Mobile BI Takes Child Actions in to the Enterpris
S SMARTPHONES AND tablet PCs continue their incursion into the enterprise, IT departments are increasingly becoming asked to supply access
to business information on such devices. The IT sector has cottoned on to
the trend, and one from the notable areas becoming hyped at the moment
is mobile organization intelligence (BI).
But even though the early adopters from the technologies tended towards pushing static reports to devices for example BlackBerrys by way of e mail, it can be
the enhanced visualisation and interactivity possible on bigger-screen
tablet devices-predominantly Apple's iPad-that seem to provide the
most prospective for the future.
"The BI vendors were incredibly rapid to create apps," Gartner analyst
Andreas Bitterer mentioned. "MicroStrategy brought out a mobile application just two or three months soon after the iPad came out, by way of example,
promptly followed by other individuals like IBM, Info Builders, Oracle and
SAP." But Bitterer added that several of the more intriguing offerings
emanate from smaller, newer players like PushBI and MeLLmo (with
Roambi), although he anticipates these newcomers will probably be acquired
by main players inside two years. "The established BI providers
come out with middle-lane user interfaces although they've
the resources to develop a thing compelling, however it could be the creativity from the smaller businesses that shines out at the moment," he said.
Early adopters such as the organizations profiled below are showing that even simple mobile BI can offer substantial advantages. But Ovum
analyst Mike Davis thinks we've a lengthy solution to go before the market
reaches anything like maturity. "At the moment, the effort is largely on replicating desktop BI on smaller mobile devices," he mentioned. "But as
organisations' awareness develops, they are going to commence to put pressure on
vendors to supply richer, real-time, interactive BI on these devices.
But maturity? That's almost certainly 3 to five years away."
PLAYING About WITH MOBILE BI
HTI can be a UK-based toy manufacturer and distributor that supplies key
UK retailers for example Argos, Toys R Us, Tesco and Asda with brandname toys, which includes the Toy Story, Peppa Pig and Hello Kitty merchandise lines. Ensuring that the enterprise has the best stock for the
busy Christmas and summer shopping seasons is no mean feat. With
a three- to four-week lead time to acquire orders from producers
inside the Far East, understanding market place trends in true time is critical to
meeting peaks in demand for distinct products and maximising profit margins.
Back in 2007, all transactions, orders and stock had been handled by
the company's ERP system, which was unable to produce the meaningful real-time reports that business enterprise users necessary. For the subsequent two years, IT director John
Lord worked with UK-based IBM business
partner Enterprise BI to implement a Cognos data warehousing and reporting system that would give the enterprise the information
it necessary, when it needed it. The system uses the Cognos Go Mobile service
to create customised reports for essential
management personnel, including HTI's
sales director, managing director and staff
members; the reports are emailed weekly in a BlackBerry-friendly format.
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