With one BI platform, serve mobile BI dashboards to iPhones, iPads, Android-based tablets, smartphones, as well as full dashboard reporting to PCs, Macs, and laptops.
As a server-based solution, requiring only a browser to access interactive dashboards and drill-down reports, SAC's Style Intelligence has always been mobile friendly. However, a Flash plug-in had been required for the interactivity of dashboards and visual analyses.
More recently with the proliferation of Apple's iOS, that Flash requirement has been obviated, and interactive dashboards are rendered by the server as JavaScript and HTML5. Native iOS functions like touch and hold menu controls are taken advantage of.
A Live Interactive Mobile BI Example Optimized for the iPad
While Style Intelligence employs a design-one, deploy everywhere approach, depending on the level of interactivity and frequency of use, you might prefer to design a mobile-optimized version of a dashboard that had originally been created for the desktop. You still can share the same data mash up, querying, and transformation layer between the two versions. This live example has been optimized for the layout of the iPad and spaces the controls apart for easier touching.
More Ideas for Mobile BI Applications
This example, originally built as a proof-of-concept for a prospect, is the prototypical mobile sales dashboard valuable to C-level executives as well as field sales representatives. Other popular applications of business intelligence being used in a mobile environment are:
- Marketing analysis based on daily updated surveys
- Supply chain inquiries: shipment due dates and out of stock warnings
- Retailer management console accessing all data without a laptop
- Hospitality financial management reporting
Enterprise-Grade Mobile BI Features
Foremost, Style Intelligence has been designed as a platform to support large global enterprises with big data sets and technology solution providers serving large numbers of users. Following are important infrastructural features:
Connectivity to relational databases (JDBC), multidimensional databases, XML, SOAP, Java beans (POJO), Microsoft Excel, flat files, OLAP cubes, SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, salesforce.com, Siebel CRM, Postgress, Google Analytics, and Microsoft SharePoint
- OLAP access to applications such as Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Hyperion ESSbase, Oracle OLAP, and SAP NetWeaver
- Security control at the data cell level for users, roles and groups
- Multi-tenancy support
- Data matchup across domains and multiple data sources
- Professional atomic data block modeling tool
- High performance scalability for large data sets and large volumes of users via Data Grid Cache technology
- Alerts for exceptions or business-rule triggers
- Embedded BI - a Java-style API and multiple integration points allow developers maximum control over programmatic use of dash-board and reporting
