It’s Business Decisions for All with Microsoft Business Intelligence

What works when it comes to business intelligence? Microsoft Business Intelligence, named an industry leader by Gartner in the Business Intelligence Platforms Magic Quadrant, says what works is intuition in terms of how users interact with the tools. What works is also about giving you the tools that perform at top levels in environments that already look familiar.

Delivers What Business Intelligence Should Deliver

If you’re looking into Microsoft business Intelligence tools, you’re not alone. Quickly-growing numbers of organizations are deploying Microsoft’s Business Intelligence solutions, and are enjoying the ability to activate the tools with existing programs like Excel and SharePoint. Noticeable value increases in your collaboration strengths, content management strategies and search capacities for business data across divisions are some of the benefits you can expect.

Good Things Coming with Microsoft Business Intelligence

In its essence, Microsoft Business Intelligence brings together your SQL Server, your SharePoint deployments and your Office functionality into one united platform. In terms of reporting, look for vendors like Microsoft to offer the ability to manage interactive reports that you can distribute in small batches or giant batches, by customized scheduling options. You’ve got more than one type of report, and business intelligence tools should be able to handle that (from financial reports to performance-based data, and everything in between.) Plus, expect to be able to send reports out via mobile phone technology.

Expect to use dashboards in more interactive ways, too, with fast information settings that give you real-time information on how you’re performing in accordance with your goals. Tools include dials, check boxes and gauges. Want more IT-independent abilities to call up a report? Many business intelligence tools can deliver, including self-serve functionality that lets you and your teams wade through many layers of data – in a user-friendly format – even if you’re not linked in at the moment by remote. Also look for the ability to perform advanced keyword searches that delve into BI-related metadata.

Your IT Team Already Knows, Use It

The results, say Microsoft leaders, are business intelligence tools that you can activate in the environment you’re already engaged in. You can activate Microsoft’s Business Intelligence tools in your day-to-day work scenarios, giving you a heightened ability to make outstanding business decisions.

Through functionality on the server side, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence solutions allow you to serve yourself using programs like SharePoint Server or SQL Server, laying strong data groundwork for your IT team to continually perform insightfully.

What It Looks Like In Action

When University of Northumbria at Newcastle wanted quicker access to reports that were able to support more advanced decisions and forecasting, they chose Microsoft Business Intelligence tools. In just a year’s time, a comprehensive support strategy for decision-making was up and running – on a simple-to-access Web based deployment. KPIs, scorecards and custom dashboards are among the features the University used to go even further with their business intelligence plans than they originally anticipated.

Scorecards That Score High In Maximizing Data

If you feel that your KPIs sometimes go wayward in relation to your strategic goals, consider that the scorecard features of vendors like Microsoft Business Intelligence can be highly valuable. By nature, the scorecard function should gather up dashboard metrics and then place them into a planned course of direction (your map). Get more out of your scorecard metrics by making sure they are connected to key reports and will help you perform even more detailed analysis, all tucked within a powerful overall process for performance management.

Agility – Plus Efficiency – Equals Dynamic Decisions

It’s predicted that more and more organizations will look to solutions like Microsoft’s Business Intelligence, because they can lead them toward greater agility without compromising quality or efficiency. Microsoft is making business intelligence available to all, resulting in faster, more dynamic decisions.