Using Microsoft Excel in Business Intelligence

The mere hint of spreadsheets in business intelligence once brought tremors to most BI consultants, with spreadmarts depicting the worse possible scenario in uncontrolled data and multiple versions of the truth.

However, following the slow initial adoption to complex BI tools, the business intelligence market has reassessed the use of MS Excel, not as a holder of data, but as a more acceptable interface into the BI Data Warehouse.

The following brief video [sorry - no sound] demonstrates how to use MS Excel 2007 for business intelligence. [2:08]

Incorporating Microsoft Office into business intelligence has been a major step forward towards operationalising BI. User adoption increases significantly where commonly used interfaces are employed. By keeping the data management and analytical capabilities in the back room, and bringing insight to the desktop, business intelligence is gaining much wider acceptance across the enterprise.

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