BusinessObjects™ XI Release 2 for Dummies®

Chapter 16. Making Better Decisions through Analytics

In This Chapter

• Appreciating and making effective use of analytics

• Basing a new analytic on a measure from a BusinessObjects universe

• Using analytics with BusinessObjects technology

Just as the previous chapter compares reports and dashboards — with dashboards providing an at-a-glance macro view of what’s going on in your business, and reports providing specific, more detailed data — so this chapter makes a similar comparison: In this case, charts inside reports provide the specifics, and analytics inside dashboards help shape the macro view of your data.

While a chart in a report displays detailed data in a particular area, the aim of an analytic is to highlight an indicator or trend in order to allow you to monitor it more effectively.

Understanding the Value of Analytics

In BusinessObjects, an analytic is a logical tool for visualizing data in a specific way. Creating an analytic involves selecting the template and data to use, and then personalizing how it’s rendered, tailoring it to the data you want to analyze (trends, history, or whatever).

A major difference between analytics and charts is that analytics are interactive — inside an analytic, you can monitor the time dimension. Analytics can show, for instance, whether your sales are going up or down, identify those countries where business is increasing significantly, or reveal which product is contributing the most to your bottom line.

Analytics are classified in several groups: ...