Item: Oracle Analytics Server
Rating: 10
Author: Juan Osegueda

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At Hostmark the Oracle BI Suite is the included reporting segment of UltiPro. Using Oracle Business Intelligence allows me to extract data then write or modify reports to use with all sorts of data analysis. Currently all managers are assigned access to BI to run common payroll, human resource, and benefit reports to help them make decisions. These reports are specialized or formatted to pull the information that our managers need whenever the default reports included with UltiPro don't exactly match the formatting or reporting requirements our managers are looking for.

Pros and Cons

With a little guidance, ease of use
Great database management system with just the right amount of options (scalability)
Create dashboards for various types of users

Can be overwhelming to use at first, but any report-writer would suggest to download data dictionaries first to locate fields and prompts that would ordinarily be hard to find

Alternatives Considered

ADP and Compleo

Business Intelligence works as well if not better than ADP and Compleo, in the sense that you have a few more options or report-writing platforms to work in depending on the need. For example, intermediate or advance users can start with the Report Studio for greater control when writing reports (charts, crosstabs, joins and unions, etc.), while for entry-level reporting the Query Studio would work just fine for list-type reports. The analysis studio is a great resource for managers to go directly to to compare labor hours and dollars, and the Event Studio is great for HR/PR admins to create alerts notifying them of specific changes to employee data, such as when employees move from full-time to part-time and vice versa, or when an employee is terminated and PTO may need to be paid out, for example. even something simple, like when an employee is hired and an emergency contact is missing, that sort of thing.

Likelihood to Recommend

It doesn't matter what sector you are in. You can use Oracle Business Intelligence to extract whatever data you need for decision making. Our managers use it for all sorts of things: in payroll, to report how many hours their employees are working and to track overtime, in human resources to validate all new hire information and to audit hours worked for full-time/part-time employee classification, and in benefits to find out if any employee vs. employer-paid premiums are in balance and determine benefits eligibility, to name a few.

For the normal user (which we do not give BI access to), having access to this data would be overkill.

Users and Roles

Within our hospitality industry, BI us used by our General managers, our Human Resources personnel, and our Executive officers mostly.

Support Headcount Required

2 - Myself and one other person in my organization provide the in-house support to our Business Intelligence users on an ongoing basis. While access to BI is given to many supervisors and managers across our organization, only a limited few reach out whenever the reports that we have already provided by default via dashboard need updating with new fields or removing fields when there is no longer a need to view specific data.

Future Planned Uses

Currently we are using BI at a level that suite the needs of our managers - but we know it can do more!

Business Processes Supported

Extraction of Labor Hours and Dollars
Ad-hoc reporting, simple data reporting

Innovative Uses

Custom Dashboards
Event Studio alerts
Scheduling or Bursting of selected reports

Oracle BI Foundation Suite is simply stellar - can do so much with it!

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle BI Foundation Suite