XLCubed: Company
History
XLCubed has its history in the development of an advanced reporting tool for an Oil Industry package. This manages over 10,000 gas station prices around the world for Oil Majors. Our R&D over the last 5 years has been based upon research into how end users utilize Excel in their daily reporting and analysis tasks. Producing an Excel Add-in with the full functionality that end users require and which performs well is a non trivial task. The experience of the last 5 years of the XLCubed team, with well over 20 man years of effort, has allowed us to build applications which meet the needs of the end users whilst satisfying the requirements of the IT Department and Management.
Previously...
The perception is that business intelligence projects are expensive and that to meet the competing needs that were described above a major project is required.
A tool selection exercise is carried out to determine which database is to be used and what front end should be used against it and a data warehouse project is born.
The database could be either multidimensional (OLAP) or relational. Historically, multidimensional databases were expensive and whilst recognized as the best way to provide analytics in many cases they were prohibitively expensive.
There were and remain a plethora of reporting front ends, be they from specialist BI vendors, Cognos, Business Objects, Brio or reporting tools such as crystal reports, nomad etc etc. IT and the business developed the specifications(s) and the data warehouses and reports were typically built by IT. The end users were trained in the new end user tools and depending upon the aptitude, resilience of the overall team the solution was delivered with varying results.
One common feature that is demanded in almost all implementations is "Export to Excel" because End Users want the flexibility and familiarity of spreadsheets.
Why SpreadSheets
Management Information has always been needed prior to business intelligence projects and has typically been provided through finance departments using spreadsheets. Some 20 years ago Lotus 123 burst onto the scenes and it was used across the world to provide analysis and reporting - millions of people are using spreadsheets to provide sophisticated management information and have been doing it for years.
Spreadsheets have been seen by many IT departments as the bane of their lives as they proliferate throughout the organization containing valuable information, complex calculations and "subverting" the official applications.
Spreadsheets are tremendous tools to provide the flexibility that End Users want and most end users are familiar with the concepts.
Spreadsheets are not good databases and as the volumes of data grow they are not fast, not secure and are hard to manage on a group wide basis.
The bottom line is that they will be used and that End Users will consume their information inside Excel.
The New Model - Business Intelligence for All
With the entry of Microsoft into the OLAP database market in 1997 bundling a high performance multi dimensional database with SQL server, OLAP technology is within the reach of all.
In the ensuing years the major BI front end vendors have rushed to support the OLAP engine, new vendors such as Proclarity and Panorama have arrived, and the focus has been Web and client server tools. Emerging as initially niche products have been Excel Add-in vendors who provide the capability to use Excel and Analysis Services together and research has shown that those who use Excel as the front end to Analysis Services get a better ROI.
XLCubed has put many man years of development effort into producing the best Excel Add-in on the market for Analysis Services and we believe that the combination of Analysis Services and XLCubed represents the best value for money solution on the market today.
If we review what end users, IT and management want in context of XLCubed and Analysis Services you can see a tick in the box for every requirement.