The eTrack Business Intelligence module is powered by q4bis, a powerful product in itself that is supplied by PST Software and sold throughout the USA.   Purchasing through eTrack gives the same discounts and provides you the interfaces with eTrack.

Multi-Dimensional reports allow business data to be viewed dynamically from a variety of different business perspectives.   These multi-dimensional reports allow the user to drill down and combine various aspects of the business together and manipulate them to discover business information.

Using the eTrack BI interface, complex and powerful analysis can be performed on large quantities of data quickly and with a minimum of training or technical expertise.   The result is an intuitive view of the business that is instantly understood by senior management.

eTrack have  previously developed a Reporting Database utility that can be configured to create any flat database structure from eTrack data.   A ‘cube’ is then created using SQL Server (even if you are not using SQL Server as your eTrack database) and the q4bis software runs on top of this.

The operation is seamless and can run by batch automatically each night. The characteristic of a cube is that fields are pre-calculated so a user can navigate in real time into masses of data that is only a few hours old. Tell us what you want and we'll tailor make a dashboard for you showing say your priority 1 issues, top 5 risks, top 5 overruns or negative variances or what ever you wish for.  Together with its amazing ease of use this becomes a very powerful and viable option for eTrack customers.

The two key principles of multi-dimensional reporting are Dimensions and Measures.

a)       Dimensions are a way of looking at a business.  For example, a ‘Product’ Dimension can be used to analyse development costs and effort by product.

The power of multi-dimensional reporting comes from combining Dimensions to analyse the relationships between different aspects of the business.   For example, combining a ‘Product’ Dimension with a ‘Project Dimension’.  Dimensions can have multiple levels to allow analysis at different aggregations of data.   For example, the Product Dimension can be aggregated to Components or the Project Dimension to Phases, Releases or Tasks.

b)       Measures are the ‘measures’ of business performance – the numbers that are reported.
The Measures are aggregated depending on the combination of Dimensions selected in a multi-dimensional report.  These can contain several measures for each Dimension combination.  For example, the Dimension combination of ‘Product’ and ‘Project’ could report the ‘Cost’, ‘Time’, ‘Average Rate’, ‘Utilisation’ or ‘Profit’.