How does your
organization measure against strategic goals? Are you taking advantage of
the increasing amount of corporate data to expedite
business decisions? Most executives don't have good answers to
these questions. Information is often isolated in
disparate sources and reporting to the executive office is often
inconsistent and non-uniform. Business scorecards were
developed so the first question (performance measurement) can be
effectively answered by organizing analytics around the second
(corporate data). Recently, Microsoft introduced a Business
Scorecards Accelerator to allow its customers to take advantage of
end-to-end business intelligence reporting. This article
will discuss the Business Scorecards Accelerator and its
organizational benefits.
What is the Business Scorecards Accelerator?
The Business
Scorecards Accelerator is a complete solution, supported by
Microsoft, that allows business users to define, measure, and
present business metrics. Scorecard definition and
maintenance is done through a web-based application. The
distribution of performance information is through SharePoint
Portal Server or Windows SharePoint Services web parts. Each
web part offers a different graphical view of key business
metrics. The Business Scorecards Accelerator uses SQL Server
2000 to store scorecard metadata and Analysis Services to store
business data used to compile scorecards. Fundamentally, the
application allows business users to build scorecards through the
definition of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's), map the KPI's to
measures in organizational OLAP cubes, and present calculated
results, real-time, to some or all employees through SharePoint
portal technology.
How do I build
a scorecard using the Business Scorecards Accelerator?
The Business Scorecards Accelerator
requires an environment that includes SQL Server, Analysis
Services, and SharePoint portal technology (SharePoint Portal
Server or Windows SharePoint Services). The Business
Scorecards Accelerator includes several tools for creating
business scorecards. The creation of a scorecard using the
Accelerator is as follows:
-
Using the Scorecards Development
tool, define scorecard elements. These include KPI's,
perspectives, objectives, themes, and initiatives.
-
Use the Scorecard Builder tool to
create a scorecard by including your scorecard elements.
Different scorecards can reuse the same scorecard
elements.
-
Create or identify a data source for
the scorecard. You will need to designate the database in
Analysis Services that contains the OLAP cubes that store your
scorecard data.
-
After creating the scorecard, map the
scorecard to the data source.
-
Map every KPI in the scorecard to a
measure in the OLAP cube.
-
Using the Business Scorecard Web parts,
create views that represent specific metric data.
-
These views, through the Web
parts, will be displayed on pages within your
portal.
What are the benefits of deploying the Business Scorecards
Accelerator?
The Business
Scorecards Accelerator was designed to help organizations implement
three critical business intelligence processes:
- The ability to define organizational
performance metrics and measure the business lines against these
metrics
- The distribution of scorecard data, across the
organization, through a consistent and easy to
understand interface
- The integration of a scorecard solution with existing
organizational technologies
The Business Scorecards Accelerator offers an interface for
defining and managing key business metrics, leverages SharePoint
portal technology for the presentation of calculations, and
integrates seamlessly with SQL Server. It offers a highly
optimized, easy to deploy business intelligence solution.
Summary
The
Business
Scorecards Accelerator is designed to improve an organization's
business performance by providing employees with key
insight into strategic metrics. The graphical presentation
of results allows the user to quickly analyze and react
to corporate data changes. The Business Scorecards
Accelerator offers a complete end-to-end business
intelligence reporting solution, one that allows executives to
make more informed, timely business
decisions.
