Proximal business intelligence on the semantic web

This is the post-print version of this article. The official version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2010 Springer.Ubiquitous information systems (UBIS) extend current Information System thinking to explicitly differentiate technology between devices and software components with relation to people and process. Adapting business data and management information to support specific user actions in context is an ongoing topic of research. Approaches typically focus on providing mechanisms to improve specific information access and transcoding but not on how the information can be accessed in a mobile, dynamic and ad-hoc manner. Although web ontology has been used to facilitate the loading of data warehouses, less research has been carried out on ontology based mobile reporting. This paper explores how business data can be modeled and accessed using the web ontology language and then re-used to provide the invisibility of pervasive access; uncovering more effective architectural models for adaptive information system strategies of this type. This exploratory work is guided in part by a vision of business intelligence that is highly distributed, mobile and fluid, adapting to sensory understanding of the underlying environment in which it operates. A proof-of concept mobile and ambient data access architecture is developed in order to further test the viability of such an approach. The paper concludes with an ontology engineering framework for systems of this type – named UBIS-ONTO

Solutions for decision support in university management

The paper proposes an overview of decision support systems in order to define the role of a system to assist decision in university management. The authors present new technologies and the basic concepts of multidimensional data analysis using models of business processes within the universities. Based on information provided by scientific literature and on the authors’ experience, the study aims to define selection criteria in choosing a development environment for designing a support system dedicated to university management. The contributions consist in designing a data warehouse model and models of OLAP analysis to assist decision in university management.university management, decision support, multidimensional analysis, data warehouse, OLAP

Supply Chain Digitalization – Optimizing The Factory Material Flow

Nykypäivän kiristynyt kilpailu ja edistyneet toimitusketjut edellyttävät entistä parempaa tomistusketjun digitalisointia parantamaan tehokkuutta, toimistusvarmuutta ja yrityksen kannattavuutta. Toimitusketjun digitalisoinnin avulla voidaan tukea reaaliaikaisesti muuttuvaa kysyntää valmistusyksikössä, luomalla älykäs toimitusketju joka tukee kysyntälähtöistä arvoketjua. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää ja esittää kohdeyritykselle mahdolliset toiminallisuudet ja tuotteet SAP S/4HANA:sta jotka tukevat kohdeyrityksen nykyisiä ja suunniteltuja toimitusketjun prosesseja. Työssä tutkitaan hankinnasta, varastonhallintaan ja valmistukseen liittyviä toiminallisuuksia. Toiminnallisuudet analysoidaan kohdeyrityksen näkökulmasta ja verrataan vaatimuksiin, joita kohdeyrityksessa nostetaan esille. Tutkielman teoreettinen osuus pohjautuu toimitusketjun ja ERP SAP uuteen tuotteeseen SAP S/4HANA. Toimitusketjun osuudessa tuodaan esille, kuinka vaatimukset Toimitusketju 4.0 ja Teollisuus 4.0 voidaan nähdä suuntaviivoina SAP S/4HANA:n kehitykselle. Empiirinen osuus jakautuu kahteen tutkimuskysymykseen: Mitkä ovat tulevaisuuden mahdollisuudet visualisoida, arvioida ja optimoida toimitusketjua SAP S/4HANA ydintoiminnoilla? Mitä hyötyä kohde-yritys voi saavuttaa ottamalla käyttöön SAP S/4HANA laajennetut toiminallisuudet? Työn tuloksena saatiin ymmärrys SAP S/4HANA tuotteesta ja sen mahdollisuuksista toimitusketjun osalta. SAP S/4HANA tuotteena tukee monia kohdeyrityksen vaatimuksia ylätasolla, mutta vaatii konkreettisempia tutkimuksia ja testausta kohdeyrityksen työskentely ympäristössä sekä pitäisi hyödyntää kohdeyrityksen dataa.Today’s increasing competition and advanced supply chain needs better digitized supply chain to improve efficiency, on time delivery and business profitability. Supply chain digitalization enable to have real- time optimized supply chain. Supply chain management supporting the variable manufacturing unit demand by creating smart supply chain that supports the demand-driven value chain. The purpose of the study is to investigate and present how the SAP S/4HANA functionalities and products could support the case company and defined supply chain processes. The study explores supply chain from purchasing, inventory management to manufacturing. Functionalities are analysed from case company perspective and are compared to requirements what case company has raised up. Theoretical chapters focus on the supply chain and ERP SAP new product SAP S/4HANA. Supply chain chapter is divided to Supply 4.0 and Industry 4.0 to bring up the view how the SAP S/4HANA is aligned with these topics. Empirical part is divided into two research questions: What are the future capabilities to visualize, evaluate and optimize the supply chain including the core functionalities of the SAP S/4HANA? What benefits the case company can achieve by implementing the extended functionalities of the SAP S/4HANA? As a result of the study a good understanding of the SAP S/4HANA product and the possibility related to supply chain was reached. SAP S/4HANA as a product supports most of the requirements from case company in high level but requires more specific research and testing in company environment with real company data

SOA, SoBI & EDA - Paradigms for Integration Capabilities of BI Platform

A Business Intelligence (BI) provider may offer a basic solution, a packed application or a comprising BI platform which integrates components from individual technologies in a synergic system. The providers’ tendency is to standardize the instruments offered on a single server platform. The article analyzes the integration capabilities and problems of BI platforms, emphasizes the differences between emergent technologies and suggests integration solutions. The analysis is useful both to the providers of BI solutions - in order to develop some agile platforms, as well as to their users - representing an important factor in selecting the solution. In addition, the conclusions to be drawn will emphasize the tendencies from the BI market and will represent the support in creating some agile platforms.Business Intelligence, agile platform, integration, metadata management, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Event Driven Architecture (EDA)

Internal warehouse management system in Tabaqueira (Philip Morris International)

Estágio realizado na Tabaqueira (Philip Morris International), e orientado pelo Eng. António Marcelo GonçalvesTese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Industrial e Gestão. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence: Comparative Analysis of Olap tools

Data Warehouse applications are designed basically to provide the business communities with accurate and consolidated information. The objective of Data Warehousing applications are not just for collecting data and reporting, but rather for analyzing, it requires technical and business expertise tools. To achieve business intelligence it requires proper tools to be selected. The most commonly used Business intelligence (BI) technologies are Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and Reporting tools for analyzing the data and to make tactical decision for the better performance of the organization, and more over to provide quick and fast access to end user request. This study will review data warehouse environment and architecture, business intelligence concepts, OLAP and the related theories involved on it. As well as the concept of data warehouse and OLAP, this study will also present comparative analysis of commonly used OLAP tools in Organization

Automating Business Process

Consistent presentation of the information is necessary to align stakeholders around the scope of the Program and formally gain their commitment. Reports play a major role in decision making and future planning for a financial teams and program directors. Generally, data is available when a transaction occurs and volume of data grows along with the organization. Maintaining historical and current data for reporting to stakeholders is a tough task and at times companies fail to report data accurately. Maintaining automated reporting for different modules of an organization in an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is one way of providing accurate data reporting to business. There are many tools in current day market to report data but SAP reporting tools provide a better solution according to business requirements. SAP Business Objects (SAP BO) is one of the leading SAP reporting tools that provide a complete pack of solution to the client. Since this organization already had a huge implementation of SAP Business Warehousing (SAP BW), implementing of SAP BO on top of SAP BW is a easy solution and cost effective too. As a part of this project, elimination of highly complex reporting and replacement of obsolete technologies was also considered

Review of modern business intelligence and analytics in 2015: How to tame the big data in practice?: Case study - What kind of modern business intelligence and analytics strategy to choose?

The objective of this study was to find out the state of art architecture of modern business intelligence and analytics. Furthermore the status quo of business intelligence and analytics' architecture in an anonymous case company was examined. Based on these findings a future strategy was designed to guide the case company towards a better business intelligence and analytics environment. This objective was selected due to an increasing interest on big data topic. Thus the understanding on how to move on from traditional business intelligence practices to modern ones and what are the available options were seen as the key questions to be solved in order to gain competitive advantage for any company in near future. The study was conducted as a qualitative single-case study. The case study included two parts: an analytics maturity assessment, and an analysis of business intelligence and analytics' architecture. The survey included over 30 questions and was sent to 25 analysts and other individuals who were using a significant time to deal with or read financial reports like for example managers. The architecture analysis was conducted by gathering relevant information on high level. Furthermore a big picture was drawn to illustrate the architecture. The two parts combined were used to construct the actual current maturity level of business intelligence and analytics in the case company. Three theoretical frameworks were used: first framework regarding the architecture, second framework regarding the maturity level and third framework regarding reporting tools. The first higher level framework consisted of the modern data warehouse architecture and Hadoop solution from D'Antoni and Lopez (2014). The second framework included the analytics maturity assessment from the data warehouse institute (2015). Finally the third framework analyzed the advanced analytics tools from Sallam et al. (2015). The findings of this study suggest that modern business intelligence and analytics solution can include both data warehouse and Hadoop components. These two components are not mutually exclusive. Instead Hadoop is actually augmenting data warehouse to another level. This thesis shows how companies can evaluate their current maturity level and design a future strategy by benchmarking their own actions against the state of art solution. To keep up with the fast pace of development, research must be continuous. Therefore in future for example a study regarding a detailed path of implementing Hadoop would be a great addition to this field

How can the Business Intelligence system be developed at YIT?

The main purpose of this thesis is to improve the Business Intelligence (BI) reporting system at YIT Group. The system features, information quality and usability have been monitored in order to find improvement needs. The objective was approached by a survey and exploring the possibilities that Business Intelligence can generally offer. The survey was carried out by a questionnaire via e-mail. The questionnaire was sent to 60 out of the 500 active system users across the Nordic countries inside YIT Group. The sample of the user group consists of financial personnel and management, who can be divided inside the user group to management users, process owners, key users and end users. 14 out of 60 users answered the survey. The study discovered that there is room for improvements. Especially the system performance should be more efficient, a variety of reports should be available and the graphical details and lack of features in the user interface require more examination for better usability. By developing these basic features the system usage could be improved. Despite the problems that arose, the users have set large expectations on the new reporting system in the future. According to the survey, the system is widely used at YIT and it is a key system for reporting, planning and analysing on all levels and in all sectors. Building a better system should start from setting the objectives and slowly move forward by developing the features that need improvements. In this study ideas and remarks from the users are analysed and presented to give the right direction for the system development in the future.Miten Business Intelligence -järjestelmää voidaan kehittää YIT:llä? Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena on parantaa YIT Konsernissa käytössä olevaa Business Intelligence (BI) -raportointijärjestelmää. Parannettavaa on etsitty tiedon laadun, käytettävyyden ja sisällöllisten ominaisuuksien osa-alueilta. Tavoitteeseen on pyritty YIT:n työntekijöille laaditulla kyselyllä ja tutkimalla järjestelmän mahdollisuuksia yleisesti. Kysely toteutettiin sähköpostitse käyttäen kyselylomaketta. Kyselylomake lähetettiin 60:lle järjestelmän aktiiviselle käyttäjälle 500 aktiivisen käyttäjän kokonaismäärästä. Otanta koostui talouden ja johtotason henkilöistä, jotka jakautuvat käyttäjäryhmässä johtotason käyttäjiin, prosessin omistajiin, avainkäyttäjiin ja loppukäyttäjiin. Kyselyyn vastasi 14 käyttäjää 60:stä. Tutkimus osoitti että järjestelmän parannuksille on tarvetta. Järjestelmän suorituskyky pitäisi olla tehokkaampi, raporttivalikoima pitäisi olla laajempi sekä graafinen ulkoasu ja käyttöliittymän yksityiskohtien puutokset vaatisivat tarkastelua paremman käytettävyyden kannalta. Näitä perusasioita kehittämällä koko järjestelmän käyttöä pystyttäisiin parantamaan. Esille tulleista puutteista huolimatta käyttäjät odottavat paljon uudelta raportointijärjestelmältä tulevaisuudessa. Kyselyssä tuli esille, että järjestelmä on laajasti käytössä ja se on tärkeä järjestelmä raportointiin, suunnitteluun ja analysointiin kaikilla tasoilla ja toimialoilla YIT:n organisaatiossa. Paremman järjestelmän rakentaminen olisi syytä aloittaa tavoitteista ja edetä parantamalla yksityiskohtia esille tulleiden kehityskohteiden osalta. Tässä tutkimuksessa käyttäjien ideat ja huomiot on analysoitu ja esitelty antamaan kehitykselle oikea suunta tulevaisuudessa