in 1970s in the Management Information systems (MIS).But MIS had no analytical capabilities. By 2005,the artificial intelligence capabilities were included into BI systems (Turban, Sharda et al. 2008).There was a need of the hour to perform analysis of the data for there to be concrete proofs of the conclusions drawn by the analysts. Therefore the introduction of the BI was a major technological breakthrough.

Microsoft Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence provides a way to utilise the data available in a highly effective manner. Microsoft Corporation provides a set of business intelligence services which are well integrated with the web applications developed using Microsoft .Net framework. These services include: SQL Server reporting services (SSRS), SQL Server Integration services (SSIS) and SQL Server Analysis services (SSAS).With SSRS interactive, tabular, matrix, graphical, multidimensional reports can be created and deployed. The reports can be accessed as excel, PDF, XML and HTML. These reports have rich API (Application programming interface).SSIS is an ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) service that is used to extract data from various sources, transform into different forms and load where ever required. SSAS is used for data mining and data warehousing i.e. getting data from various data sources and managing and analysing data. (Microsoft) Barclays chose Microsoft BI software to implement Business Intelligence over the alternatives for its rich functionality, high performance, strong compatibility with tools already in use and extremely competitive total cost of ownership.

Business Intelligence in Practice(Williams and Williams 2007)

In the 1990's there was an emergence of data warehousing(DW) which is means of organising data obtained from the Information systems. The investment required in the DW projects was much more than the return the organizations obtained after its implementation. One solution to this quest was the newly introduced technology Business Intelligence. Organizations realised that to get maximum return on investment (ROI), ROI analysis could be done in BI projects from initial stages onwards for example a BI project like Forecasting. However, BI projects won't generate revenue benefits until and unless the forecasting is actually used in the operations process.

Some of the major companies that have taken this approach and got results are Avnet, Barclays, BellSouth, Ford, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Nationwide, and Sears. The BI programs have helped them to drive revenues, reduce costs, or both.

For all the businesses in general the main focus is to improve performance and increase revenue.

This is illustrated by the following diagram:

Some of the Business Intelligence project examples in financial sectors are Historical budget/forecast/actual revenue/expense/profit information, Prior years' expenses by business unit, core process, general ledger accounting, and so forth Accounts receivable aging information. Some of the Business analysis examples in financial sector are Budget analysis, Accounts receivable aging analysis, Customer receivable aging analysis, uncollected funds analysis, Revenue analysis, and Expense analysis. This analysis improved budget forecasting and performance and decreased expenses.

Businesses perform the Business value analysis of the BI initiative that they plan to implement. William's suggest that following analysis needs to be done

 BI opportunity analysis: This includes the environmental analysis, industry analysis, and business strategy review with a comprehensive assessment of the available BI tools capabilities to enable critical strategies and support key business processes to increase revenue and reduce costs.

 BI readiness assessment: Readiness assessment instruments are applied to check organizational, business, and technical readiness to provide the data required as input to the BI applications to be used.

 Process engineering: Determines and specifies the actual use of BI applications in the context of the management and operational processes to plan, control, measure, manage, and improve the business processes of the organization that are related to increasing revenues and reducing costs.

 ROI analysis: Uses investment cost estimates and discounted cash flow analysis to estimate the net present value of after-tax cash flows that will result from the investment in a BI initiative.

 Change analysis: Extends the results of process engineering by assessing the degree of process change required, the degree of individual change required,