Operational BI | Sterna Technologies Ltd.

Operational BI

Business analytics software is becoming increasingly prominent in the enterprise IT landscape as a means to deliver intelligence that drives to action. Managers are becoming increasingly aware of the need to gain insights not only to drive strategic decision making, but also to dive into the heart of operational processes.

Operational BI or Operational Business Intelligence is aimed at providing managers with real-time actionable insights, enabling management intervention while the affected process is still ongoing, thus optimizing daily business operations. Operational BI differs from strategic BI in the following:

	Strategic analytics analyzes data after the fact, i.e. once a process is completed, driving strategic decisions that will affect future activities. Operational BI affects ongoing processes.
	Real-time insights are extremely important when it comes to operational BI. Since operational BI affects ongoing processes, any delay in delivering actionable information has a direct impact on the company’s operational performance. For that reason, operational BI cannot include time-consuming processes of data extraction, transformation, and upload onto data warehouses and OLAP cubes. The delivery process of actionable information must be short and simple, working against the organization’s operational systems, such as ERP, CRM or SCM.
	Strategic BI focuses on features that allow data analysis of historic data using a multitude of analysis methods and visualization techniques, typically via self-service query and reporting tools; users of strategic analysis tools are typically highly-skilled and trained business analysts. On the other hand, users of operational BI cannot afford the time required to perform detailed data analysis; they are typically not skilled for such analysis either. For these reasons, the front-end through which operational BI is delivered must be simpler and more intuitive to use than front-ends of strategic BI solutions. Simplicity, rather than flexibility of analysis, is the key.
	Operational BI users require the capability to drill down to detailed levels (e.g. product-level). In most cases, they need to drill down to more detailed information than that required by strategic BI users.
	The added value of operational BI to the company performance is delivered much earlier and is more evident than the added value delivered by strategic BI tools.

By consolidating capabilities of operational BI, strategic BI and predictive analytics into a single platform, Sterna BPS provides the following operational BI capabilities:

	All calculations are performed in real time, on-demand.
	Real-time insights into deviations from target performance, and the financial impacts of such deviations.
	Dynamic alerting of both actual, and potential revenue losses through the unique Money Surface™ capabilities
	Delivery of actionable insights, through a remarkably intuitive user interface
	Built-in connectivity to virtually any data source, including operational systems; and complete modularity of data sources, such that data sources can be plugged in and out with minimal effort and impact on the system.
	Data warehousing and OLAP cubes not required. Instead, data is read directly from the operational systems, made available for immediate analysis.
	Agility to adapt within days to weeks to changes in the business process, due to Sterna BPS separation of data from the mathematical calculations.

Operational BI is increasingly becoming an important requirement in the business intelligence strategy of organizations that need to quickly react to change. The Sterna BPS operational BI capabilities improve operational processes, resulting in reduced costs, higher efficiency, and better customer service.

Combining operational BI capabilities together with powerful strategic BI and predictive analytics in a unified platform, empowers users of Sterna BPS to gain a holistic picture of their organization – past, present, and future – in a solution that is typically implemented in 1-6 weeks.