XLCubed Excel Edition brings the full power and flexibility of OLAP reporting to Excel. It is designed for end-users rather than IT, and once the cubes are in place the business end user is able to fully leverage them for report building and analysis. It brings together the best of Excel with the best of Analysis Services cubes.

XLCubed's primary datasource is Microsoft Analysis Services, and it can also connect to other relational data. It provides slice and dice analytics, free format asymmetric reporting, a rich environment for interactive, data connected Excel dashboards, and is fully write enabled to support planning and budgeting solutions.

Analytics

XLCubed provides an easy to use yet powerful analytics environment. With XLCubed Grids, users can explore and understand their data through slice and dice, drill through the available hierarchies, and quickly specify level or descendant based selections for dynamic reporting. User defined calculations are simple to add, but fully olap aware, and respect drill downs and hierarchy repositioning.

Report sections can be linked together by hierarchy, and the selection criteria can use the XLCubed dialogs, native Excel drop downs, or direct user entry. Any number can be quickly broken down to its constituent parts, and in-grid visualisation is available within a fully interactive environment.

Reporting

For some reporting layout is key, and there are precise corporate templates which must be adhered to. Asymmetric reporting can also be a key requirement. XLCubed’s formula model means that it’s possible to create a data-connected report of any shape and layout achievable in native Excel. The key formulae are simple in concept and are created through intuitive dialogs, or the conversion of an XLCubed Grid.

Despite the free format layout, the reports still offer drill down, drill through, and full number decomposition (breakout).

Dashboards

Excel is a highly effective environment for dashboard reporting. The user has fine grain control over the positioning, layout and sizing of charts and tables, and the ability to easily calculate additional metrics using Excel itself.

The primary issue has always been that of Excel as an isolated data island, or ‘Spreadmart’. XLCubed maintains an active connection to the data, taking away the maintenance burden associated with most traditional Excel dashboards, but retains the full flexibility of layout available in native excel. The in-cell charting available within XLCubed significantly extends what is achievable in terms of data visualization, and is ideally suited to dashboard and scorecard reporting.

Planning and Budgeting

Excel is widely used as a planning and budgeting tool, but in many cases it evolves into a complex myriad of interconnected workbooks, prone to problems and hugely complex to change and manage. XLCubed provides a data connected yet fully writeable model which adds scalability, data integrity, and manageability to Excel planning solutions. Workbooks and planning templates can be laid out in the same was as previously, but without the need for the interlinked workbooks which can lead to the maintenance nightmare.

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