This is my first post here on this blog. Over the next few weeks, I will focus on how to build an integrated business intelligence platform for Oracle eBusiness Suite - I will initially focus on the Sales and Finance subject areas, as these are the most commonly built data marts in an Oracle Apps environment.

Before I get into any designs, let me spend some time discussing why any company that has Oracle Applications would want to build an Enterprise Data Warehouse. Doesn’t Oracle have it already? The short answer to that is – Yes. The long answer to that would be – Not really.

Yes, Oracle has what it calls Daily Business Intelligence (DBI). DBI does give you a pre-built set of KPIs and reports and a portal based user interface that allows you to drill down to details. However, if you have seen or used any module of DBI, you will know that

• It is not customizable – not easily, anyway
• There are no cross-functional analyses
• There is no real OLAP capability
• No alerting, no 80/20 exception highlighting 
• …

I could go on and on why DBI falls short of a true BI solution. DBI is, however, a good solution for companies that are small or those have just implemented Oracle eBusiness Suite (eBS) and want to get quick analytical reporting from the database.

When is DBI not enough even for someone who is new to Oracle eBS? Here are a few cases:

• You have just implemented eBS for the Order to Cash or Revenue cycle but still use a legacy system for Procurement, Payables and Inventory. If you want any cross functional analyses e.g. profitability for products or profit per employee, DBI won’t measure up.
• You use eBS at your corporate headquarters, but use Peoplesoft at your subsidiaries for HR, sales and accounting. You post accounting entries of the subsidiaries at a summary level every month to eBS. Now, if you want to see sales for each customer for any subsidiary using DBI, it will not be there.

An enterprise data warehouse is essential to a robust business intelligence approach. Here are just some benefits of implementing an EDW that are most relevant to an eBusiness Suite environment:

• Link sub-ledgers/modules together for a consistent set of data for a unified view across the business (e.g. link orders with contracts with invoices with accounting)
• Integrate other data sources to arrive at common definitions for products, customers, employees and other master data.

I came across an excellent three-part article on the benefits of an EDW, tips on how to build one and how to sustain it over the long term to provide business value. You can find it here: http://www.teradata.com/t/page/117808/index.html

If companies can implement Oracle eBS with minimal customizations, why can’t Oracle deliver a pre-built enterprise scale data warehouse and analytics? Fortunately, I think, now Oracle is able to do it, thanks to the acquisition of Siebel. The Siebel Analytic Applications seem to have done the job admirably. I am just starting to evaluate this in a little more detail and will document some of my findings here in the coming weeks.

There are others in the market as well. Cognos has a similar product called Cognos Performance Applications. Business Objects has BO rapid marts for Oracle Applications. All of these have a leg up on DBI in the sense that they have conformed dimensions, so it is easier to get cross-functional analytics. I have not researched how easy it is to integrate these with other legacy applications to make sure the common data definitions apply across the enterprise.

If you are working on any DW/BI project involving Oracle eBusiness Suite, I welcome your comments, experiences and suggestions.