Top 3 Challenges
A good number of enterprises run two or more BI platforms. Xtreme Enterprises is one of them and it has three BI platforms namely, SAP BOBJ, Tableau and Power BI. Graham Fuller is one of the power users in Sales department and most of the reports he uses are available in SAP BOBJ environment. In addition to monitoring Sales he also needs to track Cost of Sales and majority of those reports are in PowerBI. On a typical day he does the following,
1. Login into BOBJ as fullerg and analyzes Sales related reports
2. Login into PowerBI as fuller and analyzes Cost of Sales related reports
3. When he needs additional reports for ex: ‘Procurement Analysis’, he creates it in SAP Lumira Designer because he has development experience in that environment.
Graham’s daily routine seems normal but there are three points to be noted:
1. If Graham wants the Procurement Analysis report, he creates a new one in BOBJ without realizing that the report could already exist in BOBJ or Power BI and he DOESN’T have access to the same. Because he created a new report, now there are two versions of the same report and they could go out of sync in future and significant amount of time might be spent on reconciliation.
2. The main reason Graham didn’t know that Procurement Analysis report exists in Power BI, is lack of a centralized searchable report metadata repository which stores such valuable information.
3. Graham’s user name is fullerg in BOBJ and fuller in PowerBI. So, he has to remember both user name and passwords. As per corporate policy of Xtreme enterprises, passwords have to be changed every 60 days and remembering password is a burden for Graham.
Before delving into the solution, let us summarize this three major challenges.
1. Limited asset reuse due to lack of centralized metadata and search capability
2. Lack of centralized metadata and multiple BI silos promote content replication
3. Users burdened with remembering user names and passwords and administrators challenged with managing multiple credentials of users
VBI View
Visual BI’s flagship product, VBI View is the perfect solution to these three and other challenges faced by organizations with multiple BI platforms. Let us see how Graham’s day at work significantly improves after Xtreme Enterprises implements VBI View.
VBI View reports repository and SmartSearch mitigates duplicate content
At the core of VBI View is a centralized, searchable, reports metadata repository which stores important attributes of reports such as Name, Description, Data source, Data provider, Tags, Refresh date time, BI Platform, Functional area etc., This searchable repository is utilized by a prominent feature of VBI View called SmartSearch.
- Graham launches SmartSearch and searches using the key word ‘Procurement’
- SmartSearch searches the repository and returns a report with that name in the Operations workspace of Power BI platform and it is NOT ACCESSIBLE to Graham.
In a matter of few minutes, using VBI View, Graham found out that the Procurement Analysis report he needs is available in Power BI platform and it is not accessible to him. VBI View also enables Graham to request access to that report instead of creating a 2nd version of the same report in BOBJ environment and he starts using it.
One Login provides access to reports in multiple BI platforms
The other challenge faced by Graham is, due to various reasons, his user ID is fullerg in BOBJ and Tableau environments but fuller in Power BI. He has to remember those user IDs and the relevant passwords, has to login into all platforms to run his Sales and Procurement Analysis reports. VBI View eliminates this hassle using a powerful feature called User ID mapping.
- VBI View administrator maps the user IDs fullerg and fuller into one ID (ex: fullerg in this case) and allows the user to set his password to enter into VBI View
- Graham can login into VBI View as fullerg and execute reports from BOBJ, Power BI and Tableau environments
Graham need not remember three user IDs and passwords and login into three different environments anymore. He can login into VBI View once and access reports from multiple platforms in one page. A significant enhancement compared to his present day experience.
Key Takeaways
Here is a summary of salient features of VBI View – the One Gateway for all BI content
- One Gateway – Access all your BI content from a central location without having to sign on to multiple BI platforms
- SmartSearch – Explore the centralized, searchable report metadata repository and request access to reports, instead of creating duplicate content
- Auto Synchronization – Changes to reports, folders, authorizations to BI platforms automatically
- Audit – Comprehensive analysis about report usage, user activity, platform availability
- Personalization – Reorganize content from various BI platforms as per user requirements
- Security – Full integration with Microsoft AD/LDAP, SSO, BI platform native authentication
- Minimal Administration – Easy to setup and maintain; no coding required
Interested in a trial version? Click here.
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