Infosys-Oracle Blog

The customers who show great interest towards the Oracle products are gradually migrating their home grown and legacy IS applications to standard Oracle based platforms in the CRM and ERP space to get better support and to be abreast with industry standards. Hence for Business Intelligence reporting, they are showing enormous interest towards Oracle BI Apps, as this is prebuilt packaged solution based on the industry best practices and standards. If the customers are already in Oracle application stack, they are showing soaring interest for moving towards the Oracle BI Apps path, as they can develop the solution on top of the prebuilt package.

In my opinion the Oracle BI Apps project should start in a simple way with the following objectives and then should enter into actual full life cycle implementation:

• Set up a pilot environment for Oracle Business Intelligence and there could be two options:
  a). Loading the vanilla data of transactional database to Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse by using the standard out of the box ETL routines
  b). Loading the customer  supplied real-time data to Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse  by using the standard out of the box ETL routines
• Demo the Dashboards and reporting capabilities offered in the out of the box solution.

The recommended approach is to use the customer data, if the customer already has the up and running transactional application. In this approach the customer would be more ebullient as they see their own data in the industry best practice dashboards and reports.

Hence in this pilot approach of implementing a BI Apps, customer keeps the pilot as simple as possible and ensures the minimal SME involvement and then gradually builds the full blown solution from the strong BI foundation. This approach will be best suited for the global deployment and roll-outs, as the initial validation and success is measured during the pilot phase.

After the successful implementation of POC, the customer should get good grip of the vanilla dashboards and reports then the implementation team should assist in determining the following:

• Determine the extent to which "out of the box" Oracle ETL routines plug into deployed Oracle/Non Oracle applications, and associated reporting capability
• Determine the extent to which Oracle "out of the box" reporting solution can mix with the various levels of business reporting requirements
• Perform "Fit Gap" exercise where customisation have been made in the source application
• Determine where an extension of ETL customization will be required

Based on the reporting business requirements and fit gap analysis, the business stakeholders can take better informed decisions with the complete guidance and direction from the implementation team.  The key factor is both the business and IT team should not work towards replicating the legacy reports in BI Apps and they should always consider the BI Apps as new philosophy and new approach for business improvement.

According to me, this is what is customers are really interested in Oracle BI Apps, as they explore and understand what is available as the industry best practice and what is their business objective and they try to implement the best suitable solution for organisation Business Intelligence.

In the current trend, most of the customers do not want to invest heavily and later uncover the major gaps in the implementation. Hence the above stated approach can be used for successful implementation of BI engagements with the right implementation partners, who have an extensive knowledge of Oracle applications, combined with the industry and business expertise. These partners provide end to end advice and support to ensure that business makes the right decision and right choice for Oracle BI Apps implementation.