Business Intelligence: Connectivity Options & Evaluation Criteria for SaaS, Best Practices & Vendor Selection Guide
Hypatia Research, LLC, January 2009, Pages: 30
McKesson Pharmaceuticals, Welch's, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, Nike, and Shaklee are just a few of the firms that utilize SaaS-based business intelligence to both save on implementation costs and to take advantage of business intelligence insight faster. Customers noted that they could frequently deploy SaaS-based BI initiatives at one-fourth the cost and in one-fourth the time.
Acquiring business intelligence (BI) capabilities through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model versus enterprise BI represents the inflection point of two separate trends in business. One trend signals the increasing importance of gaining insight into all manner of business events. These events encompass not just transactions, but patterns in activity as widespread as customer responsiveness, network management, supply chain performance, and fraud detection. The focus on BI comes from business grasping the importance of the axiom: “if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.”
The second trend relates to an increasing interest in the concept of SaaS. The idea of leasing rather than buying a software application, and accessing it over the Internet, offers companies many benefits relating to the conservation of resources. With a SaaS application, companies can generally:
- Deploy applications faster (weeks rather than months)
- Reduce the cost of deployment (by a factor of four)
- Avoid the cost of hardware and associated maintenance and monitoring
- Eliminate the need for on-site expertise in the application itself
These two trends are converging now for a variety of reasons.
Not the least of these is the realization that overarching business insight relies on the integration of information from a multitude of systems. Even companies that have standardized on all-encompassing enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications realize that sometimes key business data exists beyond the boundaries of such applications. While ERP vendors are concertedly designing and acquiring new modules, two facts remain: it takes time to incorporate new and acquired modules into the ERP infrastructure, and companies may have custom-built modules whose functionality outweighs the promises and even the reality of what ERP vendors provide.
Executive Summary
- Two Converging Trends
- A Plethora of Data Sources
- Our Assessment:
Chapter One: Current Industry Usage
- Metrics Vary Widely
- Specific Vertical Uses of SaaS BI
- Case Study: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida
Chapter Two: Current Vendor Landscape: BI Delivered as a Service
- Vendor Landscape
- Case Study: Car Toys
- Case Study:Welch's
Chapter Three: Exploiting Legacy Data: SaaS Connectivity
- Exchanging Data
- Data Sources
- Connectivity Among Data Sources
- Case Study: McKesson
Chapter Four: Packaging & Pricing Options for Services
- Key Advantages of Hosted Services
- Evaluating Options
- Pricing Options & Investment Criteria
- Case Study: Global Manufacturer of Scientific Equipment
Conclusion: Moving Towards Innovation and Efficiency?
- Key Advantages of Hosted Services
- Selection & Investment Criteria
- Our Assessment
About the Authors
This “Business Intelligence: Connectivity Options & Evaluation Criteria” outlining best practices and selection criteria for SaaS-based business intelligence solutions.
BOSTON, MA – – Hypatia Research, LLC today released a report entitled “Business Intelligence: Connectivity Options & Evaluation Criteria” outlining best practices, vendor solutions and selection criteria for deploying SaaS-based business intelligence solutions.
McKesson Pharmaceuticals, Welch's, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, Nike, and Shaklee are just a few of the firms that utilize SaaS-based business intelligence to both save on implementation costs and to take advantage of business intelligence insight faster. Customers noted that they could frequently deploy SaaS-based BI initiatives at one-fourth the cost and in one-fourth the time.
Hypatia's analysts determined that the popularity of SaaS-based BI represents the inflection point of two separate trends in business: the increasing importance of gaining insight into all manner of business events, and increasing interest in the idea of leasing rather than buying a software application, and accessing it over the Internet.
With a SaaS application, companies can generally:
- Deploy applications faster
- Reduce the cost of deployment
- Avoid the cost of hardware and associated maintenance and monitoring
- Eliminate the need for on-site expertise in the application itself
“One of the most striking elements we uncovered in this research is the number of vendors who are licensing their business intelligence software engines to other application vendors. This means that companies looking for BI capabilities have even more options for accessing insight,” added co-author and senior editor Howard Baldwin.
Vendors evaluated include: Business Objects, Cognos, SAS. Acxiom, Birst, Experian, Lucidera, Oco, SRC, 1010Data, Jaspersoft, Pentaho, and QlikView
- McKesson Pharmaceuticals
- Welch's
- Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida
- Nike
- Shaklee
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