Today's management depends on information and information flow at most. What wasn't as meaningful before once the whole management was intuitive rather than information-based, plays fundamental role, these days. No responsible manager imagines making a decision without knowing its bases, causes, influence on current position and prognosis for the future. However, it's not as easy as it seems to follow all information at once. As a consequence, more and more managers decide to turn their IT systems onto a new level what makes information flow better, faster, and more accurate. Called together Business Intelligence, these systems often are sold as special suites which Oracle Business Intelligence packet is one of. And among many tools which Oracle BI consists of, Oracle Business Intelligence Answers is the one responsible for the core of answering business questions.

The most important fact to understand is that answering the question is only the very end of the complex job that needs to be done. Thereupon, Oracle Business Intelligence Answers tool has to be useful enough to take care about the whole process, from gathering data from different sources to presenting it in the most various ways to let its end users benefit most. And - in a very few words - Oracle BI Answers is one of these tools that one truly can depend on.

Oracle Answers from user's point of view

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite contains many useful tools which Oracle Answers seems to be the one users might use the most frequently. It's connected with the fact that every analysis is originated from the Answers tool. The Answers tool is also the one needed for answering each and every business question. Then, in a very few words, Oracle BI Answers is query and ad hoc reporting tool used from within an intuitive Web interface. In practice, it means quite a wide and simplified answering business questions.

The Oracle BI Answers tool bases on reports (requests) which are the source of useful information for users (who got proper permission, by the way). Every report consists of necessary data and sorted information what ensures the "theoretical value". Once the report can be anyhow manipulated, its "practical value" can be added. For a random instance, one - given with a table of numbers - could quickly gather the point and realize what decision he should make. However, there is a lot of people whom the numbers aren't the clearest for. Thereupon - considering the practical value of reports prepared with Oracle BI Answers - they can quickly turn numbers into drawings. Tables into graphs. Rows into lines. As a result, report findings can be present in the most easily understandable way, what makes them useful to even the most differentiated people across the organization.

Nevertheless, that's not everything yet. Once the report is done, it still remains modifiable. If a user wants to change his point of view or dive into chosen area of data, or change the dimension, he can do it with a few clicks only. It makes Oracle BI Answers faster and easier and - if followed with Web based interface - make it truly a universal tool. Finally, the reports can be saved in different formats or - for instance - kept in Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Catalog and, there, accessible for all users who could benefit from it.

Once the Oracle BI Answers tool is extremely easy to use and intuitive, no IT involvement is needed to prepare or modify the reports. Even though the whole tool is controlled from above by IT departments, its particular usages are up to the end users and report orderers. Such relation guarantees lower costs and shorter time needed for preparing each report. 

Oracle BI Answers resources

• http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/enterprise-edition-platform-compone-093074.html - here - on the official Oracle page - are a few words of Oracle BI Answers description included. However the subpage is devoted to the Oracle Business Intelligence Suite as a whole,  it's a good source of information about the relation between Answers and other tools and the whole system. It's also enough to check what each component can be used for and - if possible - what to replace it with. However, what's much more important, one gets there an unrestrained access to all the documentation on Oracle BI Suite. That's the real Business Intelligence bible and -simultaneously - an obligatory position for every Oracle systems user.
• http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=378 - this is the official forum of Oracle. However the liked part is devoted directly to the Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition as a whole, once BI Answer is its integral part, all the information about the tool itself can be found here. What's important, there are about 20 thousand threads which - at most - contains problems and their solutions, what makes the forum truly a worth interesting source of any knowledge. Once there are users from all over the world asking questions and suggesting the solutions, one can be sure about credibility and serious treatment. From the very fundamentals to the most complex and detailed operations - Oracle Forum is where anyone could find exactly what he needs and - if his problem hasn't been mentioned yet - ask a new question without a need to wait for original Oracle experts to answer.
• http://www.dba-oracle.com/Cou_OBIEE_Power_User_Answers.htm - Oracle BI Answers tool, the same as a whole Business Intelligence Suite is intuitive to use. In most of cases, even the beginners should manage to learn the procedures, however no one refuses it could last a bit too long. Thereupon, different companies provide various courses which they teach people how to work with Business Intelligence solutions during. An example course, which the link leads to, is devoted to two important tools of the Oracle Business Intelligence Suite - Oracle Answers and Oracle Dashboards. If believe Burleson specialists, who are the course providers, they focus mostly on practice instead of theory, what makes the course even more attractive. All in all, the theory is included in a BI Suite's manual and guide book which every it users receives at the very beginning. Thereupon - if focused on practical examples of Answers and Dashboards use - the course truly could be worth interesting. However, the courses provided by different companies also can be useful. This one was chosen randomly.