With the primary goal of putting business insight capabilities in the hands of everyone who needs them, we built our business insight solution on SQL Server, SharePoint, and Excel with PowerPivot – tools commonly used throughout most organizations which provide many benefits:
- SQL Server includes powerful reporting and analytics capabilities.
- PerformancePoint Server with SharePoint allows users to drill through data via web browsers and to publish reports and documents to central libraries where data is easier to track, store, and manage.
- Excel uses IT-defined data connections and data mining add-ins so analysts can quickly perform ad hoc analyses to identify real-time trends that aren’t visible in canned reports.
Productivity improvement is central to our business insight solution, enabled primarily by the ability to create customized, interactive dashboards that collect data from multiple sources (structured and unstructured) and present it in one timely, consolidated view. Beyond that, PerformancePoint Server scorecards keep people aligned with goals and drive accountability, while strategy maps allow management to monitor performance against specific metrics. And every step of the way, SharePoint integration allows people everywhere in the organization to easily find and share data, collaborating whenever and wherever they need to.