SWIFTPOS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

As SwiftPOS has expanded into larger Companies that have multiple venues or franchisee stores, the requirement for additional reporting and data analysis has become far greater. While a substantial number of venue analysis reporting options are available in the SwiftPOS software, additional information can be obtained by using the standard Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing tools provided by Microsoft in SQL Server 2005/2008. Microsoft provides a broad range of tools for Business Intelligence. These tools cover the key areas of BI including the structure and creation of the data warehouse, analysis, reporting, and data Extract, Transform and Load.

Overview of Business Intelligence

In recent years the demand for Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing solutions have grown as new hardware and software technologies lowered cost and Simplified implementation. As demand for BI and DW has grown, so too has the size and complexity of databases grown. A unique set of tools and processes has been developed by Microsoft in order to meet the demands for this type of information management.

Microsoft Business Intelligence Tools

Microsoft provides a broad range of tools for BI. These tools cover the key areas of BI including the structure and creation of the data warehouse, analysis, reporting, and data Extract, Transform and Load.

Business Intelligence Reporting Tools

Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse reporting tools tend to receive the most attention, since they are the components most visible to the end users. The reporting tool needed may vary based on the type of report desired and the data used to create the reports. For example, SQL Server Reporting Services is an excellent tool that integrates well with SQL Server databases as well as with Online Applications Processing cubes.

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

SQL Server Reporting Services is a server based reporting tool designed to create, deploy and serve web based BI reports. These reports can be based on both relational and multidimensional data. The SQL Server reporting architecture consists of the Report Server engine that actually runs the reports and the report server website which is used to display the reports.

Digital Dashboards

Digital Dashboards, also known as Enterprise Dashboards or Executive Dashboards are a tool that provides important high-level metrics to organization decision makers. Digital Dashboard are designed to visually display the “health” or “status” of the business by graphically displaying key performance indicators (KPIs) such as inventory levels, customer satisfaction ratings or manufacturing quality measures. The Digital Dashboard provides a visual “heads-up” display of data that can be pulled from multiple systems and data sources in order to provide notices, alerts, warnings and summaries of key performance indictors.