Business Intelligence

A “Business Intelligence” solution is a layer of software that, in simple business terms, gathers together all the data across your business, makes sense of it, and displays or reports it in a way that immediately tells managers what’s going on.

Businesses of all sizes need this. But BI has historically been complex and very expensive – affordable only to the biggest companies. And now, all the top BI vendors just got gobbled up by the biggest IT companies – to focus even more on their big customers. Who’s got a BI solution that fits a small to mid-sized company?

Some “Business Intelligence” vendors sell advanced report formatting tools to format charts, graphs, dashboards, …whatever. But these tools usually can’t merge, join, calculate, transform, or do much of anything to prepare data prior to formatting it. They can only take what you’ve already processed (usually into a single table or spreadsheet) and format it into screens and reports. Which is helpful, but leaves you to do all the grunt work first, with no tools other than your own wits and maybe a spreadsheet(s). That’s how they cut their costs.

But the “front end” of a real BI solution (the report design part, the part you see) accounts for just 20% of the project. 80% of the effort and expense involves developing the “back end”, the part that gathers and makes sense of your data. So reporting tools seem cost effective, but what’s missing is the most valuable part. You’ll have to make up this deficiency by spending your time (or paying someone) to transform your data into something the reporting tool can actually use.

Direct Focus Software Offers ...

Direct Focus Software is different. We’ve created a new generation of complete BI tools. Tools that are extremely flexible and adaptable to custom BI requirements. Designed to deliver solutions quickly and affordably. To expect your business to change. With a flexible, tool-based (as opposed to programming) back end to get the grunt work done PLUS a front end for those snazzy reports. Designed to grow (i.e., scalable) and change with your business.

Direct Focus Software Business Intelligence solutions provide interactive reporting, multi-dimensional pivot-tables and ad-hoc reporting with exceptionally powerful run-time control over design, updates, queries and filters. Access virtually any data source. Perform complex joins, merges, calculations, and transform data into logical, useable information supporting your business decisions. Work in either (or both) a Windows or Web environment. Schedule the system to run queries, create reports and distribute them automatically. Administrate user security centrally on the report level all the way down to the “cell” level – a level of control you can’t find with other solutions. Direct Focus Software solutions can even allow updates on data elements directly from the BI reporting environment, all strictly governed by your custom security configuration.

We build modular solutions. So if you need just a little reporting module, you pay for just that. More complete solutions still have a rapid turnaround on each piece, so you can review the project as it progresses. No “surprises” after you’ve waited six months and spent most of your budget.

Key Features ...

A typical DFSW solution includes a set of standard reports (scorecards, dashboards, tables, graphs, etc.) to keep an updated eye on things according to the business view(s) you need to measure the health of your business. It also includes advanced Ad Hoc reporting to view your business in ways you haven’t even thought of yet. Most businesses spend too much time doing ad hoc reporting because, while they have to deal with constant change, they have nothing more than spreadsheets and their own wits to deal with it. A quick, flexible ad hoc capability is a great tool for any business for keeping on top of their operations, their market and their competition. We also provide extensive printing reports for printing (or outputting to pdf’s) those multipage, complex documents that every business needs.

We create Business Intelligence solutions that fit your needs, and provide training so you can continue to change, modify and grow your environment as needed. Or if you prefer, we can provide ongoing reporting services for you.

Imagine doing your annual budgeting with an information environment that lets you “what if” til you’ve looked at all the angles, “drill down” from top to bottom in 5 dimensions (or more, if it makes sense), compare “this” to “that” until you know exactly how you’re going to make this year better than last, and the year before, and the one before that. And then set up key performance indicators to measure, gauge, and “dashboard” your progress all year long – automatically.

And recognizing that there will probably STILL be cases where you want to get just the right data quickly into a spreadsheet and brainstorm to your heart’s content, you can output or cut and paste to Office and Acrobat.

For a more thorough, hands-on overview, call to set up a Direct Focus Software interactive BI Demo.

Or, let us know your custom requirements. Email us at DFSWmail@gmail.com or call us at 888-626-DFSW. Once we have them, we can usually produce a working proof of concept demo in two weeks or less.

Because we’re directly focused on your business.