Business Intelligence is a technology-based process for analyzing data, which helps managers and employees of organizations make more informed business decisions. BI includes a wide range of methodologies, tools and applications, which enable the organization to collect information from internal IT systems and external sources, as well as prepare this information for analysis. The end result of this process is running queries, generating reports, creating dashboards and graphing data, which helps managers and professionals in making operational decisions and strategic planning.
What is business intelligence?
Business intelligence is the use of technology programs and tools by organizations to analyze data and raw information; This is the simplest definition possible for this broad topic. This method has been created as an approach in organizational and personal architecture, which helps managers to make correct, quick and principled decisions by using information and data analysis. By using this method, the distance between middle and senior managers will disappear in terms of communication and information level, and the information that decision makers will need will be provided to them at any level and in the fastest time.
Now imagine that you are the manager of an organization or company and you want to measure your success and failure factors in the future using your data and information. If you use business intelligence in this way, BI will help you identify the factors of success or failure in your projects by using tools and methods such as: text and graphic charts, reports and dashboards, and solve the problems according to the available tools. do.
How does business intelligence work?
Business intelligence architecture is more than a BI software. Business intelligence data is typically stored in a database built for the entire organization or in smaller data marts that hold a subset of business information for each department and business unit, often with a single database. They have an organizational relationship. In addition, large data lakes based on Hadoop clusters or other big data systems are increasingly used as repositories for business intelligence and data analytics, especially for log information, sensor data, text, and other types of unstructured data. Structured or semi-structured is used.
Business intelligence data can include historical and real-time data collected from source systems during production, tools available to support decision-making processes and strategic and tactical techniques. Before being used in BI applications, raw data from different sources usually needs to be integrated. To ensure that business intelligence teams and its users are accurate and consistent in analyzing information, they integrate and validate information by integrating data and verifying the accuracy of information.
The steps of the business intelligence process include the following:
- Data preparation, where data sets are organized and modeled for analysis
- Prepare a query of the data to be analyzed
- Distribution of key performance indicators (KPI) to business users
- Use available information to help develop and advance business business decisions
Why is business intelligence important?
In general, the role of business intelligence is to improve the business operations of the organization through the use of relevant data. Companies that effectively use BI techniques and tools can turn collected data into valuable insight into business processes and strategies. Such insight can then be used to make better business decisions that increase productivity and revenue, as well as accelerate business growth and greater profitability.
Without the use of business intelligence, organizations cannot easily use data-driven decision making. Instead, managers and employees primarily base their important business decisions on other factors such as accumulated knowledge, prior experiences, intuition, and emotions. Although good decisions can be made using these methods, due to the lack of data, these decisions are full of errors and wrong actions. On the other hand, the businesses that proceed with the development approach and think about the development of their business by benefiting from the method and methods of future research of business can use the output data and analyzes performed by business intelligence systems in this direction.
Benefits of business intelligence
A successful business intelligence program creates various business benefits in an organization. For example, BI allows top executives (C-suite executives) and department heads to continuously monitor business performance so that problems can be quickly addressed if they arise. Analyzing customer data helps improve marketing, sales, and customer service effectiveness. Supply chain, production and distribution sources can be identified before they cause financial damage. HR managers can better monitor employee productivity, labor costs, and other workforce data.
In general, the main business benefits of BI programs can include the following:
- Accelerate and improve decision making
- Optimization of internal business processes
- Increasing the usefulness and operational efficiency
- Point business problems that need to be addressed
- Identify emerging business and market trends
- Develop stronger business strategies
- Upsell and provide insight to earn new revenue
- Gain superiority over competing companies
BI initiatives also bring more limited business benefits. Among other things, it makes it easier for project managers to check the status of business projects and organizations to collect competitive information from their competitors. In addition, business intelligence, data management and IT teams leverage business intelligence and apply it to various aspects of technology and analytics operations.
A variety of business intelligence tools and programs
Business Intelligence offers a wide range of data analysis applications to meet various information needs. Most of them are supported by both self-service BI software and traditional operating systems. A list of business intelligence technologies available to organizations include:
Ad hoc analysis
Ad hoc analysis is one of the fundamental elements of modern applications and the main feature of self-service business intelligence tools. This element is a process for writing and executing queries to analyze specific business issues and problems. Although Ad hoc queries are usually created quickly, they are eventually executed regularly and included in dashboards and reports along with analysis results.
Online analytical processing (OLAP)
Online analytical processing (OLAP) is one of the primary technologies of business intelligence. OLAP tools enable users to analyze data in various dimensions, which is especially suitable for complex calculations and surveys. In the past, data had to be They used to be extracted from a data warehouse and stored in multidimensional OLAP data cubes, but today it is possible to run OLAP analysis directly on column databases and it is increasing day by day.
Mobile business intelligence
Mobile BI makes BI apps and dashboards available to users on smartphones and tablets. Mobile business intelligence tools are typically used for viewing data rather than analyzing it, and are designed with an emphasis on ease of use. For example, mobile dashboards may only display two or three data visualizations and KPIs for easy viewing on the device screen.
Important Notes
Steps of the business intelligence process:
- Data preparation, organization and modeling
- Preparing a query from the data
- KPI distribution among users
- Use of information for business development
Advantages of business intelligence:
- Business performance control
- Increase profit, efficiency, sales and customer service
- Identification of supply chain, production and distribution sources
- Better control of employee productivity, labor cost and other labor data
- Better decision making
- Better development of business strategies
- Get better performance than competitors
Types of methods in business intelligence tools and programs :
- performance analysis
- Analytical processing on line
- Mobile business intelligence
