There are two key steps to improving data analysis and presentation in a Business Intelligence system so that it leads to appropriate decision processes by staff and managers. The first step is to ensure data is filtered or highlighted when business exceptions are detected and these results are clearly presented to the user. The second step is to provide simple tools to explore and drill-down on the business exceptions presented so that the appropriate action is clear to the user.

There are a number of techniques that can contribute to the goal of Actionable Intelligence and some of the easiest to implement include the following:

• Display background colors and background bar charts under the numerical values to highlight Media business exceptions (for example, red might be used to flag urgent exceptions, amber for a warning exception)
• Use relevant comparisons from pacing history to clearly detect exceptions (this would flag current pacing trends that were unacceptable)
• Define Causality Dimension Hierarchies (described in detail in another Tip!) for immediate drilling to the cause or source of the issue or exception
• Implement Exception Only Analysis to focus on items requiring action such as average rate falling below a past value, or approaching sellout at a pace that is too high according to historical pacing
• For well defined exceptions, use Notification Analysis to inform the appropriate staff to take action on the exception (actively sending a message to the user rather than waiting for them to review the analysis)

The easier and faster it is to create and customize reports and dashboards by individual users, the more often these "power users" will add refinements to their traditional reports to simplify their decisions and action process.  These enhanced actionable reports, when published back to the portal, are then available to all other staff and executives in the company, increasing overall corporate efficiencies.

BIAnalytix is a data warehouse and business intelligence system from Decentrix which includes all the advanced tools necessary to refine the analysis and drill-down on exceptions to create powerful Actionable Intelligence for the corporation.  User participation in creating analysis reports that can be used as Actionable Intelligence and sharing it across the organization is as simple as creating an Excel spreadsheet.