EXECUTIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS: DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE AND

BUILDING BY USING THE BUSINESS INTELIGENCE TOOLS

Lungu Ion
Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, 021319.19.00, e-mail: ionlungu_ase@yahoo.com
Vatuiu Teodora
Constantin Brncui University, Tg-Jiu, Romania, 0253218222, e-mail: vatuiu_teodora@yahoo.com
Abstract: The Executive Information Systems (EIS) are designed to improve the quality of strategic level of
management in organization through a new type of technology and several techniques for extracting,
transforming, processing and presenting data in order to provide strategic information. These technologies are
known as Business Intelligence Tools.
This paper presents the development lifecycle, architecture of Executive Information Systems and also the main
technologies used for designing and building an EIS.
Keywords: Business Intelligence (BI), EIS, Data Integration, Data Warehouse, Data Mining, OLAP (On-Line
Analytical Processing).

1. INTRODUCTION
The Management Information Systems are second level information system, designed to provide information
required by managers for planning and decision making. They relay on Operational Information Systems when
dealing with primary data, but their main features are the flexibility and the easy to use. They are supposed to
supply immediate responses to various data requests, to process collected data to get summary information.
From a modern perspective, the information systems provide support for decision making and the use of the new
generation of Decision Support Systems is rapidly expanding. All these information systems, took advantages of
data bases, the fourth generation environments and the high technologies of modern computers.
EIS is a subset of a class of technology solutions that also are referred to in the industry as business intelligence
(BI) software. The main objective of EIS (Executive Information Systems) is to provide in real time
representative information to the high-level management, to support strategic activities such as goal setting,
planning and forecasting, and also tracking performance. Another objective of these systems is to gather,
analyze, and integrate internal and external data into dynamic profiles of key performance indicators. Based on
each executives information needs, EIS can access both historical and real-time data through ad-hoc queries.
EIS users can manage and manipulate multidimensional or cube-like databases. In essence, managers at every
level can have a customized view that extracts information from disparate sources and summarizes it into
meaningful indicators.
EIS consists in a set of technology solutions that is based on business intelligence (BI) tools. EIS provide a
friendly graphical interface and when this is customized for the individual manager, allow users to access
corporate data and complements the executive's personal knowledge and provide quantitative diagnostics to
monitor the progress of decisions.
In many organizations there are implemented ERP systems for operational and transactional processing for
different functional areas such as: financials, inventory, purchase, order management, production. Information
from these functional areas within an ERP system is managed by a relational software database such as Oracle
Database or Microsoft SQL Server.
Operational levels of management require detailed reports with daily operational activities. But executive levels
need information for strategic and tactical decision that often requires reports of aggregated data from ERP and
non-ERP application sources.

2. EIS DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE

There are some major differences between OLTP systems lifecycle and EIS lifecycle which depends on
executive systems characteristics, but the same traditional techniques and stages are used for development:
justification, project planning, analysis, design, construction, and deployment (fig. 1).

837
 Fig 1. EIS development lifecycle

In these stages there are many steps used for modeling EIS characteristics such as:
EIS are oriented o business opportunities rather than transactional needs;
EIS have to implement strategically decisions, not only departmental or operational decisions;
EIS analysis is focused on business needs. This stage is the most important of the process;
Development process is cyclical, focused on evaluation and improvement of successive versions, not
only building and major delivering of a singular a final version.

3. EIS ARCHITECTURE AND BI TOOLS

EIS systems demand for technology solutions that can extract, analyze, and visualize information from ERP and
stand-alone systems in real time and with a friendly and flexible user interface. EIS architecture is common to
Decision Support Systems architecture and it's structured on three distinct levels: Management represented by
relational database, data warehouses and other type of data resources; Model Management, which is the level of
extract, transformation and processing of data; Data Visualization Tools that provide a visual drill-down
capacity that can help managers examine data graphically and identify complex interrelationships.

838
 Presentation tools:
Reports, graphs,
Charts builders, web

MIDDLE-TIER

DATA MINING OLAP WEB TECHNOLOGIES

BOTTOM TIER
Metadata Data
Central data warehouse Targets
Data Marts

Extract/Transform/Load(ETL)
Integration

Data sources

Files
Financials HR

External Sources

Production Logistics

Fig. 2.- A complex EIS arhitecture with three distinct level

A. Data Management Level

This level consists of the data sources integration through data warehouses. A data warehouse collects and
organizes data from both internal and external sources and makes it available for the purpose of analysis. A data
warehouse contains both historical and current data and is optimized for fast query and analysis.
Data are organized in another type of schema which contains fact tables and dimension tables. A fact table is
related with dimension tables and contains measure measures and which enable a much easier way in finding
data.
Dimension tables are structured on different hierarchical levels of aggregation (e.g. Time dimension can have
day, week, month and year as hierarchical levels.)
Data presented in fact tables derived from different type of data sources like relational databases and user files.
Data warehouses extract, transform and process data for high-level integration and analysis.
Data warehouse's architecture is different for each individual organization, but in generally it consists of three
levels: data sources, ETL process and data marts. All data sources can be integrated into a central source data
warehouse from where data are extracted, transformed and loaded through ETL process into a final storage
place which can be a central data warehouse or many data marts which are departmental data warehouses.

839
Although a data warehouse can make it easier and more efficient to use the EIS, it is not required for an EIS to
be deployed. Organizations can extract data directly from their host system database for their analysis and
reporting purposes, but in a more difficult way.
B. Model Management Level
At this level we can find BI tools for extracting and analyzing data such as OLAP systems, Data mining process
and statistical tools.
C. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
An OLAP engine is a query generator that provides users with the ability to explore and analyze summary and
detailed information from a multi-dimensional database. Traditional relational database systems handle this
situation by using multiple queries.
In many cases, the queries become so complex that even the developer finds them difficult to maintain. OLAP
overcomes this barrier by enabling users to analyze multi-dimensional data. OLAP systems have typically been
implemented using two technologies: ROLAP (Relational OLAP), where data is stored in a RDBMS and
MOLAP (Multidimensional OLAP) where dedicated multidimensional DBMS is used. There are also version of
HOLAP (Hybrid OLAP) and DOLAP (Desktop OLAP) systems.
Managers can use an OLAP engine for typical operations, like "slice and dice" data by various dimensions and
then drill-down into the source data or roll-up to aggregate levels. OLAP provide tools for forecasting data and
what-if scenarios and analysis. Bat OLAP can only mark the trends and patterns within the data that was
requested. It will not discover hidden relationships or patterns, which requires more powerful tools like data
mining.
D. Data Mining
Data mining tools are especially appropriate for large and complex datasets. Through statistical or modeling
techniques, data mining tools make it possible to discover hidden trends or rules that are implicit in a large
database. Data mining tools can be applied to data from data warehouses or relational databases. Data
discovered by these tools must be validated and verified and then to become operational data that can be used in
decision process.
E. Data Visualization Tools Level
This level contains tools for presenting and analyzing data from previous levels. There are many graphical tools
for building friendly and flexible presentations like: reports, graphics, and charts builders, web pages which can
be integrated into an organizational portal or an ERP system interface such as Oracle E-Business Suite. EIS
should permit the user the interface to accommodate different degrees of technical knowledge.

CONCLUSIONS
Information Systems are software products intended to store and handle data in an organization. They must meet
the informational needs of all levels of management - operational, middle and top and they must be designed
accordingly.
Ann EIS should be designed to allow managers who are not trained to use query languages and advanced
technologies, a fast, easy, and understandable way to navigate into data and identify trends and patterns.
Developing EIS systems involves time, high-costs and human resources, efforts and an EIS must be capable to
provide in real time representative information to the executive management.
Deploying EIS involves many risks: system design, data quality, and technology obsolescence. System design
risks stem from poor conceptualization of an enterprises true business needs before the technology is deployed.
Data quality risks relate primarily to whether or not data has been properly cleansed. Technology obsolescence
refers to the failure on the part of the vendor to anticipate new technologies. Large budgets and strategic
information are involved in deploying EIS systems this is the reason to establish rigorous criteria for evaluating
EIS systems. These criteria are discussed below.
Decisions based on business process EIS should not be viewed only as a data repository or a large set of data.
Instead, systems implementation should be concern on conceptualizing new data models, processes, and
indicators that form the content of EIS.
EIS should provide extensive understanding of the benchmarks that are useful to evaluate business processes.
This feature typically refers to the response time that a system provides to its users. Most responses should range
from a few seconds to a maximum of 30 seconds for routine queries. Response times depend on the complexity
of the database and the queries being requested.
Flexibility determines whether an EIS solution can continually adapt to changing business conditions after the
system has been delivered. An EIS should be able to accommodate changes in any type of business process and
functions like personnel, services, and processes, as well as new mandates, laws, and regulations requiring the
capture of different types of data.
Integration involves two types of issues: data integration and system integration. Data integration is the ability to
access data from much different type of systems. An EIS will be particularly effective if it can overcome the
challenge of information fragmentation, allowing executives to measure features of business processes that

840
involve information from inside and outside of the organization. System integration refers to two things: the
ability to extent the EIS software with new capabilities and modules and the systems ability to coexist with
other enterprise solutions.
EIS systems have a powerful impact on strategic decisions quality to reduce the time for making decisions. EIS
must have the ability to allow managers to view data in different perspective, to drill-down and roll-up to
aggregate levels, to navigate and online query data sets in order to discover new factors that affect business
process and also to anticipate and forecast changes inside and outside the organization. EIS improve the quality
of management in organization through new type of technology and techniques for extracting, transforming,
processing and presenting data in order to provide strategic information.

REFERENCES
1. Yonghong L., Rowan M., Dashboards and Scorecards: Executive Information Systems for the Public
Sector, Government Finance Review, Dec 2001
2. Lungu I, Sabu G., Velicanu M., Muntean M., Ionescu S., Pozdarie E., Sandu D.,- Informatics
Systems. Analyze Design and Implementation, Ed. Economic, 2003.
3. Lungu I, Bra A., Executive Information Systems Development Lifecycle, Economy Informatics
Revue, ASE, 2005
4. Moss L., Atre S. Business Intelligence Roadmap The complete project lifecycle for decision-
support applications, Addison-Wesley, 2004
5. Vtuiu T., Popeang V., The building of executive information systems by using the business
intelligence tools, Universitaria SIMPRO 2006, Petroani, page. 130
6. Internet ressources: http://www.sdmagazine.com
7. http://www.intelligenenterprise.com

841