GRANVALLEY: Portmanteaus of Enterprise and Self-Service BI

“I don’t want to offer BI solutions that do not satisfy clients!” This was the motto on Yasuhiro Otani’s mind when he was working for a consulting firm as the Director of BI solution-consulting department. While helping clients to address numerous business challenges, he realized the need to deliver higher level of customer satisfaction pertaining to the offered BI solutions. This perception triggered him to contribute and add value to business intelligence sector—paving the inception of GRANVALLEY in the year 2005. “Our BI service offering stretches from proposal to development and delivery of the data collection system, as well as the management and business analysis system,” explains Yasuhiro Otani, President of GRANVALLEY.

GRANVALLEY provides four different solution services: Business Intelligence (BI), Business Analytics (BA), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Business Performance Management (BPM). Among these services, the core of GRANVALLEY's business is the BI service that builds management information platforms using SAP Business Objects, SAP BW, and BI tools such as QlikView, Qlik Sense, and Infor BI. GRANVALLEY's ERP service includes concept design, development, and delivery of ERP that is “visualization-conscious” from the very first stage of the ERP project considering use of BI tools that support decision making.

Building a management information infrastructure that combines SAP Business Objects with SAP BW, GRANVALLEY’s service caters each client with the proposal, development, and delivery of statistical analysis and data mining solutions. Otani believes that, to make an efficacious use of a business information platform that utilizes BI and ERP, it is imperative to clarify the current ‘As-Is’ business cycle and refine it to ‘To-Be’ business model. In light of this, GRANVALLEY offers BPM ser-vices that build or rebuild the business process that fits best for the client, by supporting development of a BM System based on the management cycle as well as setting the KPIs directly connected to the improvement of business efficiency.

With the technology transitions, most of the organizations are migrating to SAP HANA. In these transitions, the migration of the existing DWH (SAP BW) without risk of data loss is a major issue that must be addressed. “The most common challenges among our clients are-bringing BI to the cloud, Self-Service BI and successful migration to SAP HANA,” says Otani.

GRANVALLEY’s service provides each client with the proposal, development, and delivery of statistical analysis and data mining solutions

Here is when GRANVALLEY’s proprietary methods come into picture; by establishing its unique methodologies including the ‘Iceberg Approach’, a faster visualization realization method leveraging the traditional waterfall methods, agile development methods, and ‘Hybrid BI’, which takes full advantage of both Enterprise BI and Self-Service BI, GRANVALLEY offers well-chiselled quality services ahead of expected time.

Hybrid BI takes advantages of both Enterprise BI and Self-Serviced BI methods. This combination of Enterprise BI and Self-Service BI enables rapid business decisions and accelerates data utilization throughout all divisions of the company leveraging data from both inside and outside the organization. Iceberg Approach aids organizations in realizing visualization faster by providing them with a clear image of visualized BI and perceiving BI visualization at minimum cost within the shortest period of time. “With the Iceberg Approach, we first obtain challenges to be addressed and data from the clients to develop a mock-up dashboard using a Self- Service BI tool such as Qlik and present it to them. The clients review the dashboard and give us feedback with requirements that need to be reflected on it. GRANVALLEY then modifies the dashboard accordingly while ob-taining and processing necessary data sources at the same time to make them fit for practical use. This process is repeated as many times as needed, which enables the clients to have the dashboard as they expected and develop a practical BI that satisfies their requirements,” he further explains.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, this SAP BI consulting company is all set to embrace Big Data, Cloud, and AI as well as business analytics in the future. However, GRANVALLEY will be seen brewing new solutions that address business challenges utilizing Big Data, Cloud, and AI as well as traditional services like BI, BA, BPM, and ERP. Furthermore, GRANVALLEY is developing the new solutions designed for the motorsports industry which Otani is personally familiar with, aiming for expanding into the motorsports analytics market, the area in which Japan lags behind other countries.

“By utilizing Big Data, Cloud, and AI technology as well as promoting digital business, we will be delivering the highest level of satisfaction possible to our clients by offering value-added solutions and quality services that enable the clients to improve productivity with a nominal workforce,” concludes Otani.