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| Business
Questions |
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What
is Discovery
Discovery is the process of identifying unrealized 'gems'
of insight or intelligence in data. |
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In what way does PolyVista deliver
superior insight?
PolyVista's ability to deliver superior insight comes
in two ways. First, it is able to not only provide answers
to questions asked, but also identify questions a user
should have asked, but didn't know to. The reason for
this is because PolyVista is able to rapidly analyze multiple
dimensions of data simultaneously, and automatically identify
anomalies in the data - anomalies that would be practically
impossible for a human to identify in a timely manner.
Second, because of PolyVista's automated capabilities,
it is able to provide analysis in a matter of minutes
and hours rather than days and weeks that competitive
business intelligence solutions usually require for programming
and computing time.
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Can
I still use my reporting tools if I implement PolyVista?
Yes. While PolyVista can provide
the very same analysis provided by your current reporting
software, it does not provide the ability to produce the
reports. PolyVista currently does not replace your reporting
software capabilities, but rather enhances them. PolyVista
will provide reporting capabilities in 2Q05. |
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We are not ready to do analytics, why should we consider
PolyVista?
In the 21st century, no one should
be "not ready" for analytics. In the highly competitive
world economy, every company that wants to survive and
grow needs to be utilizing the best possible analytical
tools to understand their own operations and the effects
of the business environment on those operations. The PolyVista
analytics are highly intuitive, requiring minimal delay
before you can begin to reap positive benefits from the
discoveries and validation efforts of your business analysts
and decision makers, while traditional OLAP tools have
a much longer lead time before they can provide a significant
return on your investment. PolyVista also offers a much
richer set of analytical capabilities than the typical
OLAP product. |
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We already have a walk-on-water Ph.D. group that does
all the analysis for us, why should we consider PolyVista?
How many of your "walk-on-water
PhD's" really understand your business? More often than
not, these individuals are very knowledgeable about the
statistical methods and concepts behind many forms of
analysis, but have less of an understanding of business
in general, and your business in particular. Thus, they
may surface some really interesting things if you point
them in the right direction. However, in answering some
questions, it is also highly possible that they will miss
other items that could be very interesting from a business
standpoint. Because they don't really know your business,
these items will be forgotten, or treated as incidental
to the main business question being researched, and ultimately
lost. |
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We
have many other query tools, why should we consider PolyVista?
Query tools such as those provided
by Business Objects or Cognos can provide answers to the
questions you know you want to ask about your business.
The results are presented in tabular or graphical formats,
depending on the instructions you give the tool. However,
these tools can only present answers to the questions
you ask using measures you have established. PolyVista
can take you to the next level by enabling your business
analysts and decision makers to identify new items of
interest that can help you to manage your business more
effectively, identify potential new opportunities, etc.
that canned or ad-hoc reporting would have missed. Use
Business Objects or your other OLAP tools for those reporting
tasks that you already have some ideas around. But to
find new nuggets of knowledge, and explore the implications
of those nuggets, look to PolyVista to provide the seamlessly
integrated tool that makes it easy to see the answers
to the new questions you didn't even know to ask. |
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In
what way is PolyVista superior to high end analysis tools
such as SAS and SPSS?
PolyVista can provide the same kinds
of results as these high end analysis tools, but does
so significantly faster. While with these high end packages,
much training and programming is required, and obtaining
results to queries could take weeks or months of labor.
With PolyVista, similar results can be extracted in a
matter of minutes or hours. Further, PolyVista is able
to provide automated discovery - a process that requires
significant iterative programming with high end analysis
programs. Finally, PolyVista can work seamlessly with
structured and unstructured data in an interactive fashion
- something high end analysis packages cannot do. This
ability lends tremendous value to unstructured data an
organization may possess.
When you reach a point where you have something that requires
significantly detailed or rigorous analysis, we would
recommend that you submit a more specific request to your
data-mining technicians. |
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Our IT group is too busy to look at OLAP cubes. Can PolyVista
help us get started?
Yes. PolyVista is an easy-to-learn,
easy-to-use tool that can access your application data
using either ODBC or OLEDB technology. In the event that
IT resources are unavailable to generate the needed processes
to build and update the Multi-Dimensional Database(s),
PolyVista can provide consulting services to accomplish
this task. Once the initial development is completed,
the cubes can continue to be updated on a regular basis
using scheduled batch processes. |
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| Technical
Questions |
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What
are PolyVista's limitations?
PolyVista cannot provide customized
modeling. However, if a specific model needs to be developed,
PolyVista can develop it for a nominal fee. At this point,
the prebuilt algorithms available through PolyVista will
meet almost all of a users needs. |
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How
long does it take to learn to use PolyVista?
A detailed PolyVista training session
generally lasts two days, though many of our users have
learnt to use PolyVista in a matter of a hours. |
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How
does PolyVista deliver results so quickly?
PolyVista's prebuilt algorithms
enable the automation of analysis. As a result, PolyVista
is able to provide its results rapidly. |
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What is unique about PolyVista's text/unstructured content
mining capabilities?
PolyVista's patent-pending text
mining algorithm not only allows you to mine text most
effectively, but do so in conjunction and interactively
with numeric/structured data. Additional information on
PolyVista's text mining capabilities can be found
here. |
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We do not have a data warehouse/mart - how would we use
PolyVista?
You do not need a large, formal
data warehouse/mart to start analyzing your data. PolyVista
utilizes multi-dimensional databases (cubes) as the foundation
for its analytical activities. If needed, PolyVista can
provide assistance in designing and building the cubes
so the data is ready for use by the business analysts
and decision makers who will be using the PolyVista Interactive
Discovery Environment. |
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We do not have good/clean data?
While data cleansing is certainly
a positive function, it is not necessarily a showstopper.
As long as you understand your data's limitations, PolyVista
can still provide insight for your business as well as
help with the cleanup effort. |
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We
use Oracle running on Unix (or DB2 on mainframe) in our
shop, how will Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
work?
Microsoft Analysis Services can
connect to any relational database source that supports
ODBC or OLEDB connectivity such as Oracle, Informix, DB2,
etc. as well as a variety of other file types including
Excel Spreadsheets, flat files and many others. |
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We are currently running Essbase. Why should we switch
to MSOLAP? How do we justify the expense?
Essbase can still be used for regular
"production" OLAP and other standard reporting done from
your data warehouse/mart. However, PolyVista provides
revolutionary advances in the integration of OLAP functionality,
visualization tools (graphing and charting functions),
and discovery algorithms seamlessly embodied in one simple
yet powerful tool. Thus PolyVista enables your business
users a level of analysis, which previously required the
involvement of statistical specialists and PhD's, a scarce
resource in most organizations. With PolyVista, this analysis
can be completed in a fraction of the time required by
previous approaches, assuming it could be tackled at all. |
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We have terabytes of data, how will PolyVista handle it?
PolyVista is only going to be looking
at the data that is loaded into an MDDB (cube) for analysis.
In most cases, this will probably be megabytes, possibly
a few gigabytes of data. |
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