eThesis - Kauppakorkeakoulun sähköiset gradut

The purpose of this study is to objectively analyze business intelligence reporting solution and to provide a real life application to reporting solution design. This thesis study was conducted at Aalto University School of Business in cooperation with my employer KONE Corporation, where the implementation of the reporting system took place over a period of 6 months.

The study chapters are divided into two major sections: research background and solution design and development. The first section includes the introduction of the major components of business intelligence and the manner in which the research is conducted. During this part of the thesis the reader receives important facts of business intelligence and data modeling. The latter allow the reader to understand essential information that will serve the purpose of guiding the study to its research question. This section also provides imperative information regarding the scope and limitations of the study. As it will be further clarified in the study the limitations of this study are to a feasibility study and evaluation of the designed solution. This study uses system development research method. Two research questions were answered in this study. The first research questions is 1. How to make the non-relational data available for reporting. To answer this question we have designed and developed the transformations and processes needed to transfer source data into data warehouse. As part of the solution design and development planning, the solution has been divided into two development phase where phase one focuses on the design of getting the source data into data warehouse. Phase two focuses on stabilization and maintenance of the solution that leads to solution architecture change, and it answers the second research question: 2. How to better maintain and stabilize the designed solution.

The next section of the study will go on to provide information to the reader on the solution design methods pursued at KONE Corporation global development team. In this solution we chose using existing data format in XML as data source and transfer information through SAP PX integration directly into data warehouse without having a traditional data staging area in place. This simplified data processing process and increased flexibility of the solution maintenance. We suggested to switch from monolithic architecture to microservice architecture in the later development for easier maintenance and flexibility as the final solution.

In conclusion this study hopes to provide conclusive information to organizations of all types when studying concepts to better provides possibility to connect one's existing application to modern analytics. This is presented in the study as the correct manner of system development and information system design. The vast amount of data being manipulated around the world is exponentially increasing with each passing day. Therefore the importance only grows as the greater the amount of data the greater the complexity if the wrong reporting solution design is put in place.