Business Intelligence

 

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 purpose of data management is concentrated around putting the power of computing to work 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.

How does Business Intelligence work?

Can you imagine how long it might take you to find certain piles of paper to come up with the same answers to answer a business question? 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 it 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 the company might be not working properly. To have it right, people who run the business need to know exactly what Business Intelligence is and what are the top players on the Business Intelligence tools market.

We need to constantly looking for other ways to make our decision making process easier at every stage. Because the key factor here is time and time plays the main role as it is money for businesses and business intelligence helps improve that process.

Business Intelligence defined

Business Intelligence is searching through a company's data and selecting information it can use to provide users with valuable insight into different areas of the operation.
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 of BI - 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.

    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
  • Enterprise Resource Planning software
  • Master Data Management (MDM)
  • Metadata management


Business Intelligence resources

Cognos BI
Cognos BIThe 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...
ETL Tools Info
ETL Tools InfoBusiness 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...
CoolaData Web analytics BI wiki
CoolaData Web analytics BI wikiCoolaData is a resources catalogue about tools and technologies that track and analyze user behavior on the web as well as Business Intelligence platforms which provide...
Business Intelligence software products
Business Intelligence software productsThe portal provides information on business intelligence software and contains a comprehensive, human-edited collection of quality web pages organized into the following...
Business Intelligence dashboard
Business Intelligence dashboardThe Business Intelligence Dashboards portal provdes a number of articles covering various aspects of Management Cockpits, Metrics, KPIs, visualizations and balanced scorecards. It...
It is just about communication blog
It is just about communication blogBlog 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
On Demand AnalysisOn Demand Analysis develops leading-edge reporting and analysis software applications based on Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) technology. Their flagship product, Discover...
Business Intelligence knowledge
Business Intelligence knowledgeThe 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...
Recommended books on business intelligence
Recommended books on business intelligenceThe 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
Beam-ReportBEAM-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
The Business Intelligence Tools SurveyThe 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 Business Intelligence
Datamonitor Business IntelligenceDatamonitor is a provider of online data, analytic and forecasting platforms for key vertical sectors. The Datamonitor research covers seven major industry sectors with thousands...
Zettapoint (Database Storage Analyzer)
Zettapoint (Database Storage Analyzer)Zettapoint delivers a suite of VLDB optimization solutions that significantly reduce TCO of data warehouse environments and improve BI performance through intelligent ILM....
Marcus Zillman resources
Marcus Zillman resourcesMarcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. presents thoroughly selected resources and blogs for Business Intelligence, Data Mining, eCommerce, Information Quality and many...
Business Intelligence Scenario: From Pressure to Performance
Business Intelligence Scenario: From Pressure to PerformanceBusiness Intelligence presentation which shares interesting observations on a BI market. It divides the market into Drivers, Enablers, Inhibitors and analyses the information...
Jaspersoft OpenSource Business Intelligence
Jaspersoft OpenSource Business IntelligenceJasperSoft Business Intelligence Suite is a strong competitor of Pentaho BI. It contains an interactive reporting server, graphical report design interfaces, OLAP analysis tools,...
Information Week (Intelligent Enterprise)
Information Week (Intelligent Enterprise)Intelligent Enterprise is the online authority for business intelligence, enterprise applications, information management, performance management and process management news and...
Best Practices for Business Intelligence Tool Selection
Best Practices for Business Intelligence Tool SelectionThe Business Intelligence Tool Selection best practices article outlines the most significant tasks in the selection of BI strategy. This article outlines a streamlined process...
Oracle buys Hyperion
Oracle buys HyperionAn article about the purchase of Hyperion by Oracle (the world's third-largest software company) and the impact of that transaction on the performance of Oracle...
Business Intelligence Articles
Business Intelligence ArticlesA Business Intelligence resource portal with many interesting articles, white papers, research results and industry news. Users can find information about all BI technologies on...
BI Best Practices
BI Best PracticesBusiness Intelligence Best Practices is a collaborative and interactive forum for the business intelligence and data warehousing community to support and foster growth within the...
MS SQL Server Reporting services guide
MS SQL Server Reporting services guideA step by step technical tutorial with screenshots on how to create BI reports with Microsoft SQL server Reporting Services. The guide describes how to install Reporting Services,...
Bitpipe research guide
Bitpipe research guideBITPIPE research guide about Business Intelligence with free detailed reports on Business Intelligence Software. Contains vendor reports on BI applications, White Papers, product...
BI Tools Selection
BI Tools SelectionThe Business Intelligence selection tools section lists the different types of BI tools and the selection criteria for each. Articles are divided into the following logical...
LearnDataModeling
LearnDataModelingThe LearnDataModeling site is aimed to help learning data warehousing. It contains information and learning materials about business intelligence, data modelling, database design...
Oracle BI
Oracle BIOracle delivers a complete, pre-integrated technology foundation to reduce the cost and complexity of building and deploying enterprise business intelligence. Oracle Data...
SAP Business Objects
SAP Business ObjectsSAP Business Objects XI is a business intelligence platform which delivers a complete set of market-leading, end-to-end BI capabilities. Business Objects provides enterprise...
Microsoft Business Intelligence
Microsoft Business IntelligenceMicrosoft offers a complete, fully integrated business intelligence solution. With Microsoft Business Intelligence, users get a rich set of technologies and a flexible,...
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategyMicroStrategy 8 Product Platform inherits the industrial-strength attributes that have become the hallmark of MicroStrategy technology - including user scalability, data...
Gartner business intelligence evalutation
Gartner business intelligence evalutationGartner provides fact-based consulting services that help clients use and manage IT to enable business performance. It offers research services and executive programs and is...
EvalLite
EvalLiteEvalLite is a Windows based application which run against a Database Server. EvalLite offers independent and in-depth comparative analysis of the leading warehouse population...
Barc Research (formerly BI Verdict and OLAP Report)
Barc Research (formerly BI Verdict and OLAP Report)The OLAP Report is an independent research resource for organizations buying and implementing OLAP applications. The webpage is committed to provide independent information to...
John Trifiletti Tutorials list
John Trifiletti Tutorials listResource list with vast amount of Business Intelligence and data warehousing tutorials. It includes a very good SAS resources...
Pentaho Tutorial
Pentaho TutorialPentaho OSBI technical tutorial. It contains an overview of the Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence platform, a guide on Mondrian OLAP server installation and setup, use of...
Business Intelligence salaries
Business Intelligence salariesReports with Average Salary for Business Intelligence and data warehousing specialists on the UK market with comparisons and changes over time. It is also a good place to look at...
1keydata Business Intelligence
1keydata Business Intelligence1keydata Data warehousing portal aims to help people get a good high-level understanding of what it takes to implement a successful data warehouse project. A lot of the...