Business Intelligence Expertise

Business Intelligence

BI Strategy and Planning

Many companies know they would like to begin making use of BI technologies, but do not know where to start. LBi can come in and perform an analysis of your existing architecture; we will sit down with the business users and discuss goals, wants, and needs; we will understand your business.

After collecting all this information, LBi will formulate a BI Strategy which is unique to your business. We will recommend the appropriate technologies to achieve your BI goals. We will suggest multiple options with varying price points. We will make sure you walk away with all the necessary information to make an informed decision about the future of your BI technical architecture. Then, we will help you implement your strategy and see it through to completion.

Reporting and Analytics

Almost all companies utilize software applications that are continually capturing data about business operations. Many times, these applications have a reporting component with some canned reports which give users a view into some of the captured data. But what happens when a user wants more - when the canned reports aren't good enough? Enter Business Intelligence. LBi can craft a reporting solution, using BI tools, which will allow the users virtually unlimited access to the data collected by their applications.

One of the most frequently requested BI items is Ad-Hoc Reporting. LBi can deliver an Ad-Hoc Reporting tool which enables users to create their own queries against the available data. This enables all users, from beginners to power users, to query for virtually any data they would like. Once the query has been run, the data can be manipulated and analyzed, allowing end-users to create their own professional looking reports.

We can also deliver software solutions which make use of BI to provide powerful analytical tools. One such solution is a BI dashboard. This tool provides end users with a simple and intuitive way to create complex queries. It builds a layer on top of the Ad-Hoc Reporting engine, opening up the ability to design custom queries to even more users.

ETL and Data Warehousing

ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) is the process of taking existing operational data and massaging it into a format more suitable for reporting. Often times, the database structure for an operational software application is just not suited for efficiently running complex BI queries. In addition, a particular application typically is only designed to report on data collected by itself. The use of ETL allows companies to collect and organize data from a host of different sources and combine them into a single data warehouse.

LBi has years of experience consolidating and converting legacy databases into BI warehouses. We can take your existing database(s) and turn them into an efficient and intuitive reporting repository. For more on ETL, see our news story, The Benefits of Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL).

Custom Dashboards

A Custom Business Intelligence Dashboard by LBi Software can add tremendous value to any application. While leveraging the application's existing data, LBi can generate informative and interactive dashboards which will allow you to visualize information in an entirely new way.

A Custom Dashboard will give management the tools they need to analyze patterns and identify trends. The Dashboard can be made up of a number of familiar components, such as pie charts, bar charts, and line graphs, which will provide new insight into existing data.

Most people believe that implementing a Business Intelligence Dashboard requires first purchasing an expensive BI package such as Business Objects or Cognos - this is not the case! LBi can develop a inexpensive Custom Dashboard using your existing database(s).

See below for an example Dashboard from our CaseManager application:

Manager Dashboard - CaseManager - HR Help Desk Call and Case Tracking Software Application

Manager Dashboard - CaseManager - HR Help Desk Call and Case Tracking Software Application

Business Objects Application Framework

In order to facilitate the implementation of BI through the use of Business Objects into web applications, we have created a custom Business Objects framework. This framework encapsulates many of the most powerful and often used features of Business Objects. By building on the existing Business Objects SDKs, we are able to use the framework to rapidly deliver BO solutions without the need to "reinvent the wheel" with each new application. The framework combines functions from many of Business Objects' offerings into a single package which can be leveraged by web applications to provide BI tools to end users.