E-PAPER NOVEMBER 2016

Reasons to Build an Agile Data Mart4

Many businesses struggle with slow and inflexible business intelligence

tools and processes. An agile data mart based on technology

from Dell Technologies, Intel, and SAP can provide the speed and customization that organizations

need, while improving productivity and driving down BI costs.

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To learn more, visit http://www.dell.com/SAP

These days, many technology professionals are talking about big data. And vendors are emphasizing how businesses can capture the insights hidden in their large stores of unstructured data —

that is, the information that resides in documents, email messages, images, and videos.

Big data analytics is a worthwhile effort, but many orga-nizations are still struggling just to create and deliver the insights from their “small data” in a timely, usable fashion. The structured data generated and used by business applications forms the foundation of the typical business intelligence (BI) mission. Yet in today’s data-driven world, these daily reporting and analytics packages are increasingly delayed. And it takes far too long with existing tools for analysts to create the new reports and insights needed to monitor and manage core operations, causing missed deadlines. As a result, analysts at many companies spend more time pulling and preparing their own data than generating insights. In short, the business’s need for insights outpaces the capabilities of the available tools and official processes.

The problem with the status quo becomes even more obvious when analysts need to dig into the data to answer inevitable questions and find root causes of trends seen in standard reporting. In a typi-cal scenario, standard executive reports highlight overperformance or underperformance, and the executive wants to know why. The analysts go back to the drawing board to figure out the official answer, but their existing tools and databases don’t meet their needs, so they pull

their own data and create their own reports. In the process, they create shadow IT, putting unplanned burdens on the data warehouse and storing redundant data locally, in some cases even stashing servers and databases under their desks. But because each analyst is pulling

different source data and relying on different business logic, the new reports or analytics often don’t agree. The result

is “analysis paralysis.” The analysts and management team spend so much time trying to figure out which

of the reports is correct that they aren’t able to act on the insights.

Until recently, Dell’s sales operations group expe-rienced many of these problems: The company’s business reporting teams were spending about

80% of their time moving data around instead of driving business insights. After investigating a variety

of solutions, sales operations decided to build an agile data mart based on SAP HANA in-memory database tech-

nology. Though Dell didn’t use SAP’s other enterprise software at the time, the decision paid off. Dell was able to reduce its BI costs by nearly half while synchronizing its data and improving its report turn-around time by 60%. In the process, Dell eliminated 80% of unofficial reporting in the area of business management.

Dell’s experience in creating an agile data mart provides a blueprint that other large and even midsize organizations should consider. The agile data mart approach can help speed delivery of reports, improve consistency, and increase productivity while providing business users with the flexibility that they need.

UBM •• 4 REASONS TO BUILD AN AGILE DATA MART

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To learn more, visit http://www.dell.com/SAP

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WHAT IS AN AGILE DATA MART? If your organization is like many others, it may have already undertaken initiatives to build a data warehouse or a data lake, and you may be wondering what is different about an agile data mart.

SAP defines a data mart as “a repository of data gathered from operational data originating in transactional systems (and/or other sources). It’s designed to serve a particular com-munity of information workers by forming the basis for analytics, report-ing, or a specific use in another type of application.” The key point here is that while a data warehouse or data lake holds all of an organization’s data, a data mart is spe-cifically focused on meeting the needs of one group of business users — often the analysts involved in business intelligence.

An agile data mart is different from other types of data marts because it enables a much more rapid response to business needs. Think of an agile data mart as a real-time data pipeline that

integrates data from a variety of sources into a consistent, usable format for high-performance access by business users. An agile data mart strikes the ideal balance between the IT or BI team’s need for centralized scaled solutions that enforce consistency and business users’ need for

agility and innovation. For its agile data mart, Dell relied on SAP’s HANA in-

memory database platform. The in-memory tech-nology made possible blazing-fast performance. But that was just the beginning. This com-

plete BI platform helped Dell increase the agility of

the entire BI process, ensuring on-time reporting, accelerating new-

report development, and enabling self-service analytics, all while simplifying business logic and increasing consistency of results.

After its own positive experience with SAP HANA, Dell put together a complete agile data mart solution that other companies can use. It bundles SAP’s HANA in-memory plat-form with Dell services and Dell hardware

that uses the Intel Xeon® processor family. Businesses and other organizations can use this solution to overcome BI challenges and experience four significant benefits.

BENEFIT 1: RAPID RESPONSE TO BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS AND IMPROVED CONSISTENCY A successful implementation of an agile data mart requires not only the right technology, but organizations also need to agree on which key performance indicators (KPIs) are important and how they’re going to calculate those numbers.

In many organizations, generating new reports through the official process is too cum-bersome and time consuming. The business requirements and logic must be translated into a series of queries written by a SQL developer, and this iterative process can take weeks. If business logic needs to be changed in an exist-ing report, the change requirements can often cascade changes into other queries. But busi-ness decisions must be made today.

As a result, analysts pull their own data and create their own reports, which are often repli-cated in several different places in the company. Without an agile data mart, those analysts are

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likely applying similar but different analytical approaches to similar but different data sets. Naturally, they generate reports that don’t agree. Decision-makers are left wondering if the information they’ve been given is accurate, and they aren’t able to respond quickly and easily to market issues.

SAP HANA solves this challenge. It stores busi-ness logic separately from the data. It immediately reflects changes to the business logic in all reports and analytics. With no need to wait hours or days to see the results between code changes, analysts can develop new reports much more quickly. Fur-thermore, SAP HANA consistently applies the business logic to the raw data stored in mem-ory, allowing analysts to drill down from the top-line report into deep-level analysis, always working from the same data set.

In Dell’s case, creating the agile data mart has eliminated the analysis paralysis that comes from conflicting reports. Now data is synchronized for more than 99% of the

company’s records, regardless of the source. This has helped Dell standardize 50% of KPIs used by the company. The BI teams can create new custom reports 60% faster than with the previous analytics solution.

Instead of waiting weeks for IT to help design a new report, users

get the information they need in just minutes. Of course,

that change didn’t happen overnight, but with the right technology and care-ful coordination between business users and IT, Dell’s

sales operations team was able to obtain the reliable

information it needed.

BENEFIT 2: SPEEDY DELIVERY OF REPORTS AND ACTIONABLE INSIGHTSWith traditional approaches, it can take hours or even days for analysts to refresh the stan-dard reports that business decision-makers need. The process of loading the data and then applying all of the calculations and creating separate reports often exceeds the available time. As your business grows, your

data stores grow — as does the complexity of analytical approaches, which makes the process take even longer. As a result, manag-ers are sometimes forced to make decisions based on incomplete or outdated information.

SAP HANA is a revolutionary technology that dramatically speeds data delivery for analytics and reporting. Data is loaded directly into memory, and can even be streamed in real time for up-to-the-second insights. The business logic is stored separately and is applied to the raw data as needed, creating the reports on the fly. This gets the report-refresh process back inside of an acceptable time frame.

In Dell’s case, reports are now always ready on time. In addition, without the need to cre-ate multiple tables with different views of the data, the agile data mart requires less raw capacity than the former solution. Because the Dell sales operations team was working with a data set containing 3 billion records, the agile data mart made a significant difference.

For business users, an agile data mart means that instead of waiting hours or days for analytics to run, they can get the actionable insights they need in just minutes.

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BENEFIT 3: THE FLEXIBILITY FOR BUSINESS USERS TO CREATE ANALYTICS ON A SELF-SERVICE BASISWith an agile data mart, business users no longer need to rely on IT to help them create new analytical approaches. When they have a question that isn’t answered by the standard reports, nonprogrammers can use the drag-and-drop query builder in the SAP HANA software to design custom reports. HANA can pull in data from multiple sources — even from Excel spreadsheets. These local innovations can be saved back into the centralized business logic to immediately empower all users with the same approaches. And because those reports all pull from the agile data mart, they can be certain that the reports they’re creating are accurate and reliable. For analyt-ics, there is no need for slow queries to the data warehouse. Data can be accessed directly from the agile data mart. At Dell, the business analysts were able to perform

queries 60 times faster than with the analytics tool they had previously used. That has made Dell’s sales operation more agile and better able to respond to changing conditions.

BENEFIT 4: INCREASED BI AND BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY For Dell, the agile data mart has resulted in widespread productivity gains. Most noticeably, business users have the data

and insights when and how they need them to do their jobs. Reports are

based on a consistent data set, and, when necessary, custom

analytics apply a consistent business logic, so users no longer waste time arguing about which report is more accurate or investigating

why similar analyses are returning different numbers.

That gives them a lot more time to spend on their “real” jobs.

The self-service capabilities of an agile data mart can also result in productivity gains for BI. The business intelligence team spends far less time managing data and waiting for

reports to run, and more time creating the insights that business users need. Analysts, who no longer have to be involved in the creation of custom reports for business users, spend more time developing even more advanced insights.

And IT productivity improves too. Because business users have a tool that meets their needs, they no longer feel the need to buy their own analytics and reporting solutions. And they no longer need their own data servers under their desks. At Dell, for example, the agile data mart has resulted in an 80% reduction in shadow IT, as well as much lower BI costs.

The agile data mart means that valuable business insights are available immediately, and the business sees and reacts to changes in real time. The business need for agility and innovation is easily balanced with IT and BI needs for centralized, consistent, and scalable solutions. That flexibility helps make the entire business more competitive and successful.

GET STARTED WITH AN AGILE DATA MART Having solved its own BI problems, Dell Tech-nologies is uniquely positioned to help other organizations achieve the same benefits. To make the process of deploying an agile data

UBM •• 4 REASONS TO BUILD AN AGILE DATA MART

To learn more, visit http://www.dell.com/SAP

mart as easy as possible, Dell offers preconfigured servers based on the Intel Xeon® processor family that come with the SAP HANA soft-ware already installed. In addition, Dell offers services and support to help ensure that your deployment is successful.

And the agile data mart isn’t limited to serving your current BI needs. Once you’ve solved your “small data” challenges, you can apply the advanced predictive and unstructured data analysis capabilities of the SAP HANA platform to tackle your big data. The SAP HANA platform includes a predictive analytics library that lets you see not only what has already happened but also what is going to happen next.

For more information on building your agile data mart, visit http://www.dell.com/SAPHANAEdge. ■ As a member of the Dell Technologies unique family of businesses, Dell EMC

serves a key role in providing the essential infrastructure for organizations to

build their digital future, transform IT, and protect their most important asset,

information. Dell EMC enables our enterprise customers’ IT and digital business

transformation through trusted hybrid cloud and big data solutions, built upon a

modern data center infrastructure that incorporates industry-leading converged

infrastructure, servers, storage, and cybersecurity technologies.

Intel® Xeon® processor families deliver the scale-up performance for real-time,

high-capacity data analysis that can help businesses derive rapid insights to build

innovative services and customer experiences. With high performance, large

memory capacity, robust reliability, virtualization, and security features, the Intel®

Xeon® processor family is designed for the most mission-critical workloads and the

always-on enterprise.

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TIPS FOR DEPLOYING AN AGILE DATA MARTIn order for your agile data mart implementation to be successful, it needs to be a collaborative, aligned effort between business and IT. Based on her own experience with deploying an agile data mart, Pilar Schenk, Dell’s executive director of global sales operations – business intelligence, offers several tips:

• Align executive sponsorship on both the IT side and the business side.

• Involve all of the stakeholders in defining global standards for KPIs and reporting.

• Address power users’ advanced requirements by making them members of an innovation council with access to a development environment that addresses their needs.

• Develop and demonstrate techniques for how the agile data mart could be used more broadly throughout the company.

• Ensure that ad hoc reporting is based on a consistent data set and implement incentives to reduce unofficial reporting systems outside of the agile data mart.

• Use change management principles to spread the cultural changes throughout the organization.