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Better business decision making with Performance Point Server 2007

Recent days there are lot of competitions floating around the business world. One is struggling to make an effective business decision with the data they have in their enterprise. But just having data is not going to help improving your business, all you need is 'Information'. How one can make use of these information to achieve what they are looking for? Microsoft provides set of business intelligence tools to deliver a holistic approach to convert business information into actionable insight by providing an integrated platform for analyzing & monitoring enterprise performance metrics and planning your business. Microsoft Office Performance Point Server 2007(Commonly Known as PPS) is one such tool which allows one to identify the KPIs, maps those KPIs with various business metrics, build scorecards, reports and dashboards.

 

Performance Point Server is built on top of SQL Server 2005. It has two components
1.     Dashboard Designer
2.     Planning Business Modeler


Dashboard Designer:

A dashboard is a collection of graphs, reports, and Key Performance Indicators that can help you monitor your business. The following components are available in the dashboard designer

1.     Data Source - Analysis Services, ODBC, Excel Services, Excel 2007, SharePoint Lists, SQL Server table
2.     KPI - Blank KPIs, KPIs import from Analysis Services
3.     Scorecards - Blank Scorecard, Analysis Services, Fixed value, Excel Services, Excel 2007, SharePoint Lists, SQL Server table
4.     Reports - Analytic chart, Analytic Grid, Excel Services, Pivot chart, Pivot table, ProClarity Analytic server page, SQL Server report, Strategy map, Trend analysis chart, web page
5.     Indicators - Variety of indicators available to highlight the performance of different metrics. One can also have custom indicators 

Creating dashboard is the simplest task with PPS. Al you need to do is drag and drop the required Scorecards, reports and filters and position them as per your need. Finally the dashboard can be published to a SharePoint Portal (MOSS 2007 & SPS 2003) using simple navigational screens.  

Planning Business Modeler:

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 can help you drive consistency throughout your organization, span planning needs across your enterprise, extend your investments in Microsoft, and provide every employee with a stake in the corporate performance management process.

Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 makes it easy to:

  • Import data from multiple sources, including multiple general ledger systems.
  • Easily feed data automatically into a centralized, trusted data store.
  • Embed standardized business rules and processes.
  • Provide everyone with a single interface.
  • Ensure that people only see appropriate and relevant information.
  • Track changes automatically.
  • Manage planning and budgeting processes.


PerformancePoint Server 2007 delivers on these goals first by utilizing Microsoft Office Excel as the end-user interface for planning, budgeting, and forecasting. With PerformancePoint Server 2007, Excel is where people contribute, interact, and build reports. And Excel is where end users ultimately write their changes back to a central data model that contains data on actual side-by-side with planning data.

PerformancePoint Server 2007 data models are built to support the range of business models used in your organization, from sophisticated financial modeling to straightforward budget planning.

Built on top of the proven enterprise capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, PerformancePoint Server 2007 ensures that your performance management application can scale to meet a large user base.

Posted by Susam S on January 24, 2008 01:27 PM |

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Comments

What are the other business intelligence tools developed by Microsoft and how does PPS differ from those?

Posted by: kishore | April 9, 2008 06:15 AM

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