Data exploitation with the aim of supporting decision making can be divided into four steps.

• Find Your Data: The first step is to decide which data is needed to support decision making. From the business point of view, this step requires expertise in the informational needs of the decision making process. From the technical perspective, knowledge in the IT-systems hosting the necessary data is required. This expertise and knowledge is naturally part of any organisation. However, to acquire the complete picture may require the involvement of staff from IT, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Logistics, etc..

 

• Combine Your Data: The second step concerns the availability of the needed data. As data can be stored in different formats (Excel, Access, Text Files, MSSQL Databases, Oracle Databases and many others), it may be difficult and costly to access and combine it. Quella Creator is an ETL-tool capable of extracting and combining data from data sources in any format. Furthermore, Quella Creator ensures that all the data needed by the organisation is easily available for analysis and reporting.

 

• Create Reports: The third step is to transform data into reports. The aim of a report is to deliver the necessary information needed for decision making in the form and manner required by decision makers. For this purpose, Quella Creator can generate both OLAP-reports and Spreadsheet/List reports. OLAP-reports are particularly suited for ad-hoc analyses where users search for different answers as the analysis progresses. Spreadsheet/List reports on the other hand are more suitable for answering pre-defined questions and for delivering operational reports.

 

• Analyse and Make Decisions: The fourth and final step is to give decision makers enough flexibility in the way they work with their reports. Quella Cognitus is an analysis tool that allows users to interactively sort, filter and search for data in a report. In addition, ad-hoc calculations, formatting and charting are easily available. All this is delivered with the power to handle the required data volume with the shortest possible response time.