Glossary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A
Ad Hoc Query
An impromptu request that directs a database server to search through its data for specified information or results.
Aggregation
A process of collecting individual items of data together assembled into a database.
Analytic Application
A software application designed to fulfill all the analytic requirements of a particular business process e.g. financial analysis, customer analysis.
Analytics
Business analytics is a term used for sophisticated forms of business data analysis used to discover and identify new and meaningful trends.
B
Balanced Scorecard
An analysis technique, developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, designed to translate an organisation's mission statement and over all business strategy into specific, quantifiable goals and to monitor the organisation's performance in terms of achieving these goals.
Basel II
New Accord ( Basel 2, New Accord) - A set of banking standards that will regulate finance and banking for countries in the European Union. This is focused specifically on global banks and financial institutions and ensures liquidity of those institutions for the protection of public trust.
Blueprint Management Systems
Leading provider of Business Intelligence and Performance Management services, solutions and training. We create information systems that allow our clients to visualize and control the processes that directly affect success.
Business Analytics
A technique that makes it easier to visualise and analyse business data to support decision making.
Business Forecasting
Revising budgets and plans to reflect new knowledge of the business and amending plans based on major events and changing circumstances.
Business Intelligence (BI)
An environment in which business users receive information that is reliable, secure, consistent, understandable, easily manipulated and timely. With this information, business users are able to conduct analyses that yield an overall understanding of where the business has been, where it is now, and where it will be in the near future.
Business Intelligence Platform
A foundation of tools and technologies necessary for the development and deployment of Business Intelligence and Business Performance Management applications.
Business Intelligence Tools
The tools and technologies used to access and analyze business information. They include online analytical processing (OLAP) technologies, data mining and advanced analytics; end-user tools for ad hoc query and analysis, enterprise class query, analysis and reporting, including dashboards for performance monitoring; and production reporting against all enterprise data sources.
Business Metric
Any type of measurement used to gauge some quantifiable component of a company's performance, such as return on investment, employee and student counts, revenues and expenses, etc.
Business Performance Management
A category of technologies and practices that enables organizations to translate strategies into plans, monitor execution and provide insight to improve financial and operational performance.
Corporate Performance Management
An umbrella term to describe the technologies, methodologies, metrics, processes and systems used to monitor and manage the business performance of an enterprise to translate strategies into plans, monitor execution and provide insight to improve financial and operational performance.
Enterprise Performance Management
An emerging superset of applications and processes that cross-traditional department boundaries to manage the full life cycle of business decision making.
Performance Management Methodology
A set of processes that enable a company to gain a clear understanding of their corporate strategy, objectives, and accountability, while actively monitoring their actions and performance against their company's targets as well as industry benchmarks.
Business Rules
(or business rule sets) describe the operations, definitions and constraints that apply to an organization in achieving its goals.
C
Canned reports
The modern equivalent of old paper reports. Just as paper reports with business information can be useful but are restricted to a "frozen set" of data that ages as the paper sits on a desk, canned reports reflect collections of online data that are not tied to the company's database system and can therefore not be refreshed.
Content Management
Managing an organisation's content (documents, e-mails, graphics, business intelligence reports, web pages etc), standardisation, workflow, publication authorization and access security.
D
Dashboard
An application or custom user interface that organizes and presents information in a way that is easy to read. The information may be integrated from multiple components into a unified display. A dashboard helps monitor individual, business unit, and organizational performance and processes for a greater understanding of the enterprise.
Data
Factual information, especially information organized for analysis or used to reason or make decisions.
Data Integration
The combining of data that resides in different sources.
Data Mart
A logical subset of related information, usually built around one or a few business processes, or a specific subject area designed to serve a particular community of knowledge workers.
Data Mining
A process of analysing business data (often stored in a data warehouse) to uncover hidden trends and patterns and establish relationships normally performed with specialist software tools.
Data Model
A model that describes in an abstract way how data is represented in a business organization, information or a database management system.
Data Warehouse (DW)
A collection of data pulled together primarily from operational systems and specifically structured and tuned for easy access and use for query, reporting and analysis purposes. The Data Warehouse may contain historical data, as well as transformed transactional data, aggregated data and derived/calculated data.
Dimension
A structural attribute of a cube identified by a metadata label. The label reflects the user perception of the data. Dimension Structural attribute of a cube describing the data, for example, 'Time', 'Product' or 'Geography'. A dimension acts as an index for identifying values within a multi-dimensional array.
E
Enterprise Information Management (EIM)
The approach of using software solutions as binding layers to help create and maintain the data and provide consistent interpretation of that data across the enterprise.
Enterprise Reporting
A corporate platform for the creation, sharing and publication of reports.
ETL (Extract, Transform and Load)
Technology components and processes that deal with the processing and movement of operational data to prepare it for storage in Data Warehouse and Data Mart type repositories, or to share it with other analytical applications and systems.
Executive Information System (EIS)
A concise set of customized, high-level, generally graphical views of the organization's information, enabling executive-level management to see the overall health of their business.
F
Financial Modeling
The financial analytical process that enables organizations to test operational and financial planning assumptions, model processes and activities, determine optimal use of resources, and drive profitability throughout an organization.
Financial Planning
Financial plans support corporate strategic goals and are the basis for key business decisions. To create financial plans organisations need unified planning processes for budgeting, collaborative forecasting, accurate reporting, scorecarding and performance management.
I
Information Delivery
A broad category to describe the process of making information readily available to the right people, at the right time, through a medium most suited to their particular requirements.
Information Portals
A web based solution that provide each user with a personalised view of all the information or resources they require to do their job effectively.
K
Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
A measurement, or metric, that is included on a scorecard because it drives performance achievement. KPI's express objectives in financial units for comparative purposes and are typically attached to a critical success factor or other actions associated with a corporate goal or objective.
Knowledge Management
Capturing of the collective experience, core values, and expertise of an organisation. Knowledge is embedded not only in data and documents, but also in organizational practices and processes.
M
Managed Reports
Reports templates that are created/defined for end-user use, best known as "point 'n click" reporting. The templates determine what fields are included in the report, the types of prompts users receive, and the look and feel of the report.
Metadata
Data about data; information that documents different aspects of a set of data, such as its attributes, field lengths, locations, associations, ownership, quality, and so forth.
O
ODBC (Open Database Connectivity)
A protocol used to allow reporting tools to connect to a database.
OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)
The process of manipulating large chunks of data in response to analytical queries by end users. OLAP data is organized by dimensions (for example, time, products, geographies, measures, scenarios, and so on) that include hierarchies, which support drilling down from higher levels to more detailed views.
Operational Risk Management
The oversight of many forms of day-to-day operational risks including the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people, and systems, or risk from external events.
P
Performance Metrics
Data about your company and its processes that can be used to measure how well you are performing to objectives and goals. (See KPI/Key Performance Indicators.
Profitability Management
The true measure of business success is profit. Profitability is the optimization of resource deployment and utilization for business success. Active profitability management is one focus of business performance management in which a for-profit organization measures successes and results and then adjusts its processes and goals to increase overall profitability.
R
Reporting Tool
A software tool that allows end users to build professional business reports based on data in a database. These reports can then be scheduled to be run automatically at particular times or based on business rules and distributed a group of end consumers who are interested in the information.
Rolling Forecast
A forecasting method that shifts planning away from historic budgeting and forecasting and moves it toward a continuous predictive modeling method. It requires access to relevant information from multiple data sources as well as business processes throughout the enterprise. Rolling forecasts are much better than static annual plans since they can be updated continuously throughout the year, thus improving accountability.
S
Sarbanes-Oxley
Also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 (SOX or SarbOx) is a legislation that established stringent financial reporting requirements for companies doing business in the United States.
Strategic Planning
The process of developing strategies to reach a defined objective. Strategic planning tries to drive improved future results by influencing the outside world or adapting current processes, decisions and programs so as to have more favorable outcomes in the external environment.
W
Workforce Planning
A way to plan for and track compensation, benefits and other workforce expenses, which understanding and managing this expense in the budget.
