An Introduction Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Overview V1.

Neeraj Saini

An Introduction To Oracle Business Intelligence Applications

Introduction
This article aims to provide a functional and technical overview for Oracle Business Intelligence Applications for providing an understanding for Functional and technical users Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications are complete, prebuilt BI solutions that deliver intuitive, role-based intelligence throughout an organization. These solutions enable organizations to gain more insight and greater value from a range of data sources and applications including Oracle E Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and third party systems such as SAP. Oracle BI Applications are built on the Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition, a comprehensive and market leading BI platform. This enables organizations to realize the value of a packaged BI application, such as rapid deployment, lower TCO, and built-in best practices, or to build custom BI applicationsall on one common BI foundation. Catered Functional Areas Oracle Business Intelligence Applications support over a dozen different functional areas with complete, pre-built, best-practice analytics, and a rich set of KPIs, metrics and analytic workflows. By accessing data from across the enterprise and delivering deep insight directly to business users, Oracle Business Intelligence Applications enable faster and more informed decisions that help the organization optimize resources, reduce costs, and improve the effectiveness of front-and -back-office activities ranging from sales to human resources (HR) to procurement. Oracle's ERP Analytics help front line managers improve cash flow, control expenses, manage headcount and employee performance, stream-line spend and supply chain operations, and track the financial performance of major projects. Oracle's CRM Analytics provides fact-based insight into the entire sales process and into product demand, customer price sensitivity, and overall pricing effectiveness. They enable firms to manage and track campaign performance, and to segment and retain the most valuable customers. Organizations can assess the effectiveness of loyalty promotions and partner relationships, track and analyze key service center metrics, and generate a complete picture of contact center performance
ERP Analytics Industry Applications

Oracle Financial Analytics Oracle Human Resources Analytics Oracle Primavera P6 Analytics Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics Oracle Project Analytics Oracle Spend Classification Analytics Oracle Supply Chain and Order Management Analytics CRM Analytics

Oracle US Federal Financial Analytics Retail Analytics

Oracle Retail Merchandising Analytics

Oracle Sales Analytics Oracle Service Analytics Oracle Marketing Analytics

An Introduction Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Overview V1.0

Neeraj Saini

Oracle Contact Center Analytics

Oracle Loyalty Analytics Oracle Price Analytics

Fig 1 -An Order Management Dashboard Displaying Various Related analytics

Business Transforming Benefits Of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications

Business Drivers
Accelerate BI deployment time and reduce IT costs

OBIA Enables You to

Reduce or eliminate time needed to define user requirements, analyze source systems, design data models, write ETL code, and build reports by leveraging pre-built maps, models, and metrics Streamline ongoing system administration and change management

An Introduction Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Overview V1.0

Neeraj Saini

Align decision making across all parts of the organization

Perform cross-functional analysis to understand cause and effect relationships between key performance indicators across different departments Make informed decisions based on consistent definitions, views, metrics, and calculations Highlight pending receipts and disbursements to reduce the amount and maturity of revolving credit required Identify late payers more quickly to target for more aggressive collections Identify vendors who could be paid more slowly without harming operations Identify profitable and unprofitable products, promotions, sales channels, and customers Identify loss leaders that drive sales of other, more profitable products Understand the efficacy of marketing campaigns, promotions, and loyalty programs

Conserve cash and improve cash flow

Increase customer profitability, satisfaction, and loyalty

What Is Oracle BI Applications?

Oracle BI Applications is a prebuilt business intelligence solution. Oracle BI Applications supports Oracle sources, such as Oracle E-Business Suite Applications, Oracle's Siebel Applications, Oracle's PeopleSoft Applications, and non-Oracle sources, such as SAP Applications. If you already own one of the above applications, you can purchase Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle BI Applications to work with the application. Oracle BI Applications also provides complete support for enterprise data, including financial supply chain and workforce sources. These enterprise applications typically source from both Oracle data sources, such as Oracle EBS and PeopleSoft and non-Oracle data sources, such as SAP. Oracle BI Applications consists of the following components.

Component
DAC Repository metadata files Embedded Informatica ETL tool Prebuilt Informatica content Prebuilt metadata content

Description
This content includes repository objects such as tables, subject areas, execution plans, and tasks, and is contained in XML files. This is a third-party application that performs the extract, transform, and load (ETL) operations for the data warehouse. This content includes ETL repository objects, such as mappings, sessions, and workflows, and is contained in the Informatica Repository file (Oracle_BI_DW_Base.rep). This metadata content is contained in the Oracle BI Applications repository file (OracleBIAnalyticsApps.rpd). This content is contained in the Oracle BI Presentation Services Catalog.

Prebuilt reports and dashboard content

An Introduction Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Overview V1.0

Neeraj Saini

Component
Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse

Description
The prebuilt data warehouse that holds data extracted, transformed, and loaded from the transactional database.

5 .Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse The Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse is a unified data repository for all customer-centric data, which supports the analytical requirements of the supported source systems. The Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse includes the following:

A complete relational enterprise data warehouse data model with numerous prebuilt star schemas encompassing many conformed dimensions and several hundred fact tables. An open architecture to allow organizations to use third-party analytical tools in conjunction with the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse using the Oracle Business Intelligence Server. Prebuilt data extractors to incorporate data from external applications into the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse. A set of ETL (extract-transform-load) processes that takes data from a wide range of source systems and creates the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse tables. The Oracle Business Intelligence Data Warehouse Administration Console (DAC), a centralized console for the set up, configuration, administration, loading, and monitoring of the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse.

Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse Architecture

High-level analytical queries, like those commonly used in Oracle Business Intelligence, scan and analyze large volumes of data using complex formulas. This process can take a long time when querying a transactional database, which impacts overall system performance.For this reason, the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse was constructed using dimensional modeling techniques to allow for fast access to information required for decision making. The Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse derives its data from operational applications and uses Informatica PowerCenter to extract, transform, and load data from various supported transactional database systems (OLTP) into the High-level analytical queries, like those commonly used in Oracle Business Intelligence, scan and analyze large volumes of data using complex formulas. This process can take a long time when querying a transactional database, which impacts overall system performance.

An Introduction Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Overview V1.0

Neeraj Saini

Fig2 - Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse Architecture Components

Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse Architecture Components

The Client tier contains the Informatica PowerCenter client tools and the Oracle BI Data Warehouse Administration Console (DAC). DAC is a command and control interface for the data warehouse to allow for set up, configuration, administration, and monitoring of data warehouse processes.

The Server tier contains the following:

DAC Server. Executes the instructions from the DAC Client. The DAC Server manages data warehouse processes, including scheduling, loading of the ETL, and configuring the subject areas to be loaded. It dynamically adjusts its actions based on information in the DAC Repository. Depending on your business needs, you might incrementally refresh the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse once a day, once a week, once a month, or on another similar schedule.

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DAC Repository. Stores the metadata (semantics of the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse) that represents the data warehouse processes. Informatica PowerCenter Services:

Integration Services - The Integration Service reads workflow information from the repository. The Integration Service connects to the repository through the Repository Service to fetch metadata from the repository.

An Introduction Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Overview V1.0

Neeraj Saini

Repository Services - The Repository Service manages connections to the PowerCenter Repository from client applications. The Repository Service is a separate, multi-threaded process that retrieves, inserts, and updates metadata in the repository database tables.

Informatica Repository. Stores the metadata related to Informatica workflows.

The Database tier contains the OLTP and OLAP databases.

Summary Oracle Business Intelligence Applications are powerful Tool that is enabling Organizational Decision makers To take prompt and effective decisions based on actual Key Performance Indiactaors ( KPIs) of organization, Business Intelligence Applications improve the overall Operational capability as well as Customer Satisfaction by providing the greater insight into organizational areas that greatly impact enterprise productivity , The ease of deployment, lower TCO ( Total cost of ownership (TCO) , Integration with wide variety of ERP solution makes it a Key Strategic must have tool for an organization to have an competitive edge . Acknowledgement

The author gratefully acknowledges the support from CSC for providing an opportunity to display capability

References www.oracle.com