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Business intelligence goes wireless

Tom Sullivan, Information Age

21/08/2001 17:12:16

Business intelligence goes wireless

A key element of a successful BI (business intelligence) implementation is ensuring that people have access to the information in the system whenever and wherever they need it. For this reason, vendors are rushing to provide access to back-end BI data using wireless links to a variety of client devices, including notebook computers, cell phones, and handhelds.

"We've seen this huge inflection point in the uptake of PDAs. It created a pent-up demand and a real platform for wireless BI," said Gene Villeneuve, director of product marketing at Business Objects, which recently announced its InfoView Mobile 4.0 BI software for accessing and analysing corporate information wirelessly.

Companies currently using wireless BI products list the benefits as real-time access to corporate and customer data as well as to sales and other reports. BI also provides real-time billing and inventory checking, all of which result in increased productivity.

Butler Technology Solutions (BTS), a consulting firm that offers services in recruiting technical personnel and managing IT projects, uses wireless BI to enable management and account executives to view customer and project information.

BTS runs Business Objects' software connected to a SQL Server database updated weekly from a proprietary Web-based data-entry system. Consultants enter their billable and nonbillable hours, and project managers set up projects and include customer-related information.

"We build special reports to create the reports, but obviously, they can't be too large, or include graphics, or have anything complex like union queries," said Wendy King, director of the company's e-business intelligence practice.

King says the major benefit is increased productivity, which results from better time management.

"I just arrived in North Carolina and plan to visit one of my customers today. With wireless [access to BI data], I don't need to go to my hotel room and dial in to view a report. I can view the information that I need on my way to the customer site via my cell phone. It's great, convenient, and I know the data is accurate and up to date."

Matthew Meinert, an IT manager within the electronic commerce/paperless contracting office of the US Army Communications-Electronics Command, said his division uses Business Objects' platform to produce executive reports and make them available to Palm VIIx handhelds so senior leadership can access them from anywhere.

Typical reports include regular monthly report summaries of the division's monitoring and analysis group. The leaders have been using hard copies of the reports for years; the wireless capability enables them to issue timely reports more quickly.

"Our leadership gets real-time information. This has greatly improved the decision-process time lines. We no longer have to wait for midlevel managers to get data," Meinert said.

He added that in his case he needs to make sure that the executive reports follow dashboard-type parameters, which means ensuring reports are neither too wide nor too long.

Business Objects' InfoView Mobile 4.0 BI - used by Meinert's team - is designed to enable customers to download reports onto PDAs via synchronisation; users can view and navigate the reports either while they are connected or in offline mode. Along with Palm devices, the company supports Pocket IE, Handspring Blazer and Pocket PC devices.

Business Objects is not alone in targeting users of handheld client devices. Microstrategy has announced an updated version of its Narrowcast Server report and information-delivery platform. Narrowcast Server focuses on delivering information to companies' employees, partners, and customers via e-mail, PDAs, pagers, and wireless or stationary phones.

The new features that make this possible include a subscription-based portal, SMS (Short Message Service) support, and the ability to personalise, import, and aggregate information from new content sources such as the Web and XML files.

Other BI vendors, including Cognos, Actuate and Informatica, have either made strides into wireless or are considering doing so.

Cognos and Actuate, at least for the time being, are taking the partner route, and teaming with portal vendors to enable wireless and remote access to BI applications. Cognos has partnered with portal companies such as Plumtree Software, InfoImage, and Viador to create a single interface to back-end BI data. Cognos software also centralises content management and delivery.

Actuate partnered with Plumtree as well as with some application server vendors to enable the delivery of reports. In the case of Plumtree, companies can deliver Actuate reports in XML or DHTML (Dynamic HTML) formats so they can be accessed from any client supporting these standards.

An Informatica official said his company is in the early stages of offering wireless capabilites and plans to enable wireless access to its products during the next few months.