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Today more than ever, corporations need to fully leverage the power of information to remain competitive by giving business managers fast, easy access to meaningful information in a way that assists their decision-making. The steady increase of data purchased, captured and maintained by corporations today has resulted in the need for solutions that effectively utilize this information. Companies not only need decision support technologies that automate conventional ad-hoc analytical methods, but decision support services to maximize the value of their investment. MSA recognized this pressing need and developed the following tools and services that, combined, deliver a complete solution - BusinessWEB. Data Management
Data Cleansing Cleaning and scrubbing play an integral part in the transformation of data into information. MSA not only ensures data validity, consistency, integrity, and maintenance; a team of analysts also reviews each data source independently and determines what additional measure of information may be drawn from the collected data. Utilizing MSA's automated and manual techniques, the scrubbing and consolidation of raw data allows a corporation to be confident that current problems or errors in the data will be corrected before being distributed to the end-users. Data Modeling Since people naturally think in a dimensional manner, i.e., grouping similar items together, it is necessary to present data for on-line analytical processing (OLAP) in this form. A majority of the data needed for analysis is stored in flat files or relational databases. Although these databases serve their storage purposes, they are inadequate for analyzing data over multiple dimensions. A specially structured multi-dimensional database (MDDB) must be used to obtain the performance required for OLAP. In addition, the type of data, whether for marketing, sales, finance, etc., must be considered when designing each MDDB in order to gain optimal performance. MSA is one of the world's leading authorities on designing optimized MDDB structures to address these subtle differences. MSA built its own high speed multi-dimensional database management system more than 20 years before such technology was recognized in the industry as the best way to meet the information needs of business professionals. In keeping with an open systems solutions, connections to popular OLAP databases such as Hyperion's Essbase and Oracle's Express, as well as relational databases such as DB2, Sybase, Informix and Oracle, are supported. Calculating and Loading The effective management of data is uniquely linked to its eventual use(s). Since it is often impossible to predict the numerous uses of information, a strategy which separates data management from utilization can be very effective. However, in order to implement such a strategy, it is necessary to have a system that dynamically transforms the data into a desirable format for the situation. A transformation of this magnitude often involves one or more of the following steps:
Key Features:
Knowledge Discovery The first and arguably most important step in knowledge management is identifying and cataloging the data and knowledge currently available and required in the organization. We call this process Knowledge Discovery. MSA DataAudit and Information Catalog services help companies perform this crucial first step.
A Knowledge Base is a collection of strategies, reports, and report templates that address the key business issues in an organization. Using the results from information cataloging, as well as existing Knowledge Bases, MSA consultants create a comprehensive Knowledge Base by identifying key issues, designing views to address them, and building views linked to source databases. MSA has built Knowledge Bases for many industries and functional areas, including:
The concept of a Knowledge Architecture has been exploited for some time in the realms of customer support; distributor support center, field technicians, etc., but very little in the field of decision support - partially due to its dynamic nature. Regardless, it is possible to capture and broadcast information in the context of a Knowledge Architecture which:
After a framework is agreed upon, the consultants work with MSA web designers to bring the framework to life on clients' intra/internet. Designers create the overall structure, establish guidelines for look and feel, incorporate search engines/indices and link the reports in the Knowledge Base. Information Delivery Information Authoring Using the BusinessWEB developer's tool kit, MSA developers create dynamic links between OLAP databases and a browser to generate views that encompass different business aspects and provide powerful drill-downs and nesting query capabilities through BusinessWEB. Such powerful links are created by using the Data View Description Language (DVDL) developed by MSA. The flexibility and power of DVDL gives developers fine and easy controls on what data should be displayed and how it should be presented. DVDL specifications control every aspect of the data view, from the elements of a spin to the type of table, graph, or chart. With a simple tag referencing a DVDL script in an HTML file, BusinessWEB brings the KnowledgeBase to life. This tool kit is also available for MSA clients. With sufficient training, corporate IT groups can incorporate custom changes into their own BusinessWEB pages using the powerful DVDL. Information Reporting The Strategic Thinking Partnership Given that there are virtually unlimited ways business managers need to view information, it is necessary to provide powerful ad-hoc access tools for creating customized views. However, since 80% of queries are performed multiple times by different users, business oriented views can be developed in advance to save time and allow managers to respond more quickly. Providing users intuitive access to the Knowledge Base gives corporations a sustainable advantage necessary to succeed. The BusinessWEB viewer, available for both Netscape® Navigator and Microsoft® Internet Explorer, allows users to access and analyze dynamic reports via the inter/intranet. The BusinessWEB Viewer allows you to see multi-dimensional graphics and tables in-line with your web browser. Users can look at data from different perspectives, explore exceptions, drill-down into detail data, create QuickCharts on the fly, e-mail charts and graphs, create bookmarks of favorite reports, and more. Key Features:
With the vast amount of information available with the advancement in technology, it is increasingly important for users to be able to access selected groups of information in the midst of a general repository of reports. These reports are of specific interest to these users. Their day-to-day operations may rely on them. It is important to be able to access these reports from their own desktop on a regular basis. Information browser enables users to have a central entry point to information from a wide range data source using different dimensions and measures through spins. The quick chart capabilities allow users to display data for easy visual comparison. In addition, the information browser is incorporated with common internet browser software such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, therefore, no additional training is needed to use BusinessWEB. Individual data views can be exported or printed. Users can easily incorporate output from the BusinessWEB information browser to reports and presentations. BusinessWEB allows an enterprise to disseminate knowledge quickly and efficiently. Key Features:
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