Business Intelligence                        

Business Intelligence solutions allow decision makers to analyze business performance and make intelligent decisions.  Business Intelligence (BI) tools use features such as On Line Analytical Processing (OLAP), Dashboards, Ad-hoc querying, Business Metrics, Data Mining, and Report Generation.  A Business Intelligence Solution should provide:

• Powerful data presentation and analysis functionality.  This functionality may include features such as Slice-and-dice, Drill-Down, Summarization, Grouping, Trend Analysis and Charting.  It should allow users to discover relationships in the data as well as produce reports.

• An intuitive interface that is easy to use by non-technical people.  Data should be presented in a useful and attractive manner.

• Rapid response time to user requests.  This includes the time that it takes for the software to respond to user requests.  This also means that current and relevant data needs to be available to provide for useful analysis.

JSA Software BI Solutions make use of software tools that include:

• Oracle Business Intelligence (formerly Siebel Analytics)

• Oracle Discoverer

• Oracle Business Intelligence Reports

• Cognos PowerPlay

• Cognos Impromptu

• Cognos ReportNet

• Excel Pivot Tables

Business Intelligence  tools may operate against various sources of data.  For consistency, simplicity,  optimal performance and ultimate cost savings, a Data Warehouse is preferred.

Data Warehousing                            

A Data Warehouse is a database that is organized in a way that simplifies data analysis and reporting.  When built and used properly, it can be the "Single Source of Truth" for analysis and reporting within an organization.  Most business data is collected in a database that is transaction oriented.  It is structured to process business transactions.  The Data Warehouse normally resides in a database that is separate from the source transactional data.

Traditionally, Data Warehouses are refreshed periodically.  Typically this happens weekly or monthly.  This works for many types of analysis, but prevents the Data Warehouse from being used for analysis of current operational data.  JSA Software has developed functionality to capture incremental data and update a Data Warehouse in near-real-time when that is needed.

The process of populating the data warehouse consists of 3 steps:

• Extract: The needed data must be extracted from the source database(s)
• Transform: The extracted data must be transformed into the formats needed for the data warehouse.  This may include operations such as merging data sources, filtering, summing, grouping,  translating and creating derived values.  The end result of this step should be data in a format that lends itself to analysis and reporting.
• Load: The transformed data is loaded into the data warehouse.

These 3 steps are performed by what are called ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) procedures.  JSA Software builds ETL procedures using Oracle^TM Warehouse Builder and Oracle^TM PL/SQL.

JSA Software has built many successful Data Warehouses for our customers.  Our cost-effective solutions have repeatedly exceeded user expectations.  The advantages of our Data Warehouse solutions are:

• Cost effective implementation.
• Rapid implementation / rapid results.
• "One Source of the Truth" for business analysis and reporting.
• Reduced cost for data analysis.
• Reduced cost for report creation.
• Simplified analysis.
• Simplified reporting.
• Near-real-time performance when needed.

Database Administration                  

 Database Administration activities consists of:

• Designing and building databases.
• Designing database application logic.
• Monitoring and tuning application programs that access databases.
• Installing and upgrading database system software.
• Managing database operations.
• Monitoring and tuning database health and performance.

JSA Software has experience in all aspects of Oracle^TM Database Administration and extensive expertise in database and application design, monitoring and tuning.  We have learned over the years that the proper design of databases and the applications that use them can have a tremendous impact on database and application performance.  We also have extensive expertise in tuning application programs that are performing poorly.

Oracle^TM Applications                        

JSA Software has extensive expertise in the implementation, customization, and maintenance of the Oracle^TM Applications ERP Suite (also know as the Oracle^TM E-Business Suite).  We have in depth knowledge and expertise in most the of the Oracle^TM Financials, Manufacturing and Distribution components.  We have also worked extensively integrating Oracle^TM Applications components with 3rd party vendor solutions.  Our in-depth knowledge of the Oracle^TM Applications database structures have helped us to build many custom data warehouse and Business Intelligence solutions with Oracle^TM Applications source data. 

Custom Solutions                             

JSA Software has very extensive experience architecting, designing and building custom software applications.  Our major focus has been in applications that work with the Oracle^TM database.  We have worked extensively with the broad spectrum of Oracle^TM development tools and language.  We have also worked in many non-Oracle environments including SQL Server, Microsoft .NET, C language, and others.