SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise InfoView User's Guide

Data tracking

For more information about data tracking, see the Web Intelligence User's Guide.

Tracking changes in your data

To make informed and effective business intelligence decisions, you need to understand how the data on which you base those decisions changes over time. Web Intelligence allows you to track and display data changes to help you focus your analysis on key areas and avoid wasting time exploring irrelevant data.
When you track data changes, you select a particular data refresh as a reference point. This data is known as the reference data. When you display the data changes, Web Intelligence places your current data in context by showing how it relates to the reference data.
Here are some examples of the usefulness of data tracking:
  • If an outlet no longer appears in a list of the top outlets by sales, Web Intelligence displays the outlet as deleted from the list. You can use this information to investigate why the outlet is no longer a top performer.
  • If sales have decreased in a region, data tracking displays the decrease. You can then drill down into the data for the region to understand why revenue is falling.
    In both these cases, data tracking makes the current data more meaningful by placing it in context with old data. Without this context it is much more difficult to identify trends.
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