Today, after 2 ½ years, the Shibui-IT™ software suite, capable of transferring and loading any form of ERP & CRM data through the Shibui-IT™ Advanced Connector (SAC) into a Shibui-IT™ databank for the purpose of creating easy-to-use and customized Business Intelligence (BI) reports, is ready to launch. 

The wait has been well worth it: the complete Shibui-IT™ SW & HW architectural solution is now operational and available for purchase. 

The Shibui-IT™ solution helps executives and investors make more informed decisions, monitor the performance of their businesses, and track and analyze the most vital and relevant financial data. 

While a traditional PoC is designed to verify the functionality of the design, this functional PoC not only showcases the viability of Shibui-IT™ but also its usability under real-world conditions. 

The aim of this functional PoC, moreover, is to strengthen the confidence of executive sponsors, and encourage companies to consider Shibui-IT™ as their new Reporting and Planning tool.

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Shibui-IT™ transcends traditional BI reporting tools in more than one way: its detailed depiction of key performance indices also offers two data vantage points: a basic and advanced planning and forecasting tool. These unique tools promise to avoid time consuming and labor-intensive forecasting and budgeting activities to its users.

We at k•d•m believe in the many advantages that Shibui-IT™ solution can bring to your organization. For the purpose of this PoC, we have stress-tested our creation. We have devised a data set of a fictitious Tier 2 components company which has been loaded into a simplified Shibui-IT™ ERP/CRM database running on a SQL server. 

The fictitious company has 100 customers in 12 countries and 5 regions, 4 product lines and 30 products which includes mature products, new products, opportunity funnel and end of life products as well as IP (Intellectual Property) business. The company has 12 Account Managers, a data history back to 2001, has an ERP system and a CRM tool as data source and an actual business of about $10M in 2014 and a growth potential to $50M in 2016. 

This case study, based on real-world conditions and performance parameters, brings to life the many, substantial opportunities Shibui-IT™ solution can offer to companies before you purchase our product: the closest we can bring you to a risk-free investment.

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The following overview shows the Shibui-IT™ building blocks used in the Shibui-IT™ PoC.

The architecture shows the main building blocks which are needed to test the Shibui-IT™ usability and subsequent benchmarking: The Shibui-IT™ Advanced Connector (SAC), the Shibui-IT™ OLTP and OLAP tools and the XLCubed applications. The connected customer data source used for the PoC is a SQL Server which contains the fictitious ERP & CRM data. In the production version of Shibui-IT™, all kind of sources can be connected.

A simple way to describe the data flow from source (customer) to target (Shibui-IT™ BI reports) is as follows:

Step 1:  SAC-to-source interface connects to the data sources and uploads all needed “fictitious company” data records which are needed for Shibui-IT™ BI with various SAC processing steps to a SAC CSV data repository. Shibui-IT™ uses an “n-number” of CSV files which are clearly allocated to the different data and sub-data entities. The SAC extract, transfer and load step is triggered by scheduled runs. 

Step 2:  Shibui-IT™ OLTP imports the actual SAC CSV data into an OLTP Current SQL table which always shows the current content of the CSV data repository.

Step 3:  The corporate memory of Shibui-IT™ OLTP SQL table contains the complete history of loaded data for further processing.

Step 4:  Shibui-IT™’s OLTP processing, modification and calculation logic prepares the operational data of the corporate memory for pre-analysis in Shibui-IT™ OLAP and final report authoring in XLCubed Analysis tool. These data are stored in the Reporting Foundation, a Data Source on which Shibui-IT™ BI applications are built.

Step 4:  From the Reporting Foundation the Shibui-IT™ Master and Transactional Data are processed and uploaded into multidimensional Data Cubes of the Shibui-IT™ OLAP which contains all bits of information for the Shibui-IT™ Bi reports.

Step 5:  For data visualization and Web delivery Shibui-IT™ PoC uses XLCubed Excel and Web Software packages. XlCubed solutions connect with the Shibui-IT™ Cubes data and generates the Shibui-IT™ BI reports.

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Shibui-IT™ is an innovative Business Intelligence tool that helps businesses, at all levels of the organization, easily view and comprehend their performance data.

The findings in this PoC have been buttressed by a pilot project comprising a fictitious company performing under real-life conditions. Shibui-IT™’s competitive advantages are, therefore, not relegated to a theoretical status. As we have managed to demonstrate throughout this document, our software solutions can bring real, tangible results to your organization, with minimal risk and comparatively low start-up costs.

To recap, Shibui-IT™ offers innovative solutions to businesses in five areas:

1. Raw Data, Any Data

To facilitate the seamless transfer of data, k•d•m has developed a Shibui-IT™ Advanced Connector (SAC) which uses a modular field definition approach to process different data types (string, integer, float, character...). The successful test of the SAC in the PoC demonstrates that the advanced connector is ready for customer deployment.

2. Processing, Data Integrity

Shibui-IT™ ensures data integrity during data transformations and calculations. All transactions from Shibui-IT™ SAC to Shibui-IT™ OLAP are logged, and the data are marked with unique identifiers: these identifiers can, in turn, be displayed and accessed in the Shibui-IT™ report templates.

3. Savvy Dashboards

k•d•m's Shibui-IT™ dashboard offers a set of pre-defined reporting templates to its users, spanning from basic Billing and Booking reports to revenue analysis reports. Special Shibui-IT™ reports, like Vantage Charts and Customer Fact Sheets, are also part of the Shibui-IT™ BI application library. 

4. Easy Usability

Shibui-IT™ allows any user to easily navigate between BI applications. Shibui-IT™ reports and applications not only provide "front page type" highlight-level summaries but also the option to allow users to delve more deeply into the data. The PoC proves that the dashboard’s intuitive drag and drop applications are self-explanatory and provides contextual help for first time user.

5. Fast and Secure Sharing

Shibui-IT™ reports can be accessed via a secure Shibui-IT™ Web Delivery solution. State-of-the-art authentication and security features ensure that Shibui-IT™ reports are securely made available to users. The PoC showed that the Shibui-IT™ applications can be called up and retrieved from any smartphone, tablet, PC or desktop in a matter of seconds.

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