Discovering Business Intelligence Using MicroStrategy 9

Table of Contents

Discovering Business Intelligence Using MicroStrategy 9

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. The Value Proposition of MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy Business Intelligence suite

Enterprise reporting

Scorecards and dashboards

Advanced and predictive analytics

Closed-loop BI

High-performance BI

Big Data

Summary

2. Mapping Typical Business Needs

Understanding the business needs

Summary

3. Reporting – from Excel to Intelligent Data

Visualization objects – graphs and grids

Designing and formatting the reports

Analyze data

Advanced metrics and attributes

Thresholds

Drill down

Benefits of drill down

Filters and slices

Advanced options for filters

Finding the values

Including and excluding data

Showing the total value of the results

Sorting data

Ranking

Summary

4. Scorecards and Dashboards – Information Visualization

Scorecards versus dashboards

How to design a scorecard or dashboard

MicroStrategy interface – panels, layouts, and visualizations

Features

Usability best practices

Visualization objects

Visualization types

Advanced configurations

Using filters

Using visualization objects as a filter

Scorecard design and construction

Foundation

Metrics

Visualization objects

Building a scorecard

Foundation

Metrics

Visualization objects

Dashboard building process

Summary

5. Sharing Your BI Reports and Dashboards

Reaching your audience

Main menu

The Share button

E-mail sharing

Portable dashboard

Sharing on the social media – Facebook and Twitter

The Facebook option

The Twitter option

More Share Visualization options via the Web or user blogs

Unshare the report

Mobile devices

Summary

6. MicroStrategy and the Cloud

The MicroStrategy Cloud portfolio

Personal

Personal edition

Express

Express edition

Platform

Express edition in action

Data sources

Security

Applying security

Personalize

Deliveries

Refresh data

Summary

7. BI Reports at Your Hands

The MicroStrategy Mobile BI client solution setup

MicroStrategy Mobile usability

The offline mode

Summary

A. MicroStrategy Express

Registering the Cloud service

Activating your account

B. Visualization

Visualization object's properties

Visualization object's options

Index

Discovering Business Intelligence Using MicroStrategy 9

Discovering Business Intelligence Using MicroStrategy 9

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

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First published: December 2013

Production Reference: 1171213

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78217-004-4

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Authors

Nelson Enriquez

Samundar Singh Rathore

Reviewers

Chael Christopher

Steven Zagoudis

Acquisition Editor

Kevin Colaco

Commissioning Editors

Neil Alexander

Neha Nagwekar

Technical Editors

Shashank Desai

Manal Pednekar

Copy Editors

Roshni Banerjee

Sarang Chari

Dipti Kapadia

Karuna Narayanan

Shambhavi Pai

Project Coordinator

Michelle Quadros

Proofreader

Cathy Cumberlidge

Indexer

Mariammal Chettiyar

Production Coordinator

Pooja Chiplunkar

Cover Work

Pooja Chiplunkar

Cover Image

Valentina D'silva

About the Authors

Nelson Enriquez is a multicultural executive and business leader with more than 17 years of experience in IT, strategy and planning areas, with specializations in business studies at Stanford (U.S.A), INSEAD (France), and EGADE (Mexico). He has international experience of working on several projects in other geographical locations including Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America, that are focalized in business integration, valuing and acquiring technology-related companies (the Due Diligence process), and integrating IT-related operations to company standards (Mergers and Acquisitions). He also has experience in retail, pharma, services, and manufacturing industries as a partner at an IT services company, in Monterrey, as an External Director in a Big Five consultant firm, and as a IT Planning Director at Tier 1 Retail in Mexico.

Dedicated to Nelson and Enzo, my beloved children, to the 
woman who supports my dreams, and my mother, who always believes in me.

Samundar Singh Rathore is a data warehousing and business intelligence consultant, and a trainer with extensive experience on various data warehousing business intelligence products. He has worked with a large business and analytics organization with specialization in investment and healthcare domain data. He is currently working as a MicroStrategy administrator and architect. He was born in Mundara, Rajasthan, and raised in Mumbai, Maharashtra, which is the financial capital of India. He speaks Hindi and English, and he is also proficient in Java and SQL. He is an active member and the Guru of the MicroStrategy official discussion forum at https://resource.microstrategy.com/Forum/UserProfile.aspx?uid=8557.

I would like to thank my family and friends for their support and motivation that led me to put my thoughts together for this book. I dedicate this work to my loving mother.

About the Reviewers

Chael Christopher has been working with MicroStrategy since 1999, and writes about MicroStrategy on his blog (www.chaelchristopher.com). In his fifteen years of working in this platform, Chael has worked with clients across a wide range of industries and has seen a diverse set of implementations across financial services, pharmaceuticals, retail, marketing and advertising, supply chain, and higher education. While working with MicroStrategy, Chael has seen the product evolve from a heavy client install (anyone remembers the 16-bit thunking layer?) to the Web, and now to Mobile. MicroStrategy continues to innovate across different technology spectrums, and Chael enjoys keeping up with all of the advancements.

Steven Zagoudis is the CEO and founder of MetaGovernance Incorporated and Information Governance Technologies Inc. Steven currently holds the VP Marketing Board position for Data Governance Professional Organization (DGPO). He is a Business Intelligence and Information Governance specialist with more than 20 years of experience in extensive business and technical experience. Steven has a proven track record of resolving chronic data infrastructure issues. He has formed data governance functions for numerous organizations. Steven has cross-industry experience in international and domestic organizations, having been based in the U.K. and Germany for several years. He has led the design and implementation of technical and data architectures on complex data warehousing and data mining applications, providing straightforward solutions to business problems. He is a second surgery and metadata specialist who refocuses on failed Business Intelligence projects. Steven excels at unlocking information hidden within organizational data, thereby enabling the visibility of trends for improved competitor position. Crain's Business Magazine recognized Steven as a Technology Leader. To Steven, information governance is a journey towards accurate data and meaningful information for business operations,