SOLUTIONS

ComFrame BI and enterprise data management solutions include:

• BI Strategic Analysis and Planning
• Information Infrastructure
• Extract, Transform and Load (ETL)
• Dimensional Data Marts and Cubes
• Data Consumption
• Scorecards, Dashboards and Excel Services
• Web Services

Strategic Analysis and Planning - The depth of strategic analysis and planning can vary greatly depending on the maturity level of your reporting infrastructure, data consumption strategies and goals for the engagement. ComFrame BI project teams will:

• Explore the existing and desired future state components and temporal concerns of your strategic goals.
• Examine existing and desired consumption methods (reports, graphs, dashboards, PDA) required to monitor progress toward, or away from, your strategic goals.
• Perform technical analysis of your primary data sources and existing transition and storage techniques.

Information Infrastructure - A clear, business-centered information roadmap and strategy provides the detail needed to establish an information infrastructure that will meet your BI objectives: 

• ComFrame’s methodology utilizes specific infrastructure components and techniques that maximize the effectiveness of our solutions while reaping the greatest benefit from Microsoft’s BI stack. 
• Our position as a National Systems Integrator (NSI) gives us direct access to Microsoft’s near and long term strategy, enabling us to “future proof” your information infrastructure.

Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) - ETL is the first tier of the required information infrastructure. The ETL process that routinely extracts and loads the relational data warehouse or datamart. 

• Data and business rules held in back-end systems may need to be applied as data is loaded to ensure downstream data consistency
• This is generally accomplished via SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages that execute processes to collect data from various organizational data sources during periods of minimal activity.
• These packages are physically stored on a relational database server and operate in a ‘pull mode’. By executing the packages on the database server, ComFrame BI architects allocate the majority of the ETL workload onto the data warehouse server and not on the company’s production servers.
• A separate SSIS server can be optionally allocated if high volumes of data are continuously being processed in the ETL.

Dimensional Data Marts - ComFrame's BI methodology is based on the rapid creation of business value through incremental delivery of independent data marts. Data marts are analytical data structures, associated with a specific business process, that facilitate storage of historical data, in a business (not technical) context. 

Measures are at the core of every ComFrame data mart. These are generally numeric values associated with a business process or functional activity. For example, a retail sales data mart may have measures that include:

• Units sold
• Revenue
• Number of sales transactions (customer count)

Hierarchies serve to organize groups of dimensions. For instance, all activities for the calendar date representing January 1, 2009 would be included in aggregate totals for the first week of 2009, the entire month of January, 2009, the first quarter of 2009 and the entire year of 2009.  Hierarchies make possible the drilldown analysis by users to breakdown measures into their smallest atomic contributing measure.

Dimensional data marts provide the added advantage of allowing incremental delivery of business value over time. BI projects no longer require an enterprise scope of modeling and construction to be successful. Instead, the enterprise data warehouse can be constructed over time by the release of individual, independent data marts. 

In addition to delivering incremental business value through the release of dimensional data marts, ComFrame’s BI methodology provides the following benefits:

• Predictable schedule, by decomposing the enterprise data warehouse into smaller projects of discrete, business-aligned functionality, software release risk is minimized.
• Additional functional areas can be incorporated with minimal additional effort.

Cubes - OLAP Cubes are logical objects, physically implemented in binary files that provide information consumers with fast analysis of dimensional models.

• Cubes enable you to provide information to various reporting formats (traditional, scorecards, dashboards, and charts) as well as analytical tools for exploratory (slice-and-dice) functionality.
• Cubes must have content updated through a technique known as processing.
• Cube processing must occur after the ETL processes run.

Data Consumption - Ultimate realization of the corporate goals associated with business intelligence lies in the method, frequency and organizational depth of data access, or data consumption. 

• Delivering the right data is one thing but providing that data in a fashion geared to the consumer and supporting the organizational goal behind the consumer’s access is critical. 
• There is a tremendous variety of tools to view, analyze and model the information held within our organizations. The ComFrame BI methodology places high value on consumption planning to craft a data consumption strategy for clients.

Scorecards, Dashboards, Excel Services - To take advantage of the investments made in strategic analysis and information infrastructure, organizations must effectively provide information to the right user at the right time:

• ComFrame applies usability best practices to create executive scorecards and dashboards that provide defined key performance indicators to those in decision making positions.
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  Since its inception, the spreadsheet has been a foundation for business analysis. Many organizations already have extensive expertise and have invested heavily in building business- decisioning systems entirely on Excel-based technology. You can take full advantage of your company's spreadsheet experience by using Excel Services to present business data through a standard web browser. 
• Excel Services enables you to provide protected access to business logic and data sources while sharing the information itself in a familiar environment.

Web Services - Consumers of BI information include not only human users but also other internal and external systems. Sharing of information between these systems can be streamlined through extensive use of web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) frameworks:

• ComFrame BI consultants can help you deploy web services and SOA frameworks that enable you to exchange data using standards-based formats and communication protocols. 
• Web services give your organization an opportunity to leverage business data outside a specific technology stack while at the same time maximizing your investments in existing infrastructure and business solutions.