Updated: 2008-08-21
Microsoft has several business intelligence (BI) tools and also applications with BI elements, each of which is important to understand as you decide what will work best for your company. This article provides a table that shows what Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 and Enterprise Office SharePoint Server 2007 offer as BI tools. The table is sectioned by the three core BI and performance management capabilities: monitoring, analysis, and planning. Additionally, a section about reporting and a discussion about data access and data integration follow.
Monitoring
Monitoring enables business users to define and use scorecards and key performance indicators (KPIs) to drive accountability and alignment across the organization.
| Feature | PerformancePoint Server 2007 | Office SharePoint Server | Comments |
|---|
Dashboard design | Yes | Yes | |
Scorecard and KPI elements | Yes | Yes | Office SharePoint Server KPIs are displayed in a customized document list. Excel Services (as a part of Office SharePoint Server) allows users to build scorecards in Excel and display them inside Office SharePoint Server. PerformancePoint Server dashboards, scorecards, and KPIs allow drill-down to further analyze data. |
SQL Reporting Services reports | Yes | Yes | Office SharePoint Server and PerformancePoint Server can both use SQL Server Reporting Services. For information about more reporting features, see the "Report" table. |
Analysis
Analysis capabilities allow organizations to create analytics that include graphs, key performance indicators (KPIs), and data grids, and that use advanced visualization functionalities off of Analysis Services. These rich capabilities help users rapidly identify trends, opportunities, and even threats to the business hidden within large quantities of data.
| Feature | PerformancePoint Server | Office SharePoint Server | Comments |
|---|
Excel | Yes | Yes | PerformancePoint Server includes the PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel, which populates spreadsheets with financial data and stores user annotations. Excel and Excel Services both have analytic features. |
Advanced analytics | Yes | No | PerformancePoint Server analytics include graphs, key performance indicators (KPIs), data grids, and advanced visualization in order to allow multidimensional slice, drill-across, drill-to-detail, root-cause analysis, and centralized business logic definitions.
PerformancePoint Server also allows ad-hoc queries, various filters such as applying an MDX query template, and shows relationships between dimension hierarchies, attribute hierarchies and measures, thereby simplifying the navigation of cubes. The advanced analytic features are available in a thin client. |
Excel Services | Yes | Yes | Excel Services allows Web access to workbooks. The Excel interface is a familiar end-user analytics tool. |
Planning
Effective planning, forecasting, and budgeting are essential elements of a dynamic, ongoing performance management process. The PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel allows users to work within a familiar environment and allows PerformancePoint Server to manage the business process, logic, and data at the server level.
| Feature | PerformancePoint Server | Office SharePoint Server | Comments |
|---|
Planning | Yes | No | PerformancePoint Server Planning Business Modeler makes planning, budgeting, and forecasting part of a dynamic, ongoing performance management process. The planning application provides users with a complete, enterprise view of the data, offering consolidation, allocation, and elimination. It integrates with Excel, Outlook, and Office SharePoint Server for workflow and collaboration. |
PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel | Yes | No | The PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel is a companion to Planning Business Modeler. The PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel allows users to work with financial data in a spreadsheet and store user cell annotations. Business logic is managed by the server. |
Reporting
| Feature | PerformancePoint Server | Office SharePoint Server | Comments |
|---|
Reports | Yes | Yes | In PerformancePoint Server Dashboard Designer, you can expose data in a dashboard by creating supportive reports with any number of templates. See the following section about report templates. |
Advanced financial and management reporting | Yes | No | PerformancePoint Server Management Reporter is a report writer designed to support financial tasks such as consolidation. The financial consolidation process and tasks occur within the financial models of PerformancePoint Server. Then, through Excel or Management Reporter, financial reports can be created to help deliver management and statutory reports. Management Reporter can turn advanced financial analysis, such as sensitivity and variance analysis (for example, price/quantity/customer/product mix/timing), into easy-to-understand reports. |
PerformancePoint Server Dashboard Designer templates
The following are report options in PerformancePoint Server Dashboard Designer.
Strategy Map reports display various performance measures in an organization. The strategy map uses shapes in an Office Visio 2007 diagram to show the relationships between the objectives and KPIs, and it uses color to communicate how each objective or KPI is performing.
Trend Analysis reports offer specialized functionality and use scorecards as data sources. Dashboard users can click an individual KPI and cause the linked reports to automatically refresh and display further information that is specific to the selected KPI.
Web Page reports are fully functional internal or external Web sites that you display in a Web Part next to your other dashboard elements.
Advanced analytical reports include the Perspective View, Decomposition Tree, Performance Map, and analytic charts and grids.
Reporting Services reports link to an existing Reporting Services report from within your dashboard.
Data access and data integration
Both Excel Services and PerformancePoint Server can connect to various Microsoft data sources such as SSAS, Office SharePoint Server, or SQL Server table data, Excel spreadsheets, and ODBC-compliant sources by using different tools.
PerformancePoint Monitoring Server
KPIs and scorecards can use data from any configured data source. In contrast, analytic charts and grids must use data from SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). The following are the different data source elements to configure.
Multidimensional data sources that access SSAS data.
Tabular data sources that access SQL Server 2005 data tables, Excel 2007 worksheets, SharePoint lists, or worksheets in Excel Services.
Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) compliant data sources.
Use the interfaces in the PerformancePoint Server SDK to create a custom data source.
For more information about connecting to a data source, see >Create a data source.
PerformancePoint Planning Server
The following two methods exist for data integration in PerformancePoint Planning Server.
Office SharePoint Server
Office SharePoint Server provides the following data access and integration resources.
The Business Data Catalog connects to registered line-of-business (LOB) applications and configured sites, lists, and business data Web Parts.
Web and programmatic access to Office Excel workbooks through Excel Services is available.
Data connection libraries can be created as a .odc files, which allow you to create a connection within Excel Services to access SharePoint libraries.