Item: Oracle Analytics Server
Rating: 6
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We primarily use Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g - or OBIEE as we call it.

Here was the problem: When the executive team gathered to discuss revenue numbers, everyone had their own version. We were an organization of spreadsheets that were not shared and often compiled with unique methodologies. The goal of the OBIEE deployment was to elevate - and create - common metrics that everyone could see and trust.

We first implemented it to just provide executive level insight into revenue and product sales. However the power of the reporting and ability to create dynamic dashboards quickly moved it all through the organization and on every level. It is now used to track sales territory performance, lead management, complex project revenue, product sales and market segmentation for the CEO, VPs, Product Managers, Business Analysts, and individual sales team members.

Pros and Cons

Common dashboards that can contain very complex metrics. You can have a group of views and tables in different sections on the same page. Dashboards feature the ability to add tabs so you can display the information in multiple ways - but all with a common query or theme
The reporting can be interactive. The addition of filters and view selectors mean that multiple users can utilize and customize the information without having to provide separate reports.
The drill-in functionality is pretty robust and can be done on any element - individual field, table, or graph.
There are a wide range of graphs so you're not stuck with the same old thing - unless you want to, of course.

It's not very friendly for those of us that like to by-pass the fuzzy interface and just write sql queries.
It has the ability to do sub-queries, but the performance really slows down to the point where complex dashboards simply won't run. There is not a lot of help from Oracle to help optimize.
It isn't suitable for having multiple authors or developers because there isn't any version control - you don't know who changed what.
It doesn't have the capability to have custom dashboards by user. There is a way to save a view with all the filters set - but not to select the sections that they want to see.

Alternatives Considered

The big competitor is always going to be Excel - and for the most part it has many of the same capabilities for graphing, pivot tables, and table displays that are required for reporting.
I've also used Crystal Reports and think that for enterprise reporting in a data warehouse environment Oracle is the better choice.

Likelihood to Renew

My job title doesn't allow me to make the decision, but my input will be favorable. I think as a whole it is a good solution as long as you have the proper infrastructure to support it. If you can't commit the resources, there are much simpler tools available.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well-suited in a localized footprint but we had performance issues when deploying globally since not all IT infrastructure was the same for each branch. The dashboards need a lot of bandwidth to run and we've had a lot of problems with browser compatibility. The reports will run but may display incorrect information if there are problems with the browser.

Users and Roles

Most are field operations super users who support their teams with reporting. They are operations, sales support and marketing support employees.

Support Headcount Required

10 - We have two two full time developers, a data architect, a business analyst, a solutions architect, and four active analysts building dashboards. It definitely consumes a lot of resources and isn't something easy to install or maintain. In addition to this core group we have super users with varying degrees of access that create reports.

Future Planned Uses

We were exploring the ability to use predictive analytics in the ETL to better forecast revenue.

Business Processes Supported

Standardized metrics and reporting
Sales Performance Tracking
Revenue Tracking
Lead Performance and Tracking

Innovative Uses

We used it for custom revenue allocations. Our core data was rather dirty and incomplete, being able to do allocations as part of the ETL helped us allocate revenue and costs correctly for areas like training and services.
Many of our sales territories could not be supported through the current territory assignment tool. We build a dashboard with subqueries that allowed us to pull the information out of orders and help the sales team forecast and pay their people.
The ability to do a "book" of reports enabled our teams to view their stats offline when wifi was not available.

Oracle Analytics - Great Solution But Needs Hefty Resources to Support

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle BI Foundation Suite