Chapter 3. Reporting – from Excel to Intelligent Data
Microsoft Excel is the most common tool for business reporting and analytics. Despite its excellent capabilities in that role, the final objective of Microsoft Excel is not concerned with its Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities. There is a set of specialized platforms and tools for that purpose, and
MicroStrategy is one of the best providers for BI.
Gartner defines BI as:
"Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance."
In this chapter, we will learn the reporting concepts for data manipulation and their implementation in the MicroStrategy platform in a simple and practical way. Additionally, we will learn how to use the MicroStrategy platform to its maximum strength. At the end, using MicroStrategy will be as easy as using Microsoft Excel. Please keep in mind...
Visualization objects – graphs and grids
The following figure shows a graphical representation of information:
By graphically representing the information in one single view, we can respond to business questions and detect trends and behavior of the information. In this case, we are looking at sales by region, where region 2 is the most profitable.
The following screenshot gives a detailed account of an object that is ideal for data analysis (store in this example) in order to detect specific behavior and review specific values in a grid representation:
We can use a combination of graphs and grids in one single view for a quick review of the data without the need to navigate to separate pages; this kind of single view is called a dashboard. So far, the concept is quite similar to Microsoft Excel; however, the main difference is the way in which to produce and design this visualization in MicroStrategy and how to exploit, analyze, and share information with key personnel responsible for making...
Besides the grid and graphical objects, a key component of the MicroStrategy platform is the ability to analyze and drill the information in order to resolve business issues, detect trends, opportunities or risks, as well as to define different views of data for different audiences. In this section, we will learn about these capabilities and use them.
Advanced metrics and attributes
MicroStrategy has the capability to add your own metrics (columns used for calculations, cost, revenue, and so on) or attributes (columns that organize and group metrics) besides the data loaded in the model. For advanced analysis, attributes and metrics can leverage mathematical and financial formulas; for example, it is possible to calculate average, standard deviation, sum, and variance as a new attribute, and aggregation and advanced mathematical formulas as the new metrics.
Let's start with some definitions and platform usability. The main interface includes three panels for metrics' and attributes...
In this chapter, we learned the required functionality of MicroStrategy in order to build our BI reports for data analysis and transform data into valuable information for our business needs.
We learned the basic concepts of BI reports, attributes, and metrics. We defined the calculated metrics that leverage the formula options for specific calculations. Also, we learned how to filter data, find specific information, use ranking and threshold functionality, and manage the grid by sorting and summarizing information without complex software installation and IT or BI guru support. We are now able to generate our own reports and use the MicroStrategy platform for our specific reporting needs. Also, we can generate a basic graph for visual representation. The next chapter covers data visualization, and dashboard design and generation in detail.
From the value proposition stand point, we defined the differences between Microsoft Excel and MicroStrategy platform. As you may agree now, MicroStrategy...
