Vanguard Solutions Group, Inc. (www.vanguardsolutions.com), is a Chicago, IL-based, business intelligence (BI) provider that reportedly achieved major successes in 2004. The core concept behind their solution is that BI must be demand-driven, which means that the business needs of the user dictate the technical solution, not the other way around. In other words, it should let the business users drive the process, and remove the problems of content relevance and software complexity. Namely, although IT-driven BI projects frequently do not deliver what the business users need, Vanguard has come to an understanding that the BI development cycle is inherently iterative and open-ended and that therefore the business decision maker needs to "own" the process. Thus, the vendor's solution addresses the problem of content relevance by making the underlying data architecture transparent to the users, who have access to information from multiple systems, platforms, or locations, and view it in a functional user interface.
To that end, Vanguard's Unified Information Model (UIM) ensures that the appropriate business rules are applied and the information appears in a consistent, integrated context (whereby the user environment allows business users to identify and retrieve exactly the information they need), and provides easy-to-use tools for analysis. The value of information increases dramatically when business decision makers drive the process, by having precise control of the reporting and analysis process. In the context of real-world customer deployments, Vanguard's approach emphasizes a clear separation of responsibilities. That is to say, business people, from front-line tactical decision makers to strategic senior executives, are the key users of the solution, and they are responsible for creating and using the information, reports, and analytics that Vanguard provides. The key leaders of a typical Vanguard implementation are therefore often VPs of sales, finance, operations, purchasing, or other core business functions.
Another core concept of the Vanguard solution is the automated publication and delivery of analytic content to end users, as the eDeployment module automatically generates and "pushes" customized, updated Information Views to business users. These Information Views are user-defined, personalized data sets, in the form of a client-side on-line analytic processing (OLAP) interface, with intuitive data analysis, report writing, and graphing capabilities built in. Further, with user-defined Information Views, which combine data from single or multiple data sources, users view this information in close to real-time without necessarily relying on a data warehouse (DW) or repository, which will be detailed later on. Business users receive Information Views on a predefined schedule via e-mail, or over a network, or by accessing a Web page. For example, one Vanguard customer uses eDeployment to deliver updated Information Views via e-mail to several hundred sales executives across the US every Monday morning. The sales executives are then able to take the information with them on their laptops in a disconnected and mobile fashion, and use it to stay on top of ever-changing sales trends, product promotions, and customer activities.
This model ensures that the majority of the analytical processing of content occurs "off-line" on the user's PC, rather than over a network connection. Vanguard's user environments enable business people to filter, drill-down, modify, and preview the customized Information Views, whereby the level of customization and end-user control is such that the user very rarely needs to generate "live" queries against the relational databases. This also significantly increases the scalability of the solution by delivering compressed data sets during off-peak hours. Through experience, Vanguard has been able to identify the three main types of live user queries (in relation to the above-depicted user groups), and wisely design the solution to support them with a high level of performance. The three most common types of direct queries are
1. Content building, when power users are creating new Information Views for analysis or distribution to other users.
2. "Drill-backs", when business users, who receive a summary Information View, analyze the data off-line, then drill back into the relational database for more information to support further analysis. Drill-backs are typically targeted, exception-based result sets that are small and can be processed efficiently.
To that end, Vanguard's Unified Information Model (UIM) ensures that the appropriate business rules are applied and the information appears in a consistent, integrated context (whereby the user environment allows business users to identify and retrieve exactly the information they need), and provides easy-to-use tools for analysis. The value of information increases dramatically when business decision makers drive the process, by having precise control of the reporting and analysis process. In the context of real-world customer deployments, Vanguard's approach emphasizes a clear separation of responsibilities. That is to say, business people, from front-line tactical decision makers to strategic senior executives, are the key users of the solution, and they are responsible for creating and using the information, reports, and analytics that Vanguard provides. The key leaders of a typical Vanguard implementation are therefore often VPs of sales, finance, operations, purchasing, or other core business functions.
Another core concept of the Vanguard solution is the automated publication and delivery of analytic content to end users, as the eDeployment module automatically generates and "pushes" customized, updated Information Views to business users. These Information Views are user-defined, personalized data sets, in the form of a client-side on-line analytic processing (OLAP) interface, with intuitive data analysis, report writing, and graphing capabilities built in. Further, with user-defined Information Views, which combine data from single or multiple data sources, users view this information in close to real-time without necessarily relying on a data warehouse (DW) or repository, which will be detailed later on. Business users receive Information Views on a predefined schedule via e-mail, or over a network, or by accessing a Web page. For example, one Vanguard customer uses eDeployment to deliver updated Information Views via e-mail to several hundred sales executives across the US every Monday morning. The sales executives are then able to take the information with them on their laptops in a disconnected and mobile fashion, and use it to stay on top of ever-changing sales trends, product promotions, and customer activities.
This model ensures that the majority of the analytical processing of content occurs "off-line" on the user's PC, rather than over a network connection. Vanguard's user environments enable business people to filter, drill-down, modify, and preview the customized Information Views, whereby the level of customization and end-user control is such that the user very rarely needs to generate "live" queries against the relational databases. This also significantly increases the scalability of the solution by delivering compressed data sets during off-peak hours. Through experience, Vanguard has been able to identify the three main types of live user queries (in relation to the above-depicted user groups), and wisely design the solution to support them with a high level of performance. The three most common types of direct queries are
1. Content building, when power users are creating new Information Views for analysis or distribution to other users.
2. "Drill-backs", when business users, who receive a summary Information View, analyze the data off-line, then drill back into the relational database for more information to support further analysis. Drill-backs are typically targeted, exception-based result sets that are small and can be processed efficiently.
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