More than 45% of companies using BusinessObjects also use visualisation software Tableau and about 10% of companies also use Microsoft’s PowerBI tool. Both are popular for self-service data discovery and data visualisation, but they are not great solutions for Business Intelligence (BI) reporting where defined reports are used repeatedly over time with refreshed data.
Red Olive recently hosted an event at its central London offices with partner InfoSol, which focused on how businesses can work with the different visualisation and BI tools available to them in the most productive way.
Businesses can refine their reporting using Report Busting techniques, and part of the event focused on Hermes, which uses Infosol’s InfoBurst Publish solution. This streamlines its reporting across the organisation – a major feat for a company that delivers a huge number of reports to couriers and customers on a global basis, all year round.
InfoBurst offers a variety of options for conducting and controlling Business Intelligence report bursting. It offers InfoBurst Dash, which uses in-memory dashboard data caching to speed up the access to data, making it more efficient than running multiple queries against databases.
Infosol also has a solution for integration with Tableau called InfoBurst Tab. This bridges the gap between BusinessObjects Reports, Universes, and Tableau dashboards automatically. InfoBurst Tab also assists in scheduling, merging both BusinessObjects reports and Tableau Dashboards into one PDF, making it easier to publish and share reports.
Hermes’ challenge
Hermes is a huge UK and international delivery network, delivering parcels for key brands including John Lewis, Boden and Next, 365 days a year. Hermes has around two million parcels flowing through its network of three hubs, 27 depots and 550 sub-depots on a daily basis. With an army of couriers to co-ordinate, it can be a challenge to ensure that operational issues are identified and addressed quickly to keep the parcels flowing smoothly and customers happy.
Prior to working with Infosol, Hermes found itself in a situation where it was unable to schedule and prioritise reports as it wanted using its native schedule manager. Hermes was running over 10,000 instances of reports on a daily basis but was reliant on changes in files as triggers to start reporting rather than proactively running the reports needed. It was also concerned that its reporting was not as secure and compliant with GDPR as it wished it to be.
Hermes’ best practice solution
By streamlining its reporting, Hermes is now running a minimum number of reports and delivering these to users in a timely manner. The InfoBurst solution also manages the scheduling capability to run priority reports over non-priority reports, especially during peak periods when data volumes can double or triple.
How we help
Red Olive works with businesses and organisations to get more value from their data. We do this using a particular methodology where we look for patterns in behaviour and then use data visualisation tools to provide real-time reports to show you how to make your business more productive.
If you want to find out how we can help you understand your business better and transfer this to your team through impactful reporting and dashboards, or you want to find out more about the Hermes solution, please contact us on [email protected], or ring us on 01256 831100.
