Areas such as Data Mining, Data Warehousing and Database Marketing are becoming increasingly important for OR. Here is a quick guide to the state of the art software in these areas
Getting the most from your data

by Nigel Cummings

Knowledge management is firmly embedded in management thinking for the nineteen nineties, and the use of intellectual capital has never been a hotter topic. Yet the subject is not a new one; the whole concept of business intelligence has been around for over twenty years. According to a recent report in Strategy, the official journal of Business Intelligence, 1976 was the time when Ben Heineman, chief executive of Northwest Industries, decided to use a computer terminal and monitor to plan the growth of his operating units. Heinemann and others of his day first saw the potential for the use of information technology by senior management.

But the seventies were not a good time, technologically speaking. Desktop computers were few and far between, computing power was low, and equipment costs were high. The beginning of the nineteen eighties provided a much more equable climate for the utilisation of information technology. Cheap CP/M based systems with decent specifications proliferated from companies such as ACT and IBM, and other major companies were mindful of the evolution of technology to new levels of performance.

The apex of this evolution seemed to occur in the early eighties when the DOS based Personal Computer (PC) was born. Initially parented by IBM, the PC bred quickly and became established across a wide licence base as the number one business machine. Looking at the early personal computers from a nineteen nineties perspective, it is hard to see how we managed to gain any productivity benefits from them - they were in comparison with today's computers feeble minded and lacking the graphics capabilities which we now take for granted.

Around the time of the first PC, EIS (Electronic Information System) appeared. EIS was the forerunner of today's Business Intelligence systems, and it may be considered that we owe EIS a debt of gratitude for providing the route to the graphics oriented business systems we know today. The term Business Intelligence (BI) was first coined by the US based Gartner Group as a concept and core topic of research. From a strategic planning perspective, by the year 2000 Gartner predict that 'Information Democracy' will emerge in forward thinking organisations and BI data and applications will be broadly available to employees, consultants, customers, suppliers and the public.

BI enablement is being achieved as more companies take on board query and reporting tools, EISs and decision support applications. Information Democracy (ID) bears similarity to political democracy which is intended to ensure equality for all citizens. ID on the other hand will promote the common good of an organisation, though not necessarily the individual. Users will be guaranteed access to information, but they will not all have the same level of access nor access to the same information.

Information quality will have to be considered, as data warehousing activities have now gained the interest of information system organisations. The key factors in BI are, according to the Gartner Group: timeliness, relevance, consistency, and completeness. The group feels that the outcome of an information quality architecture should serve as input into any data warehousing effort that an organisation is undertaking. As a precursor to BI applications development, IS organisations and end users should be encouraged to maintain an information quality architecture as part of an overall BI architecture, thus improving decision-making quality by more closely mapping business needs to available information.

The Business Intelligence conference and exhibition held over two days during June at the Olympia2 exhibition hall in London, brought together leading exponents of BI and a considerable number of companies with services and/or applications most suited to the BI community.

Data Warehousing was a key topic for many of the companies represented. It is significant, I think, that Data Warehousing 1998, scheduled for 11th and 12th November this year, has already sold out. Hopefully we shall be there to report on new Data Warehousing developments. In the meantime however, returning to Business Intelligence 1998, MicroStrategy of Slough were present to extol the virtues of their industrial strength support products that are used to perform sophisticated business analysis against large scale data warehouses. MicroStrategy provides solutions for such companies as: Littlewoods, American Express, Glaxo Wellcome, DuPont, B&Q, ASDA and the Mirror Group. MicroStrategy has strategic alliances with many industry leading companies including IBM, KPMG, Sequent and Price Waterhouse.

Their decision support systems are based around the relational OLAP (ROLAP) model. This is a model which can store data in any standard relational database (including Oracle, Sybase and DB/2) and analyse it using a powerful decision support engine - in MicroStrategy's case called DSS Server. The results of that analysis can be viewed from a number of user interfaces: custom built applications, standard desktop tools or web browsers. MicroStrategy utilised Business Intelligence 1998 as a platform for the announcement of their new DSS Broadcaster - the Industry's first information broadcast server. MicroStrategy can be contacted on 01753 826100, or at http://www.strategy.com.

The conference saw a significant number of product announcements. Business Intelligence of Wimbledon (the organisers) had arranged a whistle stop presentation for the press, of no fewer than 17 new products which were showcased during a two hour presentation. Thorgeir Einarsson, CEO at Compulogic, discussed the launch of Proactivity D-qm, a new dynamic query messenger which enables proactive business management. Compulogic also presented a white paper on Proactive Business Management and how to generate a return on investment of over 1000%. This document will be discussed in more detail in a special feature due for a forthcoming issue of the OR Newsletter. Compulogic can be contacted on: 0181 247 9400.

Debbie Hamel, VP of Platinum Technology, presented the DecisionBase data transformation and movement tool. DecisionBase automatically translates SAP's proprietary code for easy access and integration with other corporate data, saving developers the time required to learn the complex language and enabling companies to maximise their investments in SAP systems. To learn more about this product, contact Platinum Technology on: 01908 248400.

Nigel Youell, Marketing Director of Comshare, emphasised his company's commitment to Microsoft's Sequel Server 7 and discussed his company's product line which includes BudgetPLUS, an application capable of transforming a costly, burdensome exercise into a competitive advantage for organisations that produce annual budgets and regular forecasts. BudgetPLUS is an integrated budgeting, analysis and reporting application that improves productivity, shortens the budget cycle, and enhances the quality and usability of planning information. Comshare can be contacted on 0171 351 4399.

Sion Lewis from Prism Solutions had much to say about Prism Executive Suite, a product which has been shown to help Fortune 1000 corporations deliver business intelligent applications faster. Prism Executive Suite allows decision makers within an enterprise to manage, navigate and deliver warehoused information through a standard Web browser set of reporting tools. The new architecture of Prism Executive Suite introduces server side Java technology to the data warehousing market.

Prism believe that as data warehousing continues to move into the mainstream by providing business-critical functionality, enterprise Java is emerging as a major market demand. The new Java-based paradigm allows for: Object oriented design and component architecture, Open multi platform support, easy integration with Java tools and Highly optimised parallel execution. Java having the support of the entire computer industry, it is clear that Prism's Executive Suite has much to offer. Hopefully a forthcoming issue of this newsletter will carry a more expansive feature on the application of server side Java technology. Prism Solutions can be contacted on: 0118 959 9996.

Appropriate Ltd presented FastStats, a marketing intelligence and database analysis system that delivers high volume database access to non technical marketers. FastStats can handle many hundreds of variables across millions of records, and enables direct marketers to interact with their data quickly and easily. The latest version of FastStats (Version 3) was unveiled at Business Intelligence 1998. This latest version of the program introduces FastStats Script, a comprehensive automation and macro language that enables users to record and repeat FastStats operations. The new version also features Step Selections to show which selected characteristics contributed to the end result, and Plug-Ins are supported for the first time. This new feature enables FastStats to make best use of complementary applications from third party developers. Appropriate Ltd can be contacted on; 01926 407565.

IBM displayed their Intelligent Miner family of applications. IBM's Intelligent Miner (Version 2.1) can be utilised to search for hidden relationships stored in traditional files, databases, data warehouses and data marts. It has also been used effectively for fraud detection in various industries, for example credit card fraud detection in the finance sector. Currently in beta, IBM's Intelligent Miner for Text allows companies to gain valuable insights about their customers from textual information including Web pages, wire services, faxes, e-mails, Lotus Notes databases, call centres and contacts and patent libraries. IBM can be contacted on: 0171 202 3744.

This brief overview of the topic of Business Intelligence and the numerous products released and/or on show at Business Intelligence 1998 can only brush the surface. I have selected a number of case studies and made contact with various companies in this field, and hope to be publishing more extensive features in due course. Companies I expect to write about in more detail include: IBM, Red Brick, Adaytum, Hyperion, Prism Solutions, Ardent and Comshare.

Business Intelligence 1998 was a showcase for an impressive array of applications, many concerning data mining and warehousing. After seeing the products on offer I can well believe Gartner Group's prediction that the global data warehouse market will be worth $7 billion by 1999. Business Intelligence have recently announced the dates for their Data Mining 1999 event. It will take place during 24th - 25th March 1999 at Earls Court Conference Centre in London. Business Intelligence are located at: Third Floor, 22-24 Worple Road, Wimbledon, London SW19 4DD. Tel 0181 879 3300. Business Intelligence also have a website at: http://www.business-intelligence.co.uk

First published to members of the Operational Research Society in OR Newsletter August 1998