Business Intelligence

If you do a web search for the term "business intelligence" or "BI", you'll get two points of view - one is focused on how to gather and transform raw data into information and the other is focused on the process of analyzing and utilizing the information for strategic planning. Two parts of a whole, really, since there is no point gathering a ton of data unless you can somehow put it to use. Plus it's tough to make decisions about what your company/department/process should do unless you have enough information to support those decisions.

That got me thinking again about how important it is that ExtendSim has an internal relational database capability for storing and managing data. An internal database serves as a bridge between the simulation model and external data repositories, both to supply data to the model and to report model outputs. It also helps that ExtendSim has robust tools to facilitate the exchange of data with external sources. For example, its ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) capability allows ExtendSim to perform high speed data exchanges with external databases such as Microsoft Access and SQL Server. And the ExtendSim DB Add-In for Excel allows analysts to fully specify an ExtendSim database in Excel, including parent/child relationships, formatting, and data validation, and then retrieve useful information from the model without having to learn anything about simulation or even how to use ExtendSim.

But the storage, management, and transfer of data is only one part of the story. What is even more important is that the data gets used in a meaningful manner. And that is where simulation comes in. Simulation is a low cost, high reward method that allows you to analyze existing processes and explore the effect of changes. Likewise you can get assurance when designing completely new systems and processes since you've simulated their behavior or performance in advance. An intelligent way to do business.