BI Publisher
BI Publisher – what is it?
BI Publisher is Oracle’s reporting tool for generating highly formatted, printable reports. BI Publisher is integrated with Siebel CRM, Oracle BI and most of Oracle’s other applications. The focus of this page is BI Publisher integrated with Siebel CRM. BI Publisher reports serve a wide range of reporting needs that have previously been met with Actuate reports in Siebel, e.g Order Confirmations, Sales Pipeline Reports, Expense Reports and Customer Overviews / Snapshots. But BI Publisher is much more than only a replacement.
BI Publisher – how is it different from legacy solutions?
BI Publisher is not merely a replacement for Actuate – it also resolves the challenges that have affected Actuate’s reporting tool when used in Siebel, including
- reliance on technical skills and staff
- proprietary output format
- dependency on a Siebel release when deploying new reports
First: the implementation of Actuate Reports relies on technical skills, tools and staff in every phase of the development cycle for implementing even the most straightforward reports. As BI Publisher reports can be developed in Microsoft Word it allows the business community to take real ownership for many aspects of the report implementation.
Second: BI Publisher can generate reports in a variety of formats, including Micrsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, XML, Adobe Flash and PDF!
In our experience, almost all users of Siebel want to get data out of Siebel and into Excel for ad-hoc analysis. This has been a cumbersome process, that must be repeated every time data changes, that takes significant effort and time for the end-user and therefore costs money. With BI Publisher this has been resolved as reports can be generated straight into Excel, with embedded formulas and formatting!
Third: The release of new Actuate reports have only been possible in conjunction with a Siebel SRF release. This has meant that the time period between when the business asks for a report and it has actually been available for use, has in most cases been months rather than days or weeks. BI Publisher reports on the other hand, can be deployed by a couple of mouse clicks and the time that the business community needs to wait for a report is drastically reduced.
BI Publisher Expertise
Did you know that:
- BI Publisher has replaced Actuate as the standard reporting tool in Siebel CRM?
- BI Publisher reports can be created in Microsoft Word without technical expertise?
- BI Publisher can be used to seamlessly export and report on Siebel CRM data in Microsoft Excel?