4D help companies to do this by providing them with access to their data and presenting it back to them in a meaningful manner which allows them to make business decisions more quickly and accurately than ever before. Our BI solutions then continue to monitor and measure the company’s performance against the Key Performance Indicators.

With an Implementation Methodology designed to deliver a real Return on Investment, on budget and on time, 4D are perfectly placed to assist companies in harnessing the latest technologies in OLAP, ETL and Data Warehousing enabling them to derive an immediate benefit to the business.

Located in Congleton, South Cheshire, 4D have continued its early success by developing a reputation for building and implementing meaningful and relevant BI applications that can improve business efficiency, increase profitability and reduce costs.

Why 4D ?

4D comes from our methodology for implementing Business Intelligence solutions – Discuss, Design, Develop and Deliver.

4D's approach represents both a method and a framework that allows us to assess clients’ requirements and plan the best way to deliver them. It also creates a synergy between the business knowledge within your company and the Project and Product knowledge within ours.

In addition the approach shows the potential scope of the BI project. Often projects fail in this area because companies focus on what the system ‘looks like’ rather than what it delivers to the business.

Here’s a breakdown of what happens in each phase: -

1 Discuss

In Phase 1 we scope and define the company’s reporting requirements. We combine this with a clear understanding of the company’s ‘people’ hierarchy.

After the initial information gathering and consolidation of material, the exact structure of the BI solution including where, when and how information is retrieved will be established. This is compiled in a ‘Project Charter’ which provides a full planned and scheduled rollout of the production application, the programme for the IT department and the induction process for end users.

2 Design

Phase Two involves the logical design of the solution. This provides the client with the first draft and it will detail and define the future expectations of the solution.

Once the design – and the deliverable - has been agreed, a prototype is created, validated and finally modified to ensure the user requirements and expectations are clearly defined.

This is often the first time that a client can see what they are going to get and they can then start to fully assess what the benefits will be to the business in the future.

3 Develop

The initial emphasis of this phase (3) of the Methodology concentrates on thorough Data Analysis and Quality Assurance as poor data means poor decisions.

The resulting ‘information shortfall’, data issues and required business logic are then transposed into an applicable Extract, Transformation and Load (ETL) process ‘blueprint’ which will in turn, cleanse, enhance and ultimately populate the solution using applicable programming and scripting technology.

The solution itself is then physically constructed into an architecture, which promotes business-specific and performance critical interrogation and is verified in terms of data structure and data accuracy.

The final component of this phase is to incorporate an end-user reporting technology from which interrogation and production reporting of the underlying solution will be possible.

4 Deliver

4D are aware of the impact new technologies and working practices will have on business users.

This phase (4) deals with ‘hard’ and ‘soft aspects of the implementation.

The ‘hard’ aspects include the installation and configuration of hardware, networking and software. The ‘soft’ aspects involve communication and education of the best working practices of the forthcoming system to the end-user base and IT department.

Relevant training prior to deployment is of paramount importance to the success of the BI solution. In addition, progressive training at periodic intervals helps the user base to get the most from their implementation ensuring high acceptance and quick return on investments.