Selecting a BI Reporting Engine

We are in the process of evaluating a BI reporting engine for JDE E1. Before I start to call the representatives, can you all please provide any guidance, suggestions, and anything else that you think of to help us in our decision making processes?

What I am looking for is your experiences with the existing offerings, their benefits and any 'gotcha' moments. Also, the engine is a small piece of the puzzle, do you use the data warehouse or do you do ad hoc queries? For those that purchased the pre-built modules, what vendor did you choose and were you happy with the selection? Would you choose them again?

If you could go back to the beginning of your selection processes, what vendors would you look at? What would you do differently and what are some good questions to ask (this is a big one)?

Any help is appreciated.

Very quickly, I would definitely evaluate what size of BI you're looking for and what functionality. On the smaller side, I've seen lots of companies use GL Company for their financials BI. On the larger side, many companies are working with Oracle and are trying to implement OBIEE these days. Is OBIEE completely ready for E1 ? No, but I believe it is the future for E1 customers - so I see most customers implementing OBIEE as early adopters.

There are literally hundreds of different BI solutions. Almost every company has a different preference. I would certainly attend a major conference like Openworld or the upcoming Quest Collaborate in April and ask the hard questions at each BI suppliers stand.

Thank you for the quick reply. I knew that my question was vague and rather open ended. I was trying to get a feel for the general pulse of the industry and to get some input on what has worked from a 10,000 foot level.

To be more explicit, we are looking to bring in the GL/AR/AP, Sales, and Manufacturing modules. We are a relatively small manufacturing company but have a huge need for some good flexible real time (near real time) reporting.

Richard,

For our shop, we use Cognos. We've been using it for years. We do not allow reporting off of the JDE database. The data is replicated to the Cognos servers.

depending on the datamart, they use two different tools. For realtime, flexible queries, they use Impromptu. For less time sensitive stuff (over night refreshes), they build Cognos cubes. I'm not a cognos guy, I just work with them. but the users seem to be happy with that tool.

- Gregg

Like Greg, we are using Cognos as well but we didn't isolate the data. Eve ryone seems quite happy and it makes pretty Dashboards for those who want i t. The Cubes are refreshed each night with our evening processes and balan ced against the GL each month... Meeting expectations thus far.

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On B ehalf Of radi8
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 12:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Selecting a BI Reporting Engine

We are in the process of evaluating a BI reporting engine for JDE E1. Befor e I start to call the representatives, can you all please provide any guida nce, suggestions, and anything else that you think of to help us in our dec ision making processes?

What I am looking for is your experiences with the existing offerings, thei r benefits and any 'gotcha' moments. Also, the engine is a small piece of t he puzzle, do you use the data warehouse or do you do ad hoc queries? For t hose that purchased the pre-built modules, what vendor did you choose and w ere you happy with the selection? Would you choose them again?

If you could go back to the beginning of your selection processes, what ven dors would you look at? What would you do differently and what are some goo d questions to ask (this is a big one)?

Any help is appreciated.

EnterpriseOne 8.11 SP1 , 8.97.2.6 base, Win 2003, SQL 2005, WAS 6.0.2.21 on WIN 2K3 Web Server

As has been said, there are a lot of options in the BI space. I am on the board of the Quest Business Intelligence SIG, and we teamed with Quest to present part 1 of a "BI Shootout" in December. As part of this, the BI SIG delivered a presentation "All about Business Intelligence" which defined Business Intelligence, posed some of the major questions that you should think about when picking a BI solution, set up the BI landscape (tying it to the Gartner Magic Quadrant) and introduces the key vendors in the BI space. I would attach this presentation, but have not had success in posting attachments in the allotted jdelist space recently. If you would like this presentation, send me a message ([email protected]) with your e-mail address, and I will send you a copy.

Also, the BI SIG meets every other month (next meeting March 18). SIG meetings include presentations which provide information on BI products and technologies. Quest membership is NOT required to sit in on the SIG calls. COLLABORATE will also be a great place to learn about BI; the SIG will be presenting "All about BI" live and will be available to answer question on BI options.

As for our personal (company) situation, we are taking small steps to begin with. We have started with a front end BI solution fom Global Software. This has allowed us to reduce our (SEC) reporing process (data gathering, processing, proofing) from 3 weeks to little more than 3 days.

We chose Business Objects XI R2.It is a very intuitive tool. Ad-queries is user friendly. Dashboard involves a little bit of development but, has many good options. It also comes with crystal reports which is integrated with the software. They have their own ETl tool as well. So no need for other options.As a jDE Developer it was not hard for me to learn this new tool and users are pretty satisfied so far. All in all I am happy with it.

Hi,
i'm working on JDE 9.00 with Hyperion + OBIEE.
This suite can solve any sistuation and it's all by oracle.

Consider that you can use essbase for data aggregation, OBIEE for data presentation (importing metadata from essbase) and finaly you can integrate OBIEE dashboard inot your jde forms.

I know BO is a great solution too to but for multidemnsional db essbase is the king.

I hope this can be useful.

Regards

Bruno Condemi