KPI Library

The KPIQuantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors (of the company, department, project, individual). Library reporting data packageA subset of data objects for a project. It is typically a sub-set of a model (or can be the entire model) and is specifically created for publishing to the Pronto Xi Business Intelligence server. Packages provide data, modelled simply for end-users, for creating reports, analyses, and ad hoc queries. Within Pronto Xi Business Intelligence we have two distinct types of packages, with different content and purpose: Reporting packages Analytics packages and reportA set of data deliberately laid out to communicate business information. Depending on the context, 'report' may refer to report specification or report output. Report (more precisely, report specification) is the generic term for the objects created or edited in Cognos Analytics. Pronto Xi Business Intelligence offers a suite of standard reports. is delivered as core functionality in Business Intelligence to facilitate the creation and modification of reporting content based on the KPI data that has been made available from the pxiPronto Xi KPI Library.

The KPI Library in the Business IntelligenceBusiness Intelligence, often referred to as BI, refers to the skills, processes, technologies, applications and practices used to support decision making. This is also the name of the Pronto Xi BI module. module provides a wide range of standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which provide critical data you need to understand and analyse your business. You can use the KPI data in Business Intelligence reporting and analytics, as well as in the pxiPronto Xi Workspaces widgets functionality.

Each KPI is a setA selection of members in a dimension of individual quantifiable measures that your company can use to gauge or compare performance in terms of meeting its strategic and operational goals. Each KPI consists of multiple metrics, which provide individual points of measurement.

Each KPI is fully independent of all other KPIs, so each is a standalone entity which is calculated separately.

To save some time and effort setting things up, the KPI Library looks at things such as the master chart structure, or specific code tables, such as territory and item groupIn security, a list of users or other groups that can be used to assign access permissions and capabilities. Groups can be referenced from other authentication sources or can be local to Pronto Xi Business Intelligence. Local groups are managed from BI Administration. The list of groups that an authentication user is a member of is part of the user's passport for an Pronto Xi Business Intelligence session. In reporting, grouping is the action of organising common values of query item together and only displaying the value once. Headers and footers often appear after each instance of a common value in a grouped column, and automatically creates drill paths for you.

You can set a specific target for each metricA measure used to assess performance in a key area of a business.. This allows you to easily compare business performance against predefined company or industry goals. Importantly it allows you to use things such as conditional gauges in dashboards, with red and green traffic lights that allow you to intuitively see how you are tracking against your target.

You can also:

• compare periods

  Using the KPI Library you can snapshot data at a frequency which suits your business.

  While understanding a KPI value at a single point in time is valuable, comparing that value to other periods, or seeing how that KPI is trending over time provides valuable context. This means that you can proactively effect change to capitalise on positive trends, and intervene on negative trends.

  Having visibility of a given rep with high revenue figures but a low gross margin relative to other reps might provide the insight you need to understand that the rep is discounting heavily to achieve sales volume at the expense of the business’ profit.

• compare metrics using drill paths

  Using the drill paths in a metric you can start to compare them in relationships to other metrics.

  For example, understanding a metric such as gross margin at a company levelIn a hierarchy, a level indicates a group of common or related members. For example, in a Time level, members may include Year, Month, Day or Fiscal Year, Calendar Year, etc. is interesting, but when you compare the gross margin between different areas of your business then you can more readily analyse your whole business. This comparison can be done using drill paths.

There are also customisation opportunities in the KPI Library, including:

• custom KPIs

  You can create your own custom KPIs, either based on the existing KPI samples provided, or from scratch.

  Within these KPIs, you can construct your own metric calculations, using the metric calculations functionality.

• visible calculations

  In addition to being able to create your own calculations, you can also viewA set of data connected to a cube, deliberately laid out to communicate business information. the structure of the existing calculations for standard KPIs.

• custom drill paths

  You can create your own drill-paths (up to 10 levels each) for each metric, and you can create an unlimited number of different drill paths for each metric.

  For example, you might want to see Average Customer Days at a company level, but you might also want to see it by territory, division, or rep.

• KPI views

  You can create filteredSelectively remove data from view. views from standard or custom KPIs, giving you a more targeted view of the data.

Aggregated data without the ETL

The KPI Library stores optimised and pre-aggregated data based on the predefined drill paths. You can structure the drill paths, which means you determine which data is captured and how it is aggregated. You also have the ability to determine when this data is captured so you control your data’s history.

Importantly, this all happens in pxiPronto Xi which means you get many of the benefits of cubes but without the overhead and maintenance of the traditional Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) associated with other business intelligence offerings.

For more information about the KPI Library and its functionality, see the Business Intelligence help.

The following report is available: