Industry Validation

Recent Industry Validation | Industry Validation Archive

“Noetix is a BI solution software company that provides tools for business users accessing corporate operational data as well as for the IT department to more rapidly implement a cross-functional reporting solution that supports any future changes of the underlying Oracle E-Business Suite or Siebel business applications. The benefits of this approach include faster execution of a BI strategy with simplified access to data; a simplified transition to new versions of business applications without putting a large burden on the IT department and measurable ROI for a tool that automates an otherwise very manual process.”

“Noetix tackles a slightly different problem. ERP data models are notoriously difficult to interpret — they are typically very normalized and most of the business logic resides in the application layer. Noetix applies its extensive knowledge of ERP data content, analyzes existing metadata and creates multiple logical simplified views (for customers, products, orders, etc) on top of a complex physical schema. These views can then be easily used by any BI reports, in fact Noetix partners with Cognos to automatically generate Cognos catalog from these views.”

The survey results indicated that the discovery of relevant data sources and access to those data sources are considered key pieces of BI functionality. More than one-third of the respondents indicated that they found it difficult or very difficult to locate the data they need for analytic applications. More than a quarter said that once target data was located, it was difficult to then access that data. Respondents remarked that the single most important functionality for a BI tool was ease in finding relevant data.

"Noetix technology enables users of Oracle Daily Business Intelligence to rapidly create additional KPIs and reports directly within its framework to provide a more flexible and extensible solution. While DBI supplies a range of pre-built components, it does not generate a common metadata layer. Noetix software automatically generates metadata from enterprise applications, enabling immediate access to data."

“Before an extract, transform, load (ETL) developer accesses specific tables and columns and kicks off the ETL design process, somebody needs to inform that developer where to find the appropriate data in the first place. This data mapping exercise, as some call it, is a pre-ETL step that remains a largely manual and time consuming process. Business analysts typically use simple SQL query tools to analyze the data, load it into spreadsheets, and create requirements and rules for ETL developers. For a large, complex, and heterogeneous enterprise that most probably has gone through multiple mergers and acquisitions, the data mapping task is huge. Data discovery and integration steps still take anywhere between 50 to 80 percent of any BI effort.”

Spreadsheets and ad hoc query tools are still the leading BI tools used across organizations using Oracle Applications. Three out of four respondents said they continue to rely on spreadsheets for reporting and BI in general.

Data managers are generating hundreds of reports a month which take a great deal of time to modify and maintain. Four out of ten respondents reported that their departments generate 100 or more reports per month and that these reports need to be continually modified to meet the needs of business users. More than 60 percent of respondents said it takes a day or more to create one new report for an end user.

"It seems like Noetix is offering something different in reporting than the rest of the BI world. As it expands into supporting PeopleSoft applications and then SAP's, it will certainly have a more diverse product set."

Broader adoption of BI software is expected to continue as more end users gain access to query and reporting tools and as organizations embed BI software into operational applications supporting all business processes.

Organizations most highly value Application BI systems that reduce maintenance and implementation costs, enable end-user self-service and assure consistent, accurate data for analysis. Ad hoc query and analysis (57%) and operational reporting (53%) were the capabilities respondents most often cited as part of their current Application BI systems.

Many data managers are concerned about the accuracy of data coming from back-end sources and bringing this data together. The top challenge cited when bringing together data from the back end to populate BI tools is being able to validate the accuracy of the data used in reporting. Many respondents added that they have issues with formatting or consolidating data from disparate locations. This challenge is widespread as a previous Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) study confirmed that the average member site had at least three different brands of databases running within their enterprises.