What if, we have a personalised BI App which can answer
the business questions on an adhoc basis through voice commands?
Provide custom reports proactively based on the location
& time using GPS location of the phone?
Yes, that's now a reality with Oracle Day by Day Mobile
App.
Oracle launched Day by Day Mobile App in the first half of this year, which looks to be a futuristic personal analytics application. It is currently available as part of Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) Enterprise license and has got both Android and Apple versions. It's quite different to earlier Oracle Mobile BI and Synopsis App. Oracle Mobile BI HD app is more like an actual BI application tailored for mobile screen, whereas synopsis is for adhoc analysis sourcing data from excel sheets.Oracle Day by Day is more than mobile BI with built in AI ,NLP (Natural Language Processing) capabilities.
I got a chance to evaluate this product while working on
POC of Oracle Analytics Cloud platform. App does not require any additional
setups and can be downloaded from Google Play store or Apple App store very
easily. I am elaborating my brief experience and take on each of its key
salient features as below,
1) Easy to use: One can easily configure the app just by entering OAC application URL and user credentials. Application itself has got 3 simple tabs Smart Feed, Search and Settings.
2) Really SMART, Smart Feed: First tab of the app feeds the frequently used charts and Numbers based on the usage pattern and explicit selections. Essentially app learns on what to feed in the first tab so that user can get the required insights proactively without even asking for them.
It is so personalized that it delivers the charts based on when and where to various business questions. Oracle calls the list of these mobile charts and graphs as smart cards. Here is how it looks...
Fig1 : Day by Day app tabs and Smart Feed
3) Search with NLP & AI: In Search tab users can type the key words for the data and KPI they are looking for and any specific way it needs to be presented (like bar graph, pic chart etc.). In below example a chart is rendered based on 4 keywords typed "Costs, Germany, City, bar chart".
Fig2 : Report rendering based on key words
It is a mobile version of BI Ask available in the OAC which presents the content based on the indexing of Subject Areas clubbed with backend AI programs to construct the report on the fly.
More interesting is voice based search ..., users can tap on the Google voice icon and start asking the question to their personal assistant. In the below example, user asks a question "Revenue for phones in Germany "and app responds with a number tile with required fact.
Fig 3: Get numbers and charts through voice based queries
If a specific visualization is not mentioned in the request, App selects one or more chart types to present the data such as a Tile, Bar Graph etc. automatically.
App leverages various NLP techniques to interpret the user's voice inputs so as to construct a meaningful search criteria.
4) Bring back reports based on Date/time & Location: Assume a senior executive wants to know Sales numbers for a location when he/she is at that location or wants to have a glance of report before a meeting scheduled at a particular date/time, yes it can now be easily achieved through this app. As shown in below example with few taps user can select a Sales report to be available when he/she is at Berlin tomorrow or next week.
I would like to say that Oracle Day by Day App is a game changer in the BI space delivering truly personalized, AI based, collaborative mobile BI capability. Oracle is trying to change or extend the definition of BI from charts/graphs to getting required answers to business questions. Having said all that, App at the current state still needs lots of refinements especially to its NLP capabilities in interpreting the user's voice commands or text queries. Oracle will definitely bring more enhancements to it in the coming releases. Overall it's great trend setter for the BI and Analytics Industry.
Fig 4: Personalize your smart feed based on Date/time and Location
App uses the GPS information available in the cell phone to provide the report based on locations.
5) Share a report to a group or an individual: Users can create their own group called as Crew by adding other users (who have OAC Id & are on App) to it in Settings tab. A report can be shared to the Crew or to an individual with single tap as shown below,
Fig 5: Report sharing, broadcasting and Comment options
Report can also be broadcasted to nearby devices. And one more appealing feature available only in chrome version is to make report available to external devices through chromecast.
6) Start a group chat : Users can simply start a conversation around a report with their Crew by typing in the Comments section. It would be very helpful for Sales team to have discussions on the Go.
7) Notifications based on calls/text messages : Users can set notifications in the App if they receive a call or text message from a particular contact. Accordingly reports pertaining to that contact will be made available in the Smart Feed. It really helps in quickly gaining the insight about the contact (might be a prospect or an existing customer) before starting the conversation.
