Apr 16, 2020

The Challenges of OTBI Reporting – and How Orbit Helps You Overcome Them

Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) is a popular ad-hoc reporting and analysis tool within Oracle Cloud Applications. Its primary appeal lies in its ability to deliver real-time transactional reporting without additional licensing costs. Users can quickly create reports, dashboards, and alerts to explore their operational data on the fly.

However, while OTBI is a convenient option for Oracle users, OTBI reporting challenges can fall short for organizations with complex reporting needs. The tool is designed to work specifically with Oracle Cloud data, creating challenges when users need to integrate external data sources or perform advanced analytics. As businesses grow and data becomes increasingly decentralized, Oracle OTBI limitations may hinder a company’s ability to make fully informed decisions based on a comprehensive view of its operations.

This is where Orbit Analytics offers an alternative to overcoming OTBI reporting challenges. By enabling seamless data integration, advanced analytics, and greater flexibility, Orbit empowers organizations to unlock the full potential of their data and achieve comprehensive reporting capabilities.

Limited Data Integration Across Multiple Sources

Challenge:

OTBI reporting challenges often arise when users need to integrate data from multiple sources. Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) is primarily designed for Oracle Cloud Applications. This means users face Oracle OTBI limitations when reporting data from non-Oracle sources or combining data across modules like Oracle HCM and financials. In today’s business landscape, where organizations store data across various systems, common issues with OTBI reporting hinder comprehensive insights.

Orbit Solution:

With Orbit Multi-Source Reporting, users can overcome OTBI reporting challenges by integrating data from multiple sources, both on-premise and in the cloud. This capability offers a unified reporting platform, ensuring users have a complete 360-degree view of their business operations.

Lack of Flexibility in Operational Reporting

Challenge:

Another of the Oracle OTBI limitations is its lack of flexibility for ad-hoc and dynamic reporting. For example, an end user may want to drill down from accounts payables into procurement data, inventory reports, etc. While OTBI provides basic operational reporting, it doesn’t meet user’s needs in exploring iterative data relationships, a common requirement for operational analysis.

Orbit Solution:

Orbit Self-Service Reporting addresses OTBI reporting challenges by allowing users to create flexible, ad-hoc reports and dashboards without IT support. This enables seamless, dynamic data exploration and aligns with OTBI reporting best practices to improve decision-making capabilities.

Difficulty in Accessing and Storing Historical Data

Challenge:

One of the common issues with OTBI reporting is its limited ability to handle historical data. Users often need to compare data across different time periods, such as monthly invoice statuses. OTBI’s process for analyzing historical data requires manual workarounds like exporting snapshots to Excel and manually comparing them—an inefficient and error-prone approach.

Orbit Solution:

Organizations can overcome OTBI reporting challenges with Orbit Historical Data Management by securely storing report outputs as datasets. This eliminates manual workarounds and aligns with OTBI reporting best practices for efficient historical analysis.

Limitations with Advanced Analytics

Challenge:

Oracle OTBI limitations include a lack of built-in advanced analytics capabilities like forecasting, regression analysis, or identifying trends based on seasonal factors. Organizations must often move data to a separate warehouse for ETL processing to perform advanced analytics. This limits OTBI vs other reporting tools that offer integrated advanced analytics.

Orbit Solution:

Orbit Augmented Analytics overcomes these OTBI reporting challenges by providing predictive analytics directly within the platform. Businesses can perform regression analysis, trend forecasting, and more without additional tools or systems. This positions Orbit as a superior alternative in OTBI vs other reporting tools comparisons.

Excel Export Limitations

Challenge:

A widely recognized OTBI reporting challenge is its Excel export limitation, capping data exports at 25,000 rows. Business users relying on Excel for analysis often find this cap restricts their ability to work with large datasets, making manual workarounds necessary.

Orbit Solution:

Orbit Unlimited Excel Exports addresses this Oracle OTBI troubleshooting need by enabling users to export large datasets without row limitations. This ensures a seamless workflow for users who depend on Excel for data analysis, removing another of the common issues with OTBI reporting.

Conclusion: Overcoming OTBI Reporting Challenges with Orbit

While OTBI is a valuable tool for Oracle Cloud users, its limitations create significant hurdles for organizations requiring advanced, flexible, and integrated reporting capabilities. Orbit Analytics addresses these OTBI reporting challenges with powerful solutions such as Orbit Multi-Source Reporting, Orbit Self-Service Reporting, and Orbit Advanced Analytics. These tools overcome Oracle OTBI limitations and enable users to follow OTBI reporting best practices, ensuring they derive maximum value from their data.
Request a demo today to see how Orbit Analytics can transform your reporting processes.

FAQ’s:

1. What are the biggest challenges OTBI users face in operational reporting?

OTBI users often struggle with integrating data across multiple sources or modules, such as combining Oracle HCM and non-HCM data. Additionally, OTBI has limitations in dynamic reporting, where users may want to drill down and explore data iteratively to gain deeper insights. These restrictions make OTBI less flexible for advanced operational needs.
Orbit Solution: Orbit Analytics overcomes these challenges by enabling multi-source data integration and providing intuitive tools for ad-hoc and drill-down reporting.

2. Why is it difficult to analyze historical data using OTBI?

OTBI does not provide a streamlined way to store and access historical data for analysis. Users typically have to export query results manually into Excel and compare snapshots over time, which is both error-prone and inefficient. This creates significant challenges for organizations that need to track trends or comply with legal requirements for data retention.
Orbit Solution: With Orbit, historical data can be securely stored as datasets, allowing users to access and analyze it seamlessly over time.

3. Can OTBI handle large datasets effectively, especially when exporting to Excel?

OTBI imposes a limit of 25,000 rows when exporting data to Excel, which can be a major bottleneck for users working with large datasets. This limitation often forces users to create multiple exports and manually combine them, which is time-consuming and inefficient.
Orbit Solution: Orbit eliminates these limitations by supporting unlimited Excel exports, enabling users to work with large datasets without restrictions.

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