Course Overview
Business Intelligence is not a software program, but the application of software technologies that enable business users to make better and faster decisions based on enterprise data. In this course, you are introduced to the Microsoft Business Intelligence suite of software technologies. You learn how to build and integrate Microsoft tools into an end-to-end solution in order to achieve competitive business advantage.
This course has been classified as IT Technical Training.
Hands-on Training
Throughout this course, extensive hands-on exercises provide practical experience working with Business Intelligence tools. Exercises include:
- Reviewing a finished BI solution
- Creating a KPI within a cube
- Publishing an Excel workbook to SharePoint
- Building a scorecard with Dashboard Designer
- Forecasting trends with data mining techniques
- Designing a dashboard in SharePoint
- Visualising data with PerformancePoint analytic grids and charts
Audience
Anyone who is involved or interested in planning, monitoring, analysing or implementing business processes using Microsoft Business Intelligence tools. Knowledge of business fundamentals is assumed.
Skills Gained
You Will Learn How To
- Achieve an end-to-end business intelligence solution using the Microsoft toolset
- Consolidate enterprise data into SQL Server Analysis Services cubes
- Perform data mining with Microsoft Office Excel
- Build dashboards, scorecards and KPIs for easy visualisation of business performance
- Map business processes into a cycle of monitoring, analysing and planning with PerformancePoint
- Deliver and share reports throughout the enterprise with SharePoint Services
Course Outline
Introducing Business Intelligence (BI)
Proposing an integrated solution
- Identifying problems with current business practices as they relate to Business Intelligence
- Aligning business objectives at all levels of the enterprise
- Introducing the Microsoft BI vision and strategy
Identifying components of the Microsoft BI platform
- SQL Server
- Integration Services
- Analysis Services
- Reporting Services
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
- Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server
Collecting BI Data with Integration Services
Integrating data from multiple sources
- Connecting to external data sources
- Creating a package for data imports
Working with Integration Services in a data warehouse
- Populating a star and snowflake schema in SQL Server with Integration Services
- Automating package execution from the command line
Leveraging SQL Server Analysis Services
Defining and building a cube
- Facts
- Dimensions
- Hierarchies
- Measures
- KPIs
- Creating a cube with Analysis Services wizards
- Denormalising the database
- Introducing Multidimensional Expressions (MDX)
Extracting insight with data mining
- Determining data mining algorithms for specific business data problems
- Utilising data mining to perform targeted marketing
Presenting Data with Reporting Services
Authoring a basic report
- Building Tabular and Matrix reports with the Report Wizard
- Creating a report based on an Analysis Services cube
Taking advantage of interactivity
- Implementing drill down/up and expand/collapse
- Exporting to other formats such as Excel
Exploiting Excel for Predictive Analysis
Creating models for data mining
- Preparing and cleaning input data
- Partitioning data into training and testing sets
- Applying available models to solve business problems
Pivoting table data
- Creating charts and pivot tables from different data sources
- Connecting to Analysis Services with Excel
- Drilling down to multiple levels of detail
Publishing reports and models
- Saving a workbook to a SharePoint document library
- Viewing an Excel workbook from a Web browser
Delivering BI through SharePoint
Identifying the components of SharePoint
- Comparing WSS and MOSS
- Benefits of the BI tools available in MOSS
Preparing to display BI data in SharePoint
- Creating a Report Builder report
- Deploying data sources to a data source library
- Uploading reports to a report library
Displaying dashboards
- Building a SharePoint dashboard
- Embedding KPIs and reports
- Loading BI Web Parts
Smarter Decisions with PerformancePoint
Monitoring enterprise health
- Creating dashboards for displaying company data
- Building scorecards to provide an overall rating of the organisation
- Including specific KPIs to identify target areas
Analysing organisational performance
- Presenting Analysis Services queries in chart view
- Visualising analytic charts, grids and strategy maps
Planning for future competitive advantage
- Leveraging the built-in dimensions and hierarchies to create models
- Creating custom dimensions
- Adding business rules with SQL or MDX
- Designing data-entry forms for user input
- What-if scenarios with writeback
