Follow Up: Business Intelligence
My last post explored some of the effects of the commoditization of BI and the way Microsoft has reacted to / influenced that commoditization. Today, to underscore the idea that BI is becoming commoditized, I ran across an article about a startup business intelligence vendor with a BI product designed specifically for SalesForce.com (although it can be utilized for other applications as well). However you feel about SalesForce.com, you know that when a product begins to infliltrate the low-end pricing of the SaaS space, it truly has reached commodity status.
This company does have an interesting approach to BI – it seems to utilize some of the technology that has (fairly) recently come onto the scene (at least compared to BI and database technology itself), namely web-crawling technology such as that used by search engines. This company’s product crawls the contents of a database to report on change in the database. I assume that it does this by keeping a copy of the results of its last crawling somewhere and comparing the current db to that one as it crawls.
I think that this is an interesting approach to reporting. I’m not sure if it truly measures up to the claim of being a “business intelligence” product if that claim is meant to imply that Cloud9 will deliver everything people have come to expect from a business intelligence platform; the term has a history of loose usage, however, and the Cloud9 product certainly falls within that more inclusive sphere.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 does have features that allow programmers to do something similar. One of these is called “change data capture” (CDC). Not having made a detailed comparison between what can be accomplishe with the SQL 2008 CDC feature and the Cloud9 product’s feature, I can’t say for sure, but I would guess that a BI professional could implement a solution using SQL Server 2008 and deliver the same information produced by Cloud9.
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The latest BI Platform Report from Gartner placed Microsoft in the “Leaders” quadrant for the first time. Moving the household name ahead of Business Objects and Cognos on one of the two ranking criteria involved in the study, Gartner asserts that Microsoft’s business intelligence platform holds a very strong position on the increasingly populous business intelligence vendor list.
The two ranking criteria are “completeness of vision” and “ability to execute”. Gartner’s findings are displayed in a four-quadrant graph, with “ability to execute” represented on the X axis, and “completeness of vision” on the Y. The four quadrants are labeled “niche players”, “visionaries”, “challengers”, and “leaders”. This year’s study ranked Microsoft as the undisputed winner in the “ability to execute” category, while they still ranked behind the all 5 other vendors in the Leaders quadrant in the “completeness of vision” category. The other 5 Leaders are Cognos, Business Objects, Oracle, Microstrategy, and SAS.
The most interesting part of an Information Week review of the study by Mary Hayes Weier was this statement:
By placing the world’s largest vendor of commodity software as one of the BI market leaders, Gartner is demonstrating how quickly BI is moving from a specialized, expensive technology into a commodity itself. The rapidly commoditizing BI market, many industry observers believe, is among the reasons Business Objects accepted a $6.8 billion buyout offer from SAP (NYSE: SAP) and Cognos took a $5 billion buyout offer from IBM (NYSE: IBM).
As many know, Business Intelligence is not a new technology. Microsoft’s arrival among the market leaders validates its strategy, verbalized in the slogan “BI for everyone”. Microsoft wants to commoditize business intelligence by making it available to its market sweetspot – the mid-sized business. Such businesses often prefer packaged applications to the more expensive ”best of breed” applications that have dominated the specialty software arena in the past. Aside from being more costly to purchase, such applications require more specialty talent to maintain, are increasingly costly to integrate with an ever-expanding constellation of applications in a company’s software arsenal, and, in a consolidating marketplace, may not have the ability to promise the long-term support and continuing investment in their product that a customer desires.
Microsoft’s BI offering, which consists largely of software included in the purchase of Microsoft SQL Server, is the ultimate packaged app – the majority of companies maintaining any halfway-serious computer infrastructure already have an instance of SQL Server installed for something. The BI platform doesn’t cost the customer any extra money to obtain or install. From that privileged position, Microsoft hopes to execute its vision of providing “BI for Everyone”, providing decision-improving data to an organizations employees at every level.
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Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 – Video Introduction
Below is a video introducing the soon-to-be-released point of sale product, Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009. General availability for POS 2009 is slated for August 1st, 2009. This video identifies some of the main benefits Microsoft has aimed to deliver with Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009. This release is focused on mid-market retailers, even more so than its predecessor, Microsoft Dynamics RMS 2.0. Building on the powerful inventory, sales, and customer tracking functionality of RMS, POS 2009 has been developed with an emphasis on a simple cashier and manager UX, and the capability to customize the product to create a better fit with your business.
To see the other videos in this video demo, visit the link for “Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 Info below.
Website: Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 Info
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Dynamics POS 2009 – Ringing Up a Sale
The video below shows the process of ringing up a sale in Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009.
One of the coolest things about the video below is the demonstration of POS 2009′s extensive search capability. Rather than needing to bring up an item lookup dialogue box, users can simply type in the search box that resides on the base POS screen. Items can then be added to the sale from the result list.
The video shows how POS 2009 streamlines the checkout process to improve customer experience and improve employee efficiency.
Website: pos 2009 info
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Microsoft recently announced that its Dynamics line of business software, including Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) and Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009, is moving to digital download as its primary distribution method. The former method was mailing of media (cds or dvds). This media will now be available at a $20 fee.
This is actually more convenient for customers to download the installation files rather than wait for them to come in the mail. I don’t know why Microsoft hadn’t moved to this distribution model earlier, as much of its dynamics software has been available for download for quite some time.
The main and most important thing in the media fulfilment process is the license key, without which a customer is not officially licensed to use the software (most if not all Microsoft software is “licensed” rather than “owned”). The key used to be printed on the media or embedded in a text file saved on the media. The press release did not say how the license key would be transferred with the new distribution method.
Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 – A Major Investment in Retail
Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009, Microsoft’s soon to be released next-generation of point of sale software, represents a major investment in retail. The R&D spending that has gone into this release is significant, which indicates that Microsoft has made a long-term commitment to the retail market in general and the point of sale market in particular. Retailers can be confident in choosing Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 as their point of sale system, knowing that their investment is protected by a company with a proven track-record.
Like all Microsoft products, Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 will be continually improved by the release of software updates (similar to those you get for Windows XP or Office or other Microsoft software). Most likely, these updates will be called “hotfixes”, and will be released individually to solve problems that crop up from customer use or product testing after the product’s release to market. Periodically, these hotfixes may be bundled into a “rollup” and released to customers as a cumulative update. This is the model used by existing Microsoft Dynamics product lines.
Additionally, the licensing structure for the software gives Dynamics customers the option to buy software assurance, which guarantees the customer access to new all new releases of the product. For retailers dedicated to staying abreast of the most advanced point of sale software technology, this is a great deal. For example, a store that had implemented Microsoft Dynamics RMS previously, and was current on their software assurance, would not be required to purchase POS 2009 on its release – it would automatically be available to them by virtue of their software assurance.
Microsoft will continue to invest in the retail market, and retailers can trust that Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 and all future releases of Microsoft’s point of sale software are backed by a strong software roadmap and sense of direction. The decision to bring Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 (or RMS, the current point of sale product in the Dynamics line) is a decision that will keep you at the cutting edge of the point of sale software technology available to the small and mid-market in retail.
What any retailer really wants is to increase the bottom line revenue. When it comes to point of sale software, features that make certain business tasks easier or faster are nice, and they can indirectly contribute to profitability by freeing up employee time or shortening the amount of time the store needs to keep an employee on the clock. But the most important features are those that will increase profitability by reducing costs and increasing sales.
Inventory tracking in Microsoft Dynamics RMS helps decrease the cost of on-hand inventory as well as the cost of product outages. RMS allows a retailer to see the current inventory levels at any time during the day. Managers can generate purchase orders for all items that have fallen below a defined reorder level. When generating the purchase order, the RMS user can choose to order from the primary supplier, or from the supplier with the lowest cost. These features allow the store management to reduce product outages while operating with shortened inventory cycles and reducing inventory costs. The time it takes to complete these tasks depends on the amount of inventory and the volume of sales, but the streamlined process in RMS will certainly save the manager a good chunk of time.
The version of the Dynamics point of sale software that will succeed RMS, called POS 2009, will certainly contain the powerful inventory features available in RMS. I predict that we can expect even further advances in making inventory tracking and ordering easier and more effective.
The next post will talk about the tools Microsoft Dynamics RMS provides for increasing sales.
In Microsoft Dynamics RMS you have the capability to create your own receipt formats if the out of the box receipts don’t suit your fancy. The receipt templates are XML documents stored in this folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Retail Management System\Store Operations\ReceiptTemplates
Even if you make the choice to use a custom receipt, however, I would suggest using the out of the box templates as a starting point. Doing so will save you a lot of time and money. Even if you do have a resource that can sit down and write a large and complicated XML document, there are a handful of logical scenarios that he would have to consider and account for in making the receipt. These scenarios are already handled in the existing templates.
Here is a receipt customization that I have just completed. There was a question about how to get a receipt to show the item subtotal amount before discounts were applied. The out of the box receipts do not do this. For example, if you have 2 items at $10.00 each, and each item is discounted $2.00, the receipt will only show the $16.00 post-discount subtotal. The original $20.00 amount will not be shown anywhere on the receipt. The XML snippet below will put the “pre-discount” amount right above the discounted subtotal on the out-of-the-box 40 column receipt. The 3rd line in this xml is the discounted subtotal that already exists (I’ve only added the words “(Post-Discount)” to the label).
If you’d like to try this out, you can search the XML for the 3rd line, and when you find it, paste the first two lines in my XML here above it. I would recommend saving this receipt as a different file than the original out of the box 40-column receipt to keep the original untainted. Whether or not you do that, though, your next step will be to go to Store Operations Manager, go to Database > Registers > Receipt formats and open the properties of the 40-column receipt format. Click the lookup glass next to “Sales” and choose the XML file you just modified and saved. You will then have to restart POS at each register before that register will use the new format.
<SET name=”PreDiscountSubTotal” type=”vbcurrency”> Transaction.SubTotal + Transaction.DiscountPurchased </SET>
<ROW> “Sub Total (Pre-Discount) |” PreDiscountSubTotal </ROW>
<ROW> “Sub Total (Post-Discount) |” Transaction.SubTotal </ROW>
I don’t think Microsoft has released any info yet about what Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 will have in the way of receipt customization. I wonder if the receipts will still be in an XML format, and if so, if there will be a more accessible means of customization. Retail Management System does have the ability to make some modifications to the receipt formats without opening up the XML, using a tool in the Store Operations Manager program, but if you really want to move things around, that tool won’t cut it. One possibility I see in POS 2009 is totally moving the receipt design into SQL Server Reporting Services.
Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 – Integration
There are several significant changes between the integration options available currently with Microsoft Dynamics RMS and Microsoft Dynamics Point of Sale and those that will be available with Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009.
Currently, Microsoft Dynamics offers RMS (Retail Management System) for small to mid-sized retailers. Small retailers who plan to grow can implement Microsoft Dynamics RMS with confidence that the software will scale out with their business as it grows. RMS has integration options with several accounting programs, including Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SBF, Quickbooks, MYOB, Peachtree 3.0 and later, and Blackbaud 6.x. Most of these accounting integrations consist of RMS passing data to the accounting program’s GL. The most complete of these integrations is actually with Quickbooks 2003 or later, which allows the integration of RMS purchase orders and Quickbooks bills.
The current offering for very small shops is Microsoft Dynamics Point of Sale 2.0, which ships with Microsoft Office Accounting.
POS 2009 is marketed more toward the mid-market retail space. As such, integrations with software programs for small market retailers have been discontinued. That’s not to say that, with the advanced customization capabilities of POS 2009, one couldn’t build a simple integration with one of these accounting programs; I can’t say for sure at this stage. However, the out-of-the-box integrations will not be a part of POS 2009.
The accounting integration that ships with POS 2009 is with Microsoft Dynamics AX. I will post more about this when more information becomes available.
POS 2009 – Microsoft Dynamics’s New Flagship POS Product
You may have heard the buzz about Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009, the product that will become the POS standard in the Microsoft Dynamics line. Currently, Dynamics has two POS products: one is called Microsoft Dynamics RMS, and the other is simply called “Point of Sale”. RMS is the more serious of the two products, allowing for multiple store management, customer credit accounts, a more diverse range of item types, and integration with multiple ERP programs.
Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 will replace both the current POS product and the RMS product. POS 2009 is scheduled for release in Spring of this year. Check back here for more information; I will be posting more info as it becomes available.
