A Product Designed for Analysis

Our users enjoy unparalleled capabilities to extract value from their data. In fact, BIQ has become their solution of choice for exploring new datasets and building analysis models. Here's what some BIQ customers tell us they are doing with the tool:

			A specialty retailer has built an IT dataset to support a major savings initiative;
			An insurance company has saved seven figures using an AP dataset and a half-dozen commodity-specific datasets;
			A financial services firm has combined 11 accounting systems together for an enterprise-wide view of spend;
			An international bank has rolled BIQ to fifteen business units;
			A healthcare provider is using BIQ to rationalize HR policies across its facilities.

And here are some reasons why they've been successful.

Advanced OLAP Engine

BIQ's engine allows for real-time changes to hierarchies and real-time applications of rules. There is no "publish" phase to worry about — the changes take place immediately. We have filed for patent protection on the novel algorithms and techniques that allow this to happen.

BIQ's engine is hand-crafted for maximum speed, and performs sophisticated shortest-path query analysis. We have filed for patent protection on this, too. The net result is that BIQ makes maximum use of available CPU cycles, allowing it to handle very large datasets on an ordinary laptop computer.

Flexible Deployment Options

BIQ can be deployed in three ways: client-server, independent desktop or laptop, or peer-to-peer, where each desktop/laptop is both client and server, and where each user can connect to datasets either on his local machine or on a colleague's machine.

BIQ's client-server mode is different than most: because multiple datasets can be hosted on a server simultaneously, individual users can be analyzing their own datasets, and modifying them, at the same time that other users are viewing a different, read-only dataset. Thus, even in client-server mode, BIQ preserves for key analysts the important ability to change hierarchies, rules, and dimensions in real time.

Real-Time Hierarchy Editing

BIQ provides a drag-and-drop hierarchy editor that enables massive changes to be made in data hierarchies — entire subtrees can be moved or reorganized, new nodes created, and so forth. Making these changes permanent is a one-click, nearly-instantaneous process. The changes can be viewed immediately afterward, and all roll-up quantities are adjusted automatically according to the new hierarchy structure.

Real-Time Rules Generation and Application

BIQ allows rules generation directly from the data viewer. New rules can be applied temporarily or permanently. The results can be viewed immediately, with complete visibility as to the consequences of the changes. Changes can be undone easily if mistakes are made. The BIQ rules system is a general-purpose system. Any dimension can be mapped. Rules can even refer to the same dimension that is the target of the mapping. Rules groups are executed in a priority order that can be changed at any time. Rules that have dimensional interdependencies can have inter-dimensional priorities set as well. The result is a general-purpose system of enormous capability — capability far beyond a simple commodity mapping system like that of other products.

Real-Time Dimension Creation

New dimensions can be created at any time, and old dimensions cloned (copied), renamed, or deleted. The BIQ system takes care of modifying rules and other dependent data structures, under the covers. This means, for example, that many "Cost Center/Organization" dimensions can be created, each with a different slice at the problem. All of the resultant dimensions can be "live" — they are updated and visible inside the data viewer at all times.

Built-in Data Loading Facility

BIQ contains a built-in Data Loader that supports dimension derivation either from flattened transaction records, or through the use of external dimensional indexes that can be in hierarchical or flattened format. Fields can be named, referenced, and cross-linked using these BIQ tools. Indexes can be constructed out of "pieces" of multiple fields, concatenated together or otherwise manipulated on-the-fly, within the Data Loader itself. Construction of a useable dataset can take only a few minutes.

The Data Loader is reachable directly from the main BIQ application. If there's something wrong with a dimension, it can be dropped and re-added immediately. The dataset can be viewed incrementally, as dimensions are being created, to ensure that each dimension has been built properly. There is no "publish" process with BIQ; once the Data Loader has read in the files and indexes, and the user has identified the appropriate fields within them, the completion of a working dataset is just a few minutes away.

"All Others" Facility

BIQ is able to take the "tail" of a dimension's distribution, at any level of the hierarchy, and convert it to a single node called "All others." This is extremely useful for reports that must tie out to totals. Most products in this space provide no such capability, and therefore produce results that accounting people instinctively distrust. BIQ has filed for patent protection for the unique engine mechanisms required to properly support "All others," and for the mechanisms that make "All others" quantities available inside crosstabs, treemaps, graphs, and extracts.

Advanced Change Management: Eliminating Manual Processes

At refresh time, new data must be imported into the spend analytics system. It is a classic dual-update problem. Two organizations have been changing the data at the same time — the spend analytics people, and the accounting people. After a month, or a quarter, there are many changes made by the spend analytics people, such as hierarchy changes, that are difficult to reconcile with changes made in the meantime by the accounting people.

Other spend analytics vendors do not have an answer to this. What they do behind the curtain is to put a bunch of people together in a room (whether in Boston or Bangalore) and try to reconcile the two disparate datasets by hand. The results are error-prone, the process is expensive, and everybody loses.

In contrast, BIQ has built sophisticated, automated tools to reconcile multi-path changes to data hierarchies and rules. The same process that occurs in some back room over days or weeks can be accomplished with a few mouse-clicks by a BIQ business user. The system automatically reconciles the datasets, leaving just a few exceptions to be manually processed. The whole exercise can take only minutes.

Collaboration Tools

Although BIQ is a private-use, stand-alone application, it is easy to share work with colleagues and to work together cooperatively on rules changes, hierarchy changes, and other projects. BIQ can export changes from one user's dataset and import them into another, using the same advanced change management methodology that enables BIQ to solve the multiple-update problem when refreshing data. The practical result is that individuals can collaborate on dataset changes without sharing a common copy of the dataset.

Of course, BIQ also has facilities for exporting and importing compressed copies of entire datasets, making it very easy to share or distribute entire datasets across communities of users.

With BIQ's client-server mode, a read-only dataset can be published to a wide community of users easily. However, even in client-server mode, read-write datasets can be hosted for key analysts right alongside the read-only dataset.

BIQ Features

BIQ's Viewer is designed for maximum visibility. Every window is individually resizable, and can be popped out of the grid to "float" on top. No window has any "special" capabilities — all are equal. BIQ's engine rolls up multiple dimensions simultaneously, which means that all Viewer windows represent the current filter set at all times. Most competitive products are only able to view one dimension at a time — a "keyhole" view that is largely ineffective. There is no "pivot" operation in BIQ, because "pivoting" is automatic.

BIQ's filter navigation is enormously flexible. BIQ remembers the last 100 filters applied, and can move backward and forward freely within its filter history. Individual filters — any filter — can be turned on and off within any filter set in the history. This makes BIQ's filter manipulation capabilities superior to other mechanisms, since BIQ does not limit the user to a "stack model."

In addition to its advanced Viewer, BIQ contains a number of unique product features. Briefly, they are:

• Dimensional Measures. It is possible to create one or more measures that roll up a single dimension only, but have no meaning (and no presence) in any other dimension. These measures can be used everywhere a normal measure can — in crosstabs, in the Viewer, in extracts, in graphs and charts, and so on. For example, one can create a "number of employees" dimensional measure on the Organization dimension, which enables a number of interesting analyses.
  
  
• Shneiderman Diagrams. Otherwise known as "treemaps," these are diagrams which show relative magnitudes and relative change (by time, or by any other dimension) across a target dimension. As one customer said to us, "I cannot imagine more useful information contained on a single screen than I am seeing at this moment."
  
  
• Reference Filters. BIQ is able to store the results of up to 10 reference filters "live" in its query cache, such that the result sets associated with those filters can be viewed in real time, i.e. side- by-side with the current filter in the Viewer, or pulled into crosstabs and Excel extracts. A detailed commodity spending report, for example, normally a complex stand-alone report, can be produced trivially through the use of reference filters and a simple Excel extract.
  
  
• Crosstabs as Excel Pivot Tables. BIQ supports multidimensional and paged crosstabs by exporting data directly to Excel, and then controlling Excel remotely through its pivot table feature. Pivot tables provide much more powerful crosstab support than any "home-grown" crosstab feature, and BIQ's easy-to-use front end makes their creation, ordinarily a complex task, trivial. In addition, in-cell computations can be performed, multiple measures can be included per cell, reference filter results can be pulled in (see above), and so on — all the usual bells and whistles one is used to with Excel, combined with the power of direct reference to BIQ's OLAP engine.
  
  
• Complex Excel Extracts. BIQ is able to populate arbitrary Excel models at specific row/column offsets, with data from the current filter set or from reference filter sets (see above), in multiple pages, and in multiple locations per page. BIQ can also populate Excel models with raw transaction data (the modes can be intermixed). The result is the ability to create complex models and reports, save the extract templates and models away, and then re-run them directly from BIQ after the next refresh, or from any arbitrary filter point. In addition, extracts can be "booked" to produce multi-tabbed versions of the same report, for example drilling down all the values of one dimension, and modifying the report accordingly on each page.
  
  
• Ancillary Dimensional Data. BIQ's Data Loader can identify fields in external index files that have no relevance to cube-building, but which contain useful ancillary information. Examples include vendor addresses, GL notations, and so on. All of this ancillary information is available via the Excel extractor, or directly from the Viewer with a single mouse-click.
  
  
• Online Fuzzy Search and Drill-Thru capability, from the Viewer or the Dimension Editor.



• Create Dataset from Filter Position. BIQ can create sub-datasets from designated filter positions — and do so in batch mode, for any number of filters. This enables the creation of department-level datasets, containing only transactions with reality in the given filter position. This is useful when the goal is to provide access to BIQ, but to deny access to information that needs to be kept confidential.