Unstructured data and complex information that doesn’t fit neatly into tiny boxes can be difficult to work with in a traditional relational database. That’s why organizations in industries from automotive design to toys to logistics rely on MultiValue databases to “bring order to chaos” by allowing just about any type of information to be transformed into useful data. For decades, MultiValue has created real business value, but today users can do even more with their valuable information by connecting modern business intelligence (BI) tools to their MV databases.
Here are just some of the ways MultiValue can improve BI:
- Discovers trends and issues not obvious through numbers alone, turning data into information
- Uses a higher density of data points to produce a more detailed analysis
- Speeds data analysis by accessing all pertinent information from the same source
BI is often thought of as “dashboarding,” but that’s really the tip of the iceberg. BI software empowers business leaders to transform data into information by discovering trends and issues that might not be readily apparent just by looking at the raw files. It’s all about real-time analytics, and by tracking and analyzing unstructured data, companies can determine patterns and trends within their partnerships and customer bases, group their customers by proclivity and usage, and better target their customer- and partner-facing efforts.
And any analyst will immediately see the value of applying BI principles to the MultiValue world: the more data points are available, the more useful analytics will be. By supporting unstructured data, MultiValue allows for an exponentially more nuanced and holistic “blended” business review by drawing in relevant data points to give a truly clear view of the company and its current situation - and help business leaders determine the best steps moving forward. One key benefit of BI is being able to access data over an entire enterprise for a 360-degree view; MultiValue expands the scope of data being leveraged across all systems, creating a much finer and more detailed picture of this broad range of data.
The MultiValue application platform delivers a significantly lower total cost of ownership while simplifying and accelerating complex application development. Developers work with MultiValue’s database the way they naturally think, eliminating the time and frustration of squeezing the business into a rigid relational-database structure.
You can easily capture your ideas in a data format that’s been built for flexibility, then watch your data structure evolve naturally during development. The MultiValue “table within a table” architecture enables simplified data joins, speeding development of intuitive applications with depth that people can use immediately.
MultiValue also offers the advantage of storing all necessary information about a topic on a single system. Rather than cross-referencing one relational database for structured data with another source of unstructured data, or even going further afield to another computer or location, MultiValue systems hold all the transactional data on a single database, vastly speeding up the data retrieval process as the processor collates, compares, and analyzes the available data from a single, easily accessible source. MultiValue reduces the computer’s workload by consolidating and centralizing the necessary resources to perform business intelligence.
The bottom line is that MultiValue and BI together can be a major help to companies in any industry. One firm might need an application to track inventory levels and pricing, critical given their low margins and large number of product SKUs. BI lets them easily see all sorts of margins (gross, after rebates, by product or customer) minute-to-minute and adjust pricing on the go. Another company’s supply chain could use BI to track truck fleet logistics such as inventory levels, transportation, and order lead times to enable a global view of warehouses, goods in transit, inventory, and demand - all on one dashboard that’s easy to view and react to issues.