SharePoint Tip of the Month
May 2009: Performance Point Server's Place Within the Business Intelligence Product Stack
PerformancePoint Server (PPS) has been around for a few years now, but it has recently captured a lot of interest in the IT community, thanks to an announcement earlier this year from Microsoft about the future plans for the product. This month’s tip discusses those plans, the capabilities of PerformancePoint, and how the product can fit into a company’s overall Business Intelligence strategy.
What is the Licensing Model for PPS?
The major announcement, made in late January 2009, is that PerformancePoint Server is being rolled into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Rather than being sold as a separate product, PerformancePoint will be licensed as part of the Enterprise version of SharePoint. The implication of this announcement is that many more companies will be able to leverage their prior investments in SharePoint by having immediate access to the PerformancePoint Business Intelligence capabilities.
When is PPS the right tool?
PerformancePoint Server is not intended to replace some of the other tools in the Business Intelligence stack – it is just designed to meet an additional need. PerformancePoint is the tool to provide monitoring and analytical intelligence to all levels within an organization. Some of the other tools in the Business Intelligence stack include Excel Services, Reporting Services, and the Business Data Catalog. All of these tools are designed to deliver an organization’s data to the end user, but each in different ways. The table below breaks down these products, along with the types of questions these tools can help answer for various end users:
Example Scenarios and Questions
Provides the ability to create simple charts and small levels of analytics, that can be shared within individual departments or teams
- What is our department’s sales volumes this month?
- How did each sales representative in our department perform this quarter?
Detailed information for individual records, that people at all levels within the organization might have a hard time searching for
- Companies have important customer and related information in a variety of line-of-business database applications that they want to make readily available to end users
- Who is the main contact for ABC Sporting Goods?
- What is the status of Order Number 12345?
- What is the history for Complaint Number 23456?
Canned reports and charts that allow users to view aggregated (sum, average, maximum, etc.) data, with the emphasis on the reports being pre-defined, and on frequent and automatic distribution.
- Executives need certain pre-defined reports prepared and delivered on a recurring basis, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
- What are our outstanding receivables this month, with summaries by line of business?
- Which products are currently on backorder, by supplier?
Also used to prepare complex, aggregated data in the form of charts and other visual display methods. The main emphasis is on allowing the end-user to interact with the reports to perform detailed analytical functions, such as viewing the reports broken down in different ways.
- People at all levels within the organization need to be able to view the data in a variety of ways, and they don’t always know how they want to see it until they have the report in front of them.
- How have actual sales volumes performed compared to target measurements for each region? For each sales representative? For each product line?
- How do the revenue levels compare each quarter across the entire company? Within a product line?
PerformancePoint Capabilities
PerformancePoint Server’s strong suit is visually displaying large volumes of data at an aggregate level. Some of the key components of PerformancePoint include:
- KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) – Graphic indicators displaying how different measurements compare against target measurements
- Scorecards - a combination of multiple KPIs shown against one another
- Reports – Various charts such as line graphs, bar charts
- Dashboards – pages containing multiple scorecards and reports to give the end user a big picture view of what is going on
What makes PPS unique is that end users can drill into different data points on scorecards and reports for further refinement.
Report Showing Revenue for Clients Per Month
For example, on a bar chart report showing sales by product line, an end user could click on one of the product line bars and drill-down based on region. They could then drill-down even further by clicking on a region to see how the numbers break down within the region by the customer age group, gender, or other demographic factors. At any point in time, the user could opt to view the individual rows of data that are used to build the chart that is being viewed. To the extent that the data is captured by the organization’s enterprise databases, the possibilities are endless.
KPI-based Scorecards are equally flexible. Companies can establish certain measurements (revenue, units sold, items produced, customer complaints, etc.) for various regions, departments, individuals, time periods, products, and other factors. Each measurement has a target and an actual value. A visual indicator displays to show how the actual value compares to the target value.
The chart to the right demonstrates unit sales versus each sales representative’s sales goals for a particular time period. Green indicators show the sales rep to be on-target. Yellow indicate slightly off-target, and red would indicate significantly off target. The KPIs are designed to roll up at the regional level, demonstrating how each region performed for the quarter. The regions, in turn, roll up to the corporate level.
Additionally, the report can be designed so that end users can click on individual rows, causing a mini-spreadsheet with more details to show.
For most companies, a Business Intelligence solution will likely contain a combination of the tools discussed above. Each of the ones above are designed in one way or another to make information more widely and more readily available to the people who need it. The recent bundling of PerformancePoint within the SharePoint Enterprise umbrella, coupled with its powerful analytical capabilities are both reasons why the product has gotten so much attention in 2009 and will likely see rapid adoption in the coming year.
