Analytics Innovation Center for Oracle: Practical Insights

These short points of view are based on workshop sessions conducted at the Innovation Centers as well as real-world experience on Accenture client projects.

This issue covers four topics that the Innovation Center team commonly encounters:

• The Integration of BI and EPM
• Deploying Oracle BI with ERP upgrade planned or underway
• Getting the most out of your Oracle Business Intelligence 11g upgrade
• BI and the long tail of company data

The Accenture Analytics Innovation Center for Oracle Team shares some of the challenges they have encountered with these topics, as well as recommendations for getting the best results.

• Despite the much tighter integration along Oracle’s product line, customers still express confusion on how to integrate these capabilities in both a technical and process-oriented manner, as there are many overlapping capabilities between various tools in the Business Analytics (BI and EPM) suite.

• When it comes to EBS/PeopleSoft upgrades and OBIA, it is possible to implement OBIA alongside the upgrade but it requires proper coordination and planning—and there are other points for organizations to consider.

• To effectively use the new features of OBIEE 11g to analyze historical data, some organizations are integrating enterprise data with information available on the internet.

• Moving toward a unified reporting environment doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking if the BI infrastructure is already in place.

• Take the time to set a strategy and vision before jumping into implementation. While it may feel like the up-front work slows your project down, the dividend this effort pays during implementation and beyond is significant.

• Rationalize your existing reports, including taking a look at which reports should come from which tools. Some core team members should even attend various product training classes during the strategy and vision phase, rather than at the end of the project.

• Factor Oracle’s product roadmap into your strategy. Because there are many tools across the Business Analytics suite, some are more strategic than others.

• Ensure key ERP configurations and setups are completed before you configure OBIA. For HR, your job codes and pay-groups should be defined before you can configure HR Analytics.

• Include OBIA requirements as part of the ERP upgrade. As a simple example, if you require 10 years of history in the data warehouse, ensure your ERP Upgrade team upgrades the full set of data.

• Do not deploy OBIA in parallel if you forecast or observe significant upgrade issues or if the ERP system data which impacts BI is in constant flux.