IT Support

In Chap. 5 (IT support), a brief overview of the history and the basic hardware components of planning and reporting solutions is given. The software solutions for the planning and reporting tasks are distinguished between special ERP systems, spreadsheet programs, special software programs (based on relational database technology) and data warehouse or business intelligence supported systems. For data warehouse or business intelligence supported systems, the focus of the investigation is on the OLAP data modeling, the OLAP storage concepts, the ETL processes, the different analysis tools, such as cockpit and dashboard solutions and portals. In addition, the latest developments in BI-supported controlling with the support of traditional and exploratory BI are shown, among others, big data technology, data discovery, data visualization, data mining, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, chatbots, RPA, app technology, self service BI and cloud computing. Big data helps, among other things, with the processing speed (in-memory technology) of large heterogeneous data sets. Modern navigation interfaces can be created using the app technology with its tile types. Data discovery or visual discovery tools support big data analytics in terms of their forecasting and analysis capabilities. Especially data mining and predictive analytics receive a further boost for analysis and forecasting tasks, among others, through machine learning, deep learning and neural networks. Chatbots are computer-based dialogue systems that offer new possibilities for faster and more resource-efficient information provision for the users. With robotic process automation (RPA), there is another IT approach that can be used as an intermediate technology in controlling to replace tedious manual IT maintenance by software robots. Cloud computing is an interesting outsourcing option for companies, where IT services and resources can be used via external IT resources. Further innovations concern the topics of data quality and data modeling. The conclusion of this chapter is the topic of “mobile BI”, which is about the expansion of powerful mobile analysis and planning solutions with the help of tablets, phones and other mobile devices.