[GRLUG] Open Source Business Intelligence

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > If the Spreadsheet works, then sure, that's your BI tool. Probably
> > does the job for many small business users.
> > I've yet to test the OpenOffice3, but the last version was clunky for
> > tasks that involved connecting to DBs, permissions, parameters. 
> > I could do most, but it was slow and involved writing up documentation
> > on what's possible and not, by way of experimentation, along with
> > detailed instructions for a frustrated user. 
> The spreadsheet method breaks down as the number of rows increase. 

Certainly,  but many of the "BI" tools I've seen (including BIRT) seem
primarily to be data-presentation tools.   Which is one of the things
that is a bit frustrating about "BI" as a category;  in my experience
presentation is the easy part.  The hard part of "BI", IMO, is
collecting and correlating data from various applications and systems
(assuming some ERP package somewhere),  so if "BI" doesn't include some
ETL capability it doesn't really offer much.

> The
> BI tools are suppose to let the decision makers select and sort the data
> in a variety of ways to gain insight into the business. For example:
> What do sales look like by region?
> What do sales look like by region if we exclude the xyz product line?
> What do sales look like by region if we include Internet sales?
> What do sales look like by region comparing our salesmen using CRM tool
> verses the salesmen that do not use CRM tools?

Back in the day this would have been called DS (Decision Support).  Most
the above looks like CRM to me, since any decent CRM will already have
the data to answer these questions.   In groupware forums there have
been l-o-n-g threads about what actually constitutes CRM since many CRM
applications seem allot like groupware-lite;  everything has the
foundational address-book/schedular/task-list applications.   I think
that CRM is more a use-case than an actual category of applications.  BI
may be the same.   Maybe "CRM" is groupware + BI?   That is how we built
our CRM,  using groupware (specifically OpenGroupware
<http://code.google.com/p/zogi/>) as a platform and then pulling in
(another buzz word: "mashup") data from several systems.
<http://zogi.googlecode.com/files/CRMCallListManager.png>
<http://zogi.googlecode.com/files/CRMContacts.png>
<http://zogi.googlecode.com/files/CRMData.png>
<http://zogi.googlecode.com/files/CRMSearch.png>
We use the [now moribund] BIE <http://sourceforge.net/projects/bie-gpl/>
package to move data from various systems into a database from which it
can be presented through the CRM application.  The BI in BIE stands for
"Business Integration Engine".  Although moribund BIE provides simply
the best ETL capabilites I've ever seen in any package;  unfortunately
the project maintainers/managers were &*@^*&$# idiots and managed to
drive it into the ground.  I'd really like to replace BIE with something
currently maintained but I haven't found anything with matching
capabilities.