business intelligence and the agile budget

How investing in the right business intelligence software can help you achieve the goal of an agile budgeting and forecasting process, and boost your bottom line.

EMANIO White Paper Winter, 2011 2011 EMANIO, Inc. http://www.emanio.com T. (510) 849-9300

the agile budget | myth or reality?

The concepts of agile budgets or agile forecasting processes are not new. In fact, agility in the budgeting and forecasting process has arguably been a goal of any finance organization since the invention of the accounting ledger centuries ago. The difference

is that over the past four decades the speed at which this agility must be sustained has

multiplied to levels that can no longer be sustained using traditional means. Leading businesses are now managing budget cycles as frequently as a monthly basis, with some attempting to achieve even the elusive just in time cycle where budgets are adjusted

in real-time in order to best respond to changing market and financial dynamics. This

decision-making time compression has been coupled with dramatic increases in data volumes, with some organizations seeing as much as a 40% year-to-year growth in available data. The benefits of moving your budget and forecasting processes to a more flexible, more responsive model are equally well known with adopters often seeing dramatic results. In fact, a 2011 Aberdeen Group survey found that companies that were of financial reports as high as 93%, while traditional businesses that employed a yearly, strict budget cycle were only able to report accuracies of around 70%. The same study found that these dramatic differences lead ultimately to increased market share and, more significantly, much higher profitability. able to change budgets and forecasts on a monthly basis reported an internal accuracy

The benefits of an agile budgeting cycle then are well founded and clearly provide the kind of return on investment any CFO would be proud of presenting at a board meeting. The challenge with achieving this flexible budgeting cycle, however, is in making the right choices in the processes you implement and in selecting the right tools for the job, especially in the area of data analysis and reporting. With data volumes growing, and the time available to make decisions shrinking, being able to analyze data quickly and accurately is of critical need. In fact, the right level of agility in data analysis can be critical. In 2011, companies that adopted self-service BI in support of agile budgeting

EMANIO WhItE PAPEr | SElEctINg BuSINESS INtEllIgENcE fOr MId-SIzEd cOMPANIES, 3 MIStAkES tO AvOId

2011 EMANIO, INc.

methodologies had dramatic benefits over their counterparts who did not. Simple metrics, like the ability to add columns to reports measured in hours instead of days and dashboard modifications measured in days instead of months show the astonishing effect that the right BI tool can have on the speed and accuracy of financial decision-making.

With the benefits of agile budgeting and forecasting established, how does a mid-sized intelligence software may seem like a daunting proposition, there are three critical factors that must be always employed in order to make a selection that will be financially viable and that will provide you with the maximum return on investment (ROI) possible.

company CFO go about selecting the right tool for data analysis? While selecting business

it starts with users | empower users for best results

Empowering line-managers to make decisions. The bottom line of an agile budgeting and forecasting model starts with that sentence. In order to do so, however, an organization must also provide those managers with a tool that makes data discovery, analysis and presentation simple, straight forward and at the same time powerful. Having access to a dashboarding and reporting platform that employees a 100% script-free interface fly with minimal effort in order to analyze data on the fly to help them make decisions. center, these users are able to make impactful decisions on the fly. means that users can take pre-existing reports or create new ad-hoc reports on the Unencumbered by having to funnel report requests through a single, slow reporting

An easy to use platform, however, must provide more than just an intuitive interface that hides the complexities of data analysis. For such a tool to be truly useful it must also allow for the ability to analyze data from multiple sources quickly, easily and without data mashup capability is a cornerstone of companies that are able to manage the growth of data volumes to make better decisions.

having to wait for lengthy data integration processes to be completed. This on the fly

The promise of self-service, however, can also create nightmare scenarios of the wrong response must take security into consideration at such a deep and cohesive level that

data ending up in the hands of the wrong users. A truly viable platform to enable rapid it becomes implicitly trusted by both the CFO and the IT department. Features like the field-level security, the ability to restrict data access based on role or group membership

EMANIO WhItE PAPEr | SElEctINg BuSINESS INtEllIgENcE fOr MId-SIzEd cOMPANIES, 3 MIStAkES tO AvOId

2011 EMANIO, INc.

are cornerstones of agile business intelligence models that allow users to create reports without having to be scrutinized to ensure that sensitive data is protected from prying eyes. Security must also be coupled with performance management. Any agile BI system must be able to quickly and easily attach to production systems, bypassing the costly need systems, however, raises its own set of fears and potential problems. The right BI system

for data warehouses to pool and aggregate data. Connecting directly to your production will allow your IT department to build cascading data filtering and throttling models maximum uptime for all systems connecting to your BI software.

that will give your users the freedom they need, while giving IT the ability to ensure

centralization | ensuring consistency and accuracy

A self-service, agile BI methodology by definition implies a decentralized process. So foster an agile budgeting cycle? The answer lies in the BI platforms ability to put data

how can centralization be a core requirement of any BI platform that can be used to control into the hands of the people that know the most about it - IT. While the process of accessing data and reporting on it should be de-centralized, the fact remains that your IT staff is the single most knowledgeable part of the organization when it comes to your critical tools that the IT department can leverage to enable a truly self-service model: 1. Ease of Access and Integration

data. Any BI solution that lends itself to an agile budgeting process must provide three

The first, and most paramount requirement, is that your BI platform must provide an easy means to attach to any production data source and extract information from it. For a BI platform to foster fast analysis and decision-making, it must allow the IT department to quickly and easily attach to new data sources, expose new areas of already available Features like in-memory data caching, support for advanced technologies like loadkeep up with the growing data volumes as well as with the growing user base. 2. The Ability to Expose Only What is Relevant data and ensure that its all done securely and with the optimal performance possible. balancing and clustering must provide the type of scalability your business will need to

A second, critical aspect, is the ability to segment data in ways that make sense to

individual users and to groups of users. Your IT department must be able to provide

EMANIO WhItE PAPEr | SElEctINg BuSINESS INtEllIgENcE fOr MId-SIzEd cOMPANIES, 3 MIStAkES tO AvOId

2011 EMANIO, INc.

segmented data that provides the relevant information to your users without burdening them with fields and data tables that have no impact on their business. This ability to segregate and present your data in logical views must be easy to use and be equally able to act independently or leverage already available work that your IT team may have done by accessing stored procedures in existing databases or by taking advantage of data cubes that IT may have already built.

3. A Viable Create, Distribute, Modify Model

FInally, a true self-service BI model that fosters an agile management methodology must be able to balance the need for individual managers to report based on immediate need with the reality that most of them have little if any expertise in data analysis. For this

reason, the BI platform should allow you to deploy a model that leverages your internal data analysis skills - be they as business analysts or power users - through a model that allows these users to create reports and dashboards, distribute them to other users, while modify it and re-use it for their own personal analysis. This Create, Distribute and has, while benefiting from the agility it may not have today.

at the same time providing these target users with the ability to take existing content, Modify model allows you to take full advantage of the key skills your business already

collaboration | the backbone of agility in your business

Ultimately the single most important component of an agile budgeting and forecasting

model is the ability of the company to collaborate in near-real time on key decisions that

impact the business. This collaboration process can be hindered or it can be powered by a truly effective collaboration process should make it easy for users to leverage data to begin and engage in collaborative discussions in three critical ways: Report Approval Processes

your choice of business intelligence platform. A BI software platform that helps enable

A report approval process may not seem collaborative, but its the linchpin of delegation. The ability for a user in a position of authority to delegate a task to a second user. With that task completed, the first user can be brought back into the picture for review and final comments to ensure the work was done to expected measures. Your BI platform created by subordinates before those reports are used in larger groups or meetings. should be equally flexible by allowing users in positions of authority to approve reports

EMANIO WhItE PAPEr | SElEctINg BuSINESS INtEllIgENcE fOr MId-SIzEd cOMPANIES, 3 MIStAkES tO AvOId

2011 EMANIO, INc.

Report Commenting

Report commenting, on the other hand, should allow your users to engage in dialog with effectiveness the BI platform must provide for an effective 100% point-and-clik model of identifying comments and creating dialogues between users. Discussion Groups

one another based on information available in dashboards and reports. For maximum

Finally, discussion groups. The idea of discussion groups in business intelligence systems may seem foreign, but its actually the best place for users and employees to engage in near-real time collaborative efforts to analyze data, share ideas, ask for feedback and be able to corroboratively analyze and understand data to ensure better, faster decisionmaking.

conclusion

Agile budgeting, especially for mid-sized businesses, may seem like an idea that, although placed on even the smallest of businesses to react faster, make decisions in shorter

attractive, is simply too difficult to achieve. The reality, however, is that the pressures time-lines and manage ever expanding data volumes mean that being able to align your company budgets to the ever changing realities of the market place are becoming paramount differentiators between successful companies and those that simply survive.

The backbone of any agile budgeting and forecasting process is the ability to attach to,

analyze and act upon the information hidden in data quickly and easily. In order to do this, mid-sized companies must carefully navigate the world of business intelligence software to ensure that the platform they select provides the types of features that will factors to consider in selecting your BI solutions are: Ease of use foster and promote self-service and agility rather than hinder it. Among the most critical

Ease of use, of course, must be measured to be real. In this case, ease of use must be defined through BI systems that provide a 100% script-free environment and that allow users of all kinds of experience levels and capabilities to use and benefit from the platform. Data Centralization

EMANIO WhItE PAPEr | SElEctINg BuSINESS INtEllIgENcE fOr MId-SIzEd cOMPANIES, 3 MIStAkES tO AvOId

2011 EMANIO, INc.

Data centralization must provide your IT department with the tools necessary to attach

to any data source and provide the relevant slices of that data to the appropriate

individuals - all while maintaining tight control over data quality, security and system performance - to ensure that users have access to the data they need to make critical decisions.

Collaboration

Finally, collaboration features must be available to engage your users and ensure that context by all affected users in order to arrive at the most accurate decision possible in the fastest time.

decision-making is based on factual information, shared and viewed in the proper

Armed with a powerful self-service business intelligence platform your business can process that uses available data to empower rapid decision-making.

begin to move towards the ultimate goal of a dynamic, agile budgeting and forecasting

EMANIO WhItE PAPEr | SElEctINg BuSINESS INtEllIgENcE fOr MId-SIzEd cOMPANIES, 3 MIStAkES tO AvOId

2011 EMANIO, INc.