BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
The shortest definition of Business Intelligence (BI) might be the following: any tool, process or activity that can be used for obtaining the best information of supporting the decision-making process.
For purposes of data management it is concentrated around putting the power of computing to be working in order to make the best possible choices for a given organization. But as the IT branch is constantly increasing nowadays, new definitions of BI emerge, and, depending on the context within which the term is defined, they are less likely to resemble each other.
Why Business Intelligence tools?
Some of you would ask why we have to have such a tools like business intelligence. There is a very simple answer for that question because nowadays there is so many information which we can't put together in one thing which has common sense. That why we use different tools such as computers systems to support our struggling to get important information which allows us to run our company in better way just more efficient.
That way of running our business is from today's point of view very good and allows us to develop our business on more aspects which earn more money for us.
It is just essential today to use business intelligence system. Of course they cost us a lot but if we implement that in certain good way we got results far better than the company who has not this kind of system in its organization.
BI or Performance Management system is rather expensive but we must have it if we want to exist in today's market where the competition is very tough and difficult.
How does Business Intelligence work?
Business Intelligence is searching through a company's data and selects information it can use to provide you with valuable insight into different areas of your operation. Can you imagine how long it might take you to find certain piles of paper to come up with the same answers to pressing questions? There isn't enough time in the day to complete the chores you already have. If your company is looking to be 'smarter' than the competition, then for certain Business Intelligence is where you should invest...
Is your business as intelligent as it should be?
Have you ever pictured all aspects of your business being tied together to monitor your clientele, keep tabs on your financial situation, and make sure that your supply chain is never interrupted?
If your answer is 'no', then you should start looking for the consultants who can make that start and running in your firm. Because without that your company might be not working properly. I would say isn't working at all. So to have it right people who run the business need to know exactly what is BI. Business Intelligence provides the logistical sense to do just that.
Apart from that we need to understand that that tool has been developing and improving for years so at the moment is really good and we can rely on it. Nowadays where is more and more information different kind striking us from every direction our minds are not able to remember everything that is why we have powerful computer systems to do the job for us. Of course not everything because at the end of it we have to make a final decision.
We need to constantly looking for other ways to make our decision making process easier at every stage. Because a key factor here is the time. So the time plays a main role as the time is money for businesses and business intelligence helps improve that process for sure.
Business Intelligence defined
Despite generally defining Business Intelligence as acurate, timely, high-value and actionable (not in the legal way) insights in the business as well as technologies and processes leading to obtain them, there is no single set of protocols, processes and hardware/software options to define it once and for all.
Technological evolution is still on and differences can be seen between companies and depend on a current situation. What stays constant is the purpose - always to produce acurate, timely, high-value and actionable data.
Business Intelligence as a concept is not new; enterprises have been trying for a long time to have their systems pressed into service for the purpose of producing more valuable strategic insights.
From not-so-distant past come acronyms preceding the actual BI, which stand for the support of information management, such as DSS (Decision Support Systems), EIS (Executive Information Systems), MDS (Management Decision Systems), MIS (Management Information Systems) and so on. They all helped to establish a new way in decision-making processes.
It is also important to give explanation to the term insight. Insights are the ultimate goals for all authors, vendors and IT consultans when beginning the BI project. They are sometimes called 'moments of clarity' that push forward the whole undertaking. When a business insight is delivered by BI, it is possible to look at a previously hidden fact or aspect of the organization.
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According to Business Intelligence characteristics, four criteria must be met for the process to succeed:
- right answers - it is required that Business Intelligence represent the closest possible thing to truth, not only to give best resluts, but also to protect its quality and reputation in the company. When there is no accuracy, insights, being the product of Business Intelligence, are simply worthless. It is always harmful to the company and diminishes trust to BI for the future.
- insights of good value - as BI's role is to produce information with material impact on the comapny, insights of high value are not deduced easily, especially when analyses are not readily available. It is worth remembering that although BI insights are not necessarily obvious, they have a great impact on their environment.
- information on time - since all steps in the BI process take time, timeliness is an equally important quality to any other. For the output of a Business Intelligence process to be relevant, time intervals have to be relatively small.
- actionable conclusions - feasible course is required to take advantage of any given situation in the company. Moving from conclusion to action means for insights to be actionable.
Business Intelligence components
Basically Business Intelligence covers the following areas and is related to:
- Data warehousing
- ETL and Data Integration
- Reporting, Analysis and Interactive Dashboards
- Enterprise Performance Management - it broadens the traditional business intelligence concept by such terms as scorecarding, planning and budgeting
- Master Data Management (MDM)
- Metadata management
Business Intelligence resources
The Cognos BI portal is addressed to both business and technical users. Cognos BI Info provides technical cognos tutorials and FAQs as well as business guides for end-users. It...
Business Intelligence, Data warehousing and ETL Process information with vast business and technical knowledge about the most interesting solutions on the market. It is a good...
Blog on Open Source Trends in DW/Data Management and Business Intelligence by Luca Olivari, MySQL Ambassador and Senior Sales Engineer. Sample blog entries provide information on...
On Demand Analysis develops leading-edge reporting and analysis software applications based on Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) technology. Their flagship product, Discover...
The Business Intelligence knowledge section of KeySoft provides rich information on BI and data warehousing technologies. The website provides a FAQ for beginners in BI and a...
The kJube webpage provides a thoroughly selected list of recommended books on business intelligence related subjects. It is organized into the following sections: Business...
BEAM-REPORT proposes a new approach to support better decision making. Beam report is a simple and ultra-light software which allows managers to collect, consolidate and exploit...
The Business Intelligence Tools Survey is a 40 pages document which contains the BI comparison matrix based on thirteen tools and 70 criteria, the graphs showing how each BI tool...
Datamonitor is a provider of online data, analytic and forecasting platforms for key vertical sectors. The Datamonitor research covers seven major industry sectors with thousands...