One key area where OLAP has made a significant impact has been within Operations where the need to optimise and tune the business process is ever growing.  The drive towards the lowering of costs and more efficient means of working has led to a large financial benefit to the overall process. 

The analysis of the underlying business processes is vital, especially when the demand is acute and the need for re-structuring or merging is high. The only way to get a better understanding of the information flow is to use specific tools with real and current data, which represents the market situation. By using OLAP as part of the overall control process, the key statistics and trends can be instantly obtained together with a drilldown to the contributing item(s) for an efficient resolution.

A number of vendors provide OLAP technologies and products each with its own strengths and weaknesses. However, with the dominance of Microsoft Excel and products within the client desktop, Microsoft’s OLAP Services have shown to be not only very cost effective but provides seamless integration into the data sources.

Defining the requirement– without question, the first step has to be to agree WHAT information is required and to which level of detail.

Creating the OLAP Cubes – once the data has been identified, it needs to be extracted and incorporated into an internal format which facilitates multi-dimensional data extraction. This is an intensive process as it does require a thorough understanding of the data and its relationships. Once created, the mechanisms for refreshing and updating the data are automated.

Accessing the Data – the two most favoured mechanisms are Excel, which has built in integration facilities using its Pivot Table features and specific program interfaces. The Excel interface does give considerable power and access but it does make available all the data and it is difficult to restrict specific usage. Secondly, a program interface such as a WEB Page which has specific queries and reports tailored for a department. The latter is particularly useful as specific reports can be devised, together with audited procedures for data processing and manipulation.

Benefits– the whole process of analysing and collating the underlying data itself can bring a number of key benefits, in particular getting a better understanding of the information flows between systems and departments. Also, by analysing the data, particular areas of risk or investigation can be readily highlighted and further information gained by drilling down to individual items.

Future– As the purity and timelines of the data improves, further opportunities of applying particular analysis strategies will become available. One such approach is the use of time slices and applying particular factors to simulate future data and compare the impact of these factors. For example, the previous year may have had a brokerage cost of 7%, but by decreasing this to 5% the impact can be simulated and the simulated data itself used in analysis.