Calumo - Business Intelligence and Performance Management Blog

Last week saw the release of the latest version of CALUMO for SQL Server Analysis Services, CALUMO 11.4.  This release has rolled up all the features of the CALUMO 11.3 cumulative updates as well as delivering a set of new features and performance improvements.

Highlights

• Text Writeback architecture update
• Publishable Drop Lists and Date Pickers
• Excel VBA API
• New Installers
• Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Compatible
  

Text Writeback Architecture Update
This feature is a key differentiator within CALUMO 11 and in our recent work we took a good look at the existing architecture and reworked it for performance and scalability.

Publishable Drop Lists and Date Picker
Our standard CALUMO drop lists have been enhanced to also support data write back. Now drop lists can be used to enter data from a standard selection list.

Fig 1: CALUMO Drop Lists

The date picker simplifies selection of dates. For example, when budgeting the start date of a new employee using the date picker, a date is written back. Budgets salary and on-costs will calculate and budget from this date.

Fig 2: CALUMO Date Picker

Excel VBA API
These API allow automation and control of certain features of CALUMO from VBA macros within Excel.

New Installers
CALUMO installation is already a very easy process. For example, users can install or upgrade the CALUMO Excel client with a one button click from the status bar, thereby synchronising their version with the CALUMO Server. Adding to this, our new CALUMO installers are now smaller, faster and more reliable and can be automatically built at any time for any revision of the CALUMO codebase.  This enables us to deliver patches to the software as robust installers instead of as manually applied patches.

Other Features worth Noting

• Administrator can set a default start page a default view for a Cube.
• Administrator and Users can set default subsets for hierarchies.
• Sort and top/bottom count filters available in cube browse.
• We include a web based calculation engine supporting most Excel functions in CALUMO published web pages.
• Conditional formatted cells in CALUMO published web pages
  

CALUMO for TM1 10.3, the latest version of CALUMO for TM1 has been released.  This release delivers deeper integration with IBM Cognos TM1 and includes many new features and performance improvements.

Highlights

• Support for TM1 9.4.
• The CALUMO Excel 2007 Ribbon.
• CALUMO Sparks now bundled free with CALUMO for TM1.
• Cool UI updates like (e.g. page loading indicator for published reports making it easy to see a large report is actually loading).
• Many other enhancements, fixes and even better performance.
  

Support for TM1 9.4
CALUMO for TM1 10.3 supports TM1 9.4 and all other active versions still supported by IBM. We note that you should install TM1 9.4 FP1 as IBM have identified and resolved several critical TM1 issues in both the standard TM1 9.4 release as well as the TM1 MR1 release.

CALUMO Excel 2007 Ribbon

Love it or hate it (and we love it), the “Ribbon User Interface” is one of the most significant changes in Office 2007 which replaced the old menus and toolbars. The CALUMO Ribbon is a task-orientated graphical user interface, making it easily to navigate to the CALUMO capability you need.

CALUMO Sparks
Now part of CALUMO for TM1, CALUMO Sparks provides rich compact visualisations of large amounts of data in a single cell. By combining charts and data together in a table, we do away with the need to separately label axes and legends, or the need to associate the table data with the chart information.

For identifying trends, comparing data and highlighting exceptions (with high density information), CALUMO SPARKS makes the design of really compelling executive dashboards easy.

CALUMO SPARKS provides Line, Pie, Bar, Bullet, Grid, Progress, Stripe, Trend, KPI, Bubble, Heat Map & Harvey Ball charts. CALUMO SPARKS is an add-in for Microsoft Excel.

Other Features worth Remembering

• Freeze Panes for Web Reports.
• Context Linking in Web Reports.
• SPF Discovery (Decomposition Tree) in Web Reports.
• Save Web Reports to PDF.
• Drill Through to Transaction in Web Reports.
• Dynamic Rows in Web Reports.
• Zero Suppress in Web Reports.
• Charts can now be published as either an image or ActiveX control.

One of our clients recently showed me this report. Names and numbers have been changed, but in my conversation with them, they were very excited about it and it was clearly an important source of information for them. Their Revenue Analysis Dashboard gives them an immediate window and insight into their top performing regions, clients, products and sectors.

Look at the drop-down lists to see how they can drill deeper into any region, product or sector (I need to ask them why they don't need to dig deeper into client, but if they wanted to, a client drop-down could be added to the dashboard in 5 minutes). Other variables on the report can also be changed (time, currency, etc), so each country can see their data in local currency and head office can consolidate in any currency. They can also look at current or prior period performance or any aggregation of time (eg last quarter, or last year).

Every CALUMO report that uses drop-downs is in effect many reports. In this case, this single report represents thousands of potential combinations.

The data is securely stored in SQL Server, while the dashboard is a simple CALUMO web page for fast, secure, scalable reporting available anywhere. Being a dynamic report, when any variables change, the top ten results are updated and sorted on the fly. Naturally they also have a bottom-ten report for badly performing and unprofitable regions, clients, products and sectors.

Our client also uses CALUMO for convenient and rapid data collection during their planning, budget and forecasting cycles. Furthermore, CALUMO is used for guided self-service analytics. With its excellent query performance, analysis can be refined produced immediately, leading to even clearer insights and smarter actions.

About CALUMO
The CALUMO Group (www.calumo.com) is a leading provider of Performance Management solutions for enterprise-wide reporting planning and Business Intelligence. Since 1998 the group has successfully delivered solutions to a wide range of enterprises from SME’s to some of the largest listed companies and government organisations. These solutions provide quantifiable and valuable business insight, offering a single platform from which to integrate Corporate, Financial and Operational performance and objectives.

The Group is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Business intelligence (achieving full competency in both Platform and Performance Management Specialisations), Data Management Solutions and ISV/Software Solutions.

With the release of SQL Server 2005 and even more so with the release of SQL Server 2008, Microsoft has delivered OLAP and relational repositories in a single unified solution. Now both OLAP and OLTP is delivered on the same server, through the same API and managed using one set of tools. This is in contrast to other relational database vendors and their respective OLAP servers who have primarily converged their front-end tools while leaving the back-ends unchanged and dis-integrated.

SQL Server’s integrated components include SQL Server Integration Services for ETL, SQL Server Reporting Services for transactional reporting, SQL Server Analysis Services as their OLAP server, and native integration with Excel and SharePoint.

Written from the ground-up in .Net 3.5 (C#), CALUMO 11 is a further extension of this unified platform approach. For example, CALUMO does not create another repository for data, or another modeling engine for business rules and calculations. So, for planning, budgeting and forecasting applications (or any data collection activity) CALUMO input forms provide bottom-up and top-down write back directly into SQL Server and Analysis Services. For dashboards, reporting and analysis, if you already have Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services cubes, simply install CALUMO and you immediately have access to this data in a way that is so simple and convenient, it will forever change the way you think about business intelligence and effective collaboration.

For our customers, CALUMO is sublimely integrated with the way they work, whether through email, spreadsheets, the internet, a SharePoint portal and even PowerPoint.

“The front-end is intuitive and flexible in that we have a range of options for delivery to the wide range of users in our user community. For example, we can use a web portal, standard web for more advanced users, Excel for standard users and power users, deliver PDF’s or hard coded Excel reports. It is so open and flexible as to our options on both the data we choose to analyze, administration or the user experience.”
Alister Cairns, University of New South Wales

About CALUMO 11
CALUMO 11 — Performance Management (CALUMO) is a unified performance management application built on the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform.

CALUMO provides all facets of performance management including Business Intelligence; metrics and KPI dashboards; reporting and analysis; planning, budgeting, forecasting and modeling; management reporting, operational reporting and financial consolidations.

CALUMO provides exceptional value with a low entry cost and fast, initial implementations. CALUMO then scales to support enterprise-class performance management

About CALUMO
The CALUMO Group (www.calumo.com) is a leading provider of Performance Management solutions for enterprise-wide reporting planning and Business Intelligence. Since 1998 the group has successfully delivered solutions to a wide range of enterprises from SME’s to some of the largest listed companies and government organisations. These solutions provide quantifiable and valuable business insight, offering a single platform from which to integrate Corporate, Financial and Operational performance and objectives.

The Group is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Business intelligence (achieving full competency in both Platform and Performance Management Specialisations), Data Management Solutions and ISV/Software Solutions.

CALUMO RELEASES NEW VERSION OF ITS PLANNING AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT APPLICATION

SYDNEY – 4 June, 2009 — CALUMO Group today announced it has launched a new version of its Planning and Performance Management Application – CALUMO 11, which will work with Microsoft Windows® 7/Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 R2 to offer customers enhanced security, as well as innovative user interface features and reliability improvements. CALUMO 11 is a Planning and Performance Management Application which delivers unified Performance Management for the continuous cycle of reporting, planning, monitoring and action on the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform.

“Our ISV community is alive with innovation, and we’re committed to helping our partners drive the next generation of software experiences,” said Ross Brown, Vice President of ISV and Solutions Partners for the Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft. “Adding compatibility for the latest Microsoft operating systems helps ISVs to stay ahead of the competition and give their customers access to cutting-edge technologies.”

“CALUMO is excited to launch this new version of CALUMO 11,” said Dominic Parsons, CEO at CALUMO Group. “Making our application compatible with Microsoft Windows 7/Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 helps us offer our customers compelling benefits, including intuitive user interfaces, tools to keep them connected to data stored on the Web and full support for multi-core processing.”

About CALUMO 11
CALUMO 11 — Performance Management (CALUMO) is a unified performance management application built on the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform.

CALUMO provides all facets of performance management including Business Intelligence; metrics and KPI dashboards; reporting and analysis; planning, budgeting, forecasting and modelling; management reporting, operational reporting and financial consolidations.

CALUMO provides exceptional value with a low entry cost and fast, initial implementations. CALUMO then scales to support enterprise-class performance management.

As part of CALUMO’s continuous improvement and proven track record for development software that can be used now and tomorrow, CALUMO has leveraged new features for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 giving better performance and more simple installation.  No other BI/BPM vendor is ready for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

About CALUMO
The CALUMO Group (www.calumo.com) is a leading provider of Performance Management solutions for enterprise-wide reporting planning and Business Intelligence. Since 1998 the group has successfully delivered solutions to a wide range of enterprises from SME’s to some of the largest listed companies and government organisations. These solutions provide quantifiable and valuable business insight, offering a single platform from which to integrate Corporate, Financial and Operational performance and objectives.

The Group is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Business intelligence (achieving full competency in both Platform and Performance Management Specialisations), Data Management Solutions and ISV/Software Solutions.

Query performance was the most frequently reported product-related problem cited in Nigel Pendse’s BI Survey (www.bi-survey.com). Our own research further indicates that poor response times (especially write-back performance) are responsible for the failure of up to 85% of Business Intelligence and Performance Management projects.

The CALUMO Group has developed and released, in CALUMO 11, a set of algorithms and methods to achieve breakthrough response times for business intelligence and planning type activities including ad-hoc analysis, dynamic reports and write-back forms for planning budgeting and forecasting.

CALUMO 11’s query and write-back algorithms have been optimised to avoid any performance issues. These CALUMO performance optimising technical innovations include:

• automating the optimisation of MDX.
• automating the optimisation of write-back.
• batch and compress data transfers between internet client and server [in both directions].
• automate the correct order of calculation.

Our customers use this capability extensively for convenient and rapid data collection during their planning, budget and forecasting cycles. During any data collection, our customers can focus on the business process without being distracted by poor write-back performance or response times.

CALUMO 11 is also used by our customers for executive dashboards, guided self-service analytics and dynamic reporting from Excel or through the Web. Users view parameter-driven reporting templates, or create their own custom views and reports.

CALUMO’s excellent query performance means that self-service analytics can be done at the speed of thought. Questions can be refined and supplementary analysis produced immediately, leading to even better questions, answers and smarter actions.

CALUMO’s approach radically unclogs our customers’ IT department’s backlog of reporting and analysis for the business and shrinks the gap between analysis and action.

About CALUMO
The CALUMO Group (www.calumo.com) is a leading provider of Performance Management solutions for enterprise-wide reporting planning and Business Intelligence. Since 1996 the group has successfully delivered solutions to a wide range of enterprises from SME’s to some of the largest listed companies and government organisations. These solutions provide quantifiable and valuable business insight, offering a single platform from which to integrate Corporate, Financial and Operational performance and objectives.

The Group is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Business intelligence (achieving full competency in both Platform and Performance Management Specialisations), Data Management Solutions and ISV/Software Solutions.