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FINANCIAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Trends, Technology,Software Selection, and Implementation
Nils Rasmussen
Paul S. Goldy
Per O. Solli
JOHN WILEY
In the beginning were simple information systems. Then those simple systems
grew into applications. Soon there were many applications. Data base technology
appeared. Next came online transaction processing and soon there were online
applications. As time passed applications aged, companies merged, and
new applications were built or acquired. Before a company knew it there were
many applications each running a separate part of the business.
One day the corporate world woke up to the dilemma of the need for information.
The corporate decision makers said—“I know we have this information
somewhere in our corporation, but I just can’t find it.” I guess I will
have to make decisions based on experience and intuition.
If you asked anyone in the corporation if there was information in the
corporation, the answer was a quick and definitive—“why of course we have
information—we have applications.” But once the surface was pricked, it was
discovered that the portfolio of applications that belonged to the corporation
in fact did not provide the corporation with information. The base of applications
was:
• Unintegrated. One application thought of customers, transactions, and
vendors as one thing. Another application thought of customers, transactions,
and vendors as something else. And another application thought of
customers, transactions, and vendors as yet something else. When it was
desired to look across the corporation to see who a corporate customer
was, what a corporate transaction was, and who a corporate vendor was,
there simply was no way to do it because each application had its own
unique interpretation. Corporate information in the face of a base of applications
was nonexistent,
• For current data only. Corporate historical information was treated as an
afterthought. In many circles historical data was shed as quickly as possible
in the name of doing efficient transaction processing. The application’s
singular focus was on current information. The application can tell
what today’s bank balance is. The application can tell where a shipment
is today. The application can tell what insurance coverage there is. But
the application cannot tell what the average balance for an account for a
month was, even though that information passed directly through the
hands of the application. The application programmer saw no immediate
requirement for historical information so the historical information was
discarded. Ignoring history was an unwise thing to do. It is through history
that perspective is gained. Without history everything looks flat.
Applications thought of historical information as unnecessary baggage
and got rid of it as soon as possible and in doing so preempted an entire
dimension of information.
• Not easy to get to. The applications of yesterday were designed for efficiency
of operation and compactness of storage. This approach to design
made the transactions run quickly. But the designs that were optimal for
efficiency of operation were anything but optimal for access and analysis
of information. And the technology that the applications were written
and housed in was optimal only for efficiency of operation. In order to
access the data found in the applications, the end user had to fight
through both technology and design. In a word, the end user was frustrated
because accessing data was difficult.
It is no wonder then that the end user said, “I know the information is
there in my corporate applications. I just can’t get to it.”
It is into this world that data warehousing was born. Data warehousing
recognizes the need for corporate integration, the need for historical data, and
the need to store data in a manner and in a technology that is optimal for access
and analysis. Once the foundation of data warehousing is laid, whole new
worlds and whole new opportunities open up.
Nowhere are there more opportunities than in the world of finance. Finance
is close to the heartbeat of every corporation. If anyone needs true corporate
information, it is the finance department. Top management needs to
see—desperately—the larger financial picture of the corporation, and that
larger picture cannot be achieved with a foundation of applications. Without integrated
financial information, the corporation is flying through the clouds
blind.
Likewise the corporation needs historical financial information. It is not
enough to look at how finances are today (although that certainly is an interesting perspective.) Deep and meaningful insight about the life of and the direction
of the corporation can be derived from comparing financial positions
over time. Especially useful is the ability to look across time at financial positions
in different and novel ways. Being able to go back in time and restructure
information in a way that has not been imagined before can be very useful. And
with a properly built financial data warehouse you can do just that.
And of course putting data into a technology and in a design that is easy
to access is problematic. Once the data is freed of its shackles it can be used by
anyone in innovative ways. It simply goes without saying that the first step in
informed decision making is unfettered access to data and information.
Data warehousing unlocks all of this for the finance community.
This book tells you what you need to know about both finance and data
warehousing. It opens the door to the magic elixir of accurate, integrated, historical,
and easily available financial information. Once you have that, corporate
decisions become enormously easier and enormously more effective.
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