Getting Started with Intelligent Performance Management

PowerAnalytics dynamically connects to SAP Business One and other applications, creating optimized business models—OLAP “cubes” in a multidimensional database—that users can report and analyze from, as well as manipulate for planning purposes, via the familiar Excel spreadsheet and Internet Explorer. As a result, PowerAnalytics connects all systems into a faster, more powerful, flexible, Intelligent Performance Management system.

PowerAnalytics, bring enterprise-quality, user-friendly solutions to the small-to-medium market that SAP is serving with SAP Business One. The mapping to the General Ledger in SAP Business One is automated, with changes and updates occurring dynamically. PowerAnalytics directly addresses the need for advanced, yet easy-to-create reports—by Account, by Division, by Region, by Department, etc.—and the need for analytics and reports of multi-company consolidations.

PowerAnalytics also incorporates the flagship PARIS Technologies solution platform, PowerOLAP®, which features an integration technology, OLAP Exchange™, to establish the dynamic connection between relational databases and multidimensional cubes. OLAP Exchange™ enables users identify the business-necessary measures and fields within standard and in-house database relational tables for the creation of cubes. In other words, all the rich data in underlying systems can flow into cubes—these created from SAP Business One via PowerAnalytics, and from any other application/system data.  From these underlying systems the data is available to all users—one version of the truth, online and dynamic, in Excel or the Web.

Once the data is in cubes, PowerAnalytics users—those with security rights to do so—are able to manage meta data intuitively with a logic that is familiar to Excel users. Building or altering a model can be accomplished quickly, with end-user (not strictly IT) skills. All manner of internal formulas are available for sophisticated calculations—it has never been easier to create new company metrics and analytics. With drag-and-drop, double-click speed, users create virtually any cross-dimensional perspective, or Slice, of data. There is no end of the reports that users can create, with outstanding graphics available via a few key strokes.

As well, standard, easy-to-use PowerOLAP features allows users to create new meta data—that is, logic that works according to end-user needs, and which is not strictly reflective of underlying database information. It is this feature that enables firms to deploy PowerOLAP as a planning, budgeting, forecasting solution, because cubes can be built to incorporate “future-based logic” (budget versions, for example). And from any user interface, staff can “write back” figures into planning cubes, to see future results, instantly.

PowerAnalytics natively employs the Excel spreadsheet as a front end, so with the click of a button any Slice can be viewed through Excel; any report—containing literally thousands of cross-data views—can be saved as a single, simple Excel file; and any file can make full use of all of Excel’s formatting and graphical capabilities. From Excel, users can also enter data through the familiar spreadsheet interface to test "what if" analytical scenarios. Note that all data is stored within the cube(s), not Excel—even so, spreadsheets created via PowerOLAP maintain a dynamic connection to source cubes, retaining their standard Excel formula, formatting and graphical capabilities. PowerOLAP is the very definition of “Excel-Friendly” OLAP!

The PowerOLAP Portal enables PowerAnalytics users to utilize Crystal Xcelsius for the creation of impressive graphical representations of PowerOLAP data, for example for dashboards of key performance indicators.  Crystal Xcelsius is bundled in the purchase of the PowerOLAP Portal, and with it users can access cubes via Flash files using Microsoft Internet Explorer. The Portal also allows users to connect across the Internet from Excel spreadsheets using HTTP protocol, rather than only via TCP/IP (available without the Portal); as such, there is no need to open ports in company system, which is required when only TCP/IP connectivity is used.