Next Up: Business Intelligence On The Go

Business Objects SA and Sybase Inc. have built a wireless BI system that lets 500 Sybase employees tap into the company's data warehouse while on the road. Called Mobile Accessible Sales Tool, the application uses Business Objects' reports rejiggered for wireless access through Sybase's Unwired Accelerator and Sybase IQ data-warehouse software. Launched last year initially for 20 managers using sales-forecasting worksheets, the functionality was expanded this year, says Ian McCreery, Sybase finance director. Now the system pushes out a dashboard of key performance indicators to CEO John Chen, CFO Pieter Van Der Vorst, and other top Sybase executives. Instead of the graphical dials seen on PCs at the office, executives get simple tables of information, but they can drill down into the data, comparing budget forecasts with actual expenditures and monitoring license and support revenue. This is possible because the system summons pre-built reports instead of ad hoc queries. Adding query capabilities, including launching a query against freshly uploaded data, "is something we'd like to do in the future. It's not on the horizon at this point," says Scott Loyet, senior director of IT at Sybase.

Three years ago, Lincoln Financial Distributors Inc., the wholesale arm of the Lincoln Group of financial-services firms, implemented an Actuate business-intelligence system with its customer-relationship-management system and other operational applications. In 2003, it extended Actuate's reporting capabilities through Microsoft's Mobil.net by sending out reports via wireless to top executives and sales managers armed with BlackBerrys.

Last year it extended the business-intelligence system further by equipping 250 Lincoln wholesalers with HP iPaqs or Siemens AG's SX66s. The sales reps visit insurance firms, financial advisers, and securities traders who in turn sell products from Lincoln Group units. The wholesalers can check the CRM system for the latest activities with a customer they're about to visit, such as the amount of revenue historically generated by that customer or their latest big-ticket Lincoln sale.

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"Knowledge is power. If you're working in the dark, you're not informed about your business and can't react to changes in the marketplace," says Miko Pickett, assistant VP of IT at Lincoln Financial. Sales managers using their BlackBerrys can tell "which wholesalers need more attention," Pickett says. Managers and sales representatives can ask the system to update their devices with the latest from the data warehouse. Sales reps "don't have to wait until they get back to a laptop in a hotel room to find out if they had a good day," Pickett says. The information they download tells them whether a particular financial adviser, insurance company, or securities firm moved more of their recommended products.

Sonitrol's Gellman says his company contracted with Adesso Systems Inc. to build a mobile business-intelligence system to help its field installer and repair force. Repairmen get their dispatch orders through their ruggedized iPaq devices, along with summaries of customer purchases, complaints, and service calls. They get detailed information on the alarm system they're being sent to repair, including its maintenance history, based on information pulled out of SQL Server databases and analyzed by Microsoft's business-intelligence analytics in the database.

The iPaqs, which also collect customer signatures for completed work, take 30 days out of what used to be a six-week billing cycle when repairmen submitted paperwork to company headquarters, Gellman says. The $30,000 to $35,000 spent on the wireless system has made deployment of the company's 100 installers and repairmen more efficient, allowing the system to pay for itself in the 12 months it's been in place, Gellman estimates.

With business intelligence increasingly tied to operational tasks, it's vital, business users say, to have a system that offers wireless reporting options. Analyzing data in a data warehouse is pointless if the results can't be delivered to those who need it in a timely manner. Information generated by business-intelligence systems loses its value with age. Wireless delivery is one way to ensure it arrives in time.