Time for accountants to break up the BI party. By David Carter

I'm a bit surprised by the Microsoft answers. As with all reportng tools you only get out what you put in.

All of the data you wanted to see is available and is easily calculated if it is not. The analysis services and integration services combined can be used to filter out specific data and be made to calculate columns. And you can include as much or as little as you want in your data warehouse.

"IT technologists don’t understand the numbers" is an interesting point. I recently exchanged some comments with Stephane-Robert Langer ( http://blog.srlanger.com/ ) where he observed that IT departments typically manage the storage and connectivity to large volumes of data without being accountable for the values. Conversely, accountants working with the same data are usually less concerned with the database but are accountable for the values and meanings contained.

This seemingly small difference in the perspective of two sets of professionals looking at the same set of data makes a world of difference in practice. I believe too many accountants shy away from technology, because it's the domain of IT, and fail to realise that only they can provide the meaning. The result is IT systems that fail to deliver what is truly required.

BI and OLAP are heavily linked in large corporate systems due to the large number of transactions that need to be summated. As an example if we took an ERP system like SAP, it can process hundreds of thousands of transactions a day. Its coding, processing, data structures etc. are aimed to do this type of work. To produce BI totals, is possible under ERP systems, but it tends to slowdown the response times for normal transactions. So, it is ruled out by the IT Dept. Plus, someone has to put all the SQL queries together to build the BI dashboard.

Enter OLAP, which typically uses a copy of the ERP database and using bulk processing programs (not transaction processing); builds all the total. And typically; David is right; drilldown to transactions is not possible. ‘Open’ OLAP systems provide access to the SQL used, but you need users who are IT literate and can understand these SQL queries. The source of the data can then be ‘seen’ and additional queries entered if required. It would appear that David has encountered a ‘Closed’ OLAP system where this cannot be done; or the sales people didn’t understand the full scope of the product; and that’s not unusual in my experience.

A problem with OLAP is timeliness. The OLAP database is only as new as the latest ERP database copy. This could be 1 day/week/month old.

For SMEs, with to-days high-speed servers and a reduced number of transactions, some of these restrictions do not apply. For one, you don’t need an OLAP database, just a database against which you can run SQL and a module in the ERP system that allows you to build a dashboard from individual SQL results.
You still need a user who can construct the SQL and any supporting SQL to answer ‘drilldown’ questions. But with the right ERP software an SME can have a very effective BI dashboard that can show the latest results almost at once, so timeliness is not a problem.

As a software developer I have paid attention to this BI requirement when developing Acceptum Business Software (http://www.rcl-systems.co.uk). It allows users to construct their own BI dashboard using SQL on any part of the database. When a figure does not look right, you can build another SQL with a report to give the transaction data, or investigate using the normal reporting tools.

BI is too important to be left to just the IT department.

As a member of a firm of accountants who successfully use a BI solution I would make the following comments:

OLAP is only one element of a reporting strategy, but a very powerful one. Its strength is in presenting clear management information from a mass of underlying detail. Traditional transaction reporting systems fail to do this in an efficient and flexible way due to the resources required to process high volumes of source transactions. A complete reporting strategy does need to include elements that cater for detailed reporting where appropriate. It may be that David has misunderstood the scope OLAP is currently designed to address. The OLAP solution should not be criticised for what it doesn’t do, but admired for what it can.

David implies that this technology is new. We have been successfully using this technology for over 4 years. Microsoft should be congratulated for making this technology available to medium to small organisations at a price which represents extremely good value for money. However, it should be pointed out that the skill set required to deliver an effective OLAP solution is very different from that associated with a traditional transaction reporting system. This skill set should be identified along with the software product in order to ensure an effective solution. This is no different from looking for the correct skill set to deliver effective tax or accounting advice. We are fortunate to work with APS as our OLAP solution provider. APS have many years experience in both the OLAP and professional services domain and this has been vital to the success of this part of our reporting strategy.

For any successful reporting solution to be delivered (be it OLAP or traditional transactional), teamwork between the users and the developers is essential. It is as easy to deliver a poor transactional system as a poor OLAP one. What is vital is that both disciplines acknowledge each other’s potential contribution. IT developers are clearly not accountants and vice-versa. The best solution will come from the combination of the two skill sets. Our IT department has worked closely both with internal project teams and APS to arrive at a solution which works. It’s not about accountants knowing more than IT developers or the other way round, teamwork brings the best results in today’s business world.

In summary, the tone of David’s article runs the risk of influencing views in a way that may result in firms missing out on the significant benefits of a readily available technology. BI is not solely OLAP, it just tends to be sold that way. BI is about using a set of tools and solutions to satisfy ongoing reporting requirements which will enable a firm to run efficiently and make not only the IT developers and accountants happy, but ultimately better serve the customers. Surely that is in everyone's interest.

Neil's response is spot on. Its been our experience that Accounting Firms, particularly the Top 100, have been looking towards OLAP to deal with their Business Intelligence / Reporting issues for some time.

Here is an another example of a leading UK practice, like Armstrong Watson, that implemented OLAP over 5 years ago.

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=52206

Brian Coventry
APS

I am consultant for small companies in Spain.

I have read a lot about OLAP, altough I haven´t use it yet. Small companies I work with don´t have SQL Server. They only use Excel, Access and traditional accounting software.

In the case of small company without sql server:
Don´t you think that BI can be easily implemented with Excel 2.007, pivot tables and macros? It sounds to simple, but people love simple solutions.
(it is very easy to import a text file with accounting records and then apply pivot tables).

I would like your point of view !

Rolo

Happy to discuss how OLAP works with Excel 2007. We have been very impressed with the BI capability that Microsoft has built in to Excel.

+44 (0) 870 351 4878 or brianc@aps-advance.com