We talk a lot about the ‘foundational’ technologies of Enterprise Performance Management, which include:
- Enterprise Planning
- Statutory & Management Consolidation & Reporting
- Financial & Operational Modeling and ABM
- Business Intelligence and Scorecarding
- Data Relationship & Data Quality Management
- Analytics including OLAP
It’s the last one, OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing), that I was first introduced to when I was with Deloitte in the early ‘90s through a product called Compete! (the exclamation mark was part of the product name), which I think was acquired by Computer Associates. When I joined Hyperion in 1999, they had just acquired Arbor Software, makers of arguably the top OLAP Engine: Essbase.
Essbase, which stands for Extended SpreadSheet database, is a multidimensional database system that allows you to slice & dice data in a variety of points-of-view and drill up and down throughout the data’s hierarchy. It’s ideal for analyzing and reporting trends, patterns, variances, categories, and so on with large amounts of data.
Finally, there’s a very clear, accessible book on using Essbase from Edward Roske and Tracy McMullen of interRel consulting. It’s called Look Smarter than You Are with Hyperion Essbase
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This book walks you through from the beginning of starting and using Essbase with step-by-step instructions and a generous amount of screen shots and directions.
It gives you sample applications to build and even tells you how you can use Essbase for a variety of applications: Financial Reporting, Sales Analysis, Budgeting, etc. And the authors manage to be entertaining on what could have been a very dry topic: they are clearly excited about turning data into useful, actionable information – and they really want me to look smarter than I am!
The Author’s blog is here. And you can order from Amazon.com:
