Now that the dust has settled on Brio Software Inc.'s name and image change, the company is back to the business of doing what it does best: delivering great business intelligence (BI) applications. Its latest release is Brio Metrics Builder 7.0, which can be used to deliver business metrics to decision makers and is built on technology introduced in the Brio.Impact product, which struggled to find an audience in the overcrowded BI market. With the features and enhancements included in this release, Brio has clearly defined its value to business users who need to make informed decisions.

The product works on the basis of extracting data from disparate source systems and placing it into an application data mart, which then serves as the basis for the metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs). If you have a number of different data sources you want to incorporate within the data mart, you may spend a fair amount of time working out the extract-transform-load (ETL) process — mapping your data structures to the structure required by the product — but doing so is well worth the effort.

Once you've populated the data mart, Brio Metrics Builder has a set of administrative tools for creating metrics from the data, including a Metric Wizard that lets you compare and contrast information from different measures within the data mart and show them on a graph or chart (which you can then drill into). The functions and operators provided lend themselves to complex analysis and forecasting, but are easy enough to understand and use.

In addition to the graphical representation of metrics, you can also create reports that show discrete blocks of information (such as a small table of profit by cost center) or larger reports that show more detail. Within the framework is an analytic "library" where all of the metrics, decision flows, charts, and reports are stored. And to put it all together, the product's "news" pages can incorporate all of your metrics, graphs, charts, reports, and the like into one user interface.

Getting Started

Brio Metrics Builder isn't a product that you can install out of the box and start using. To start, you're going to have to think about the types of metrics or KPIs you want to deliver and then find (or create) the source data for the same. Once you've found the data, you'll need to create your own ETL process, as well as a data model in DB2 or Oracle that conforms to the Metrics Builder requirements.

With the data mart populated, you can then create what Metrics Builder calls "Stars" (sets of related tables that appear to be in a star formation); "StarGroups" (to interrelate different sets of data), the measures that are available from your data mart; and finally the content: all the metrics, reports, charts, and so on.

For both the database and content development, you're going to need a technical resource who understands the underlying database schema and has a good understanding of how the product works. The configuration and setup of Metrics Builder is time consuming, as it's based on your own data and the metrics or KPIs that drive your distinct business. But once you finish the initial setup and development, it should require only minimum technical resources to support the product.

Delivering the Goods

For delivery of all the content to users, Metrics Builder has its own analytic client for browsing and drilling through metrics and reports. For users who aren't used to working with dashboards, the user interface can appear cluttered but has the advantage of being able to put multiple metrics on a single page. The key to successfully using dashboard tools is to quickly identify problem areas, and Metrics Builder performs well in this area.

For analysis of trend data across multiple periods, the summary page can make the graphs too small to tell the fine details, but a blowup display will enlarge the chart and enable you to see the underlying data. (See Figure 1.) The slicing functionality within the analytic client is quick and responsive, and you can configure descriptions for each object, which help users understand what they're seeking. (See Figure 2.)

The use of mini reports also helps highlight problem areas, with multiple reports or cross-tabs that can be placed on a news page, showing metrics from different areas. Brio has used this feature to its definite advantage over its competition in the analytic software market. For managers who need to see information from multiple data sources or relating to multiple metrics, they don't need to wade through a lengthy report or drill through a clunky user interface — simply determine what they need to see and give it to them in a concise, compact summary.