BI stands for Business Intelligence, refers
to set of techniques which helps in spotting, digging out and analyzing best
information out of huge data to enhance business decision making.
Business intelligence
(BI) is the set of
techniques and tools for the acquisition and transformation of raw data into
meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes.
BI technologies provide
historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common functions
of business intelligence technologies are reporting, Online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics.
Business intelligence
(BI) is a set of
technologies, methodologies, processes, infrastructure and applications for
gathering, storing, analyzing, and transforming large amounts of raw data into
reasonable and useful information, helping enterprise users make better
business decisions.
It helps enterprise
users to make better business decisions. BI applications involve the activities
of decision support systems, query and reporting, online analytical processing
(OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data mining.
Business Intelligence
(BI) is
the process of transforming the business data into information/knowledge using
computer based techniques thus enabling the users to take effective fact based
decisions.
Business Intelligence
(BI) technology
infrastructure for gaining maximum information from available data for the
purpose of improving business processes.
Business Intelligence
(BI) Providing Right
information at Right – Time in the Right- Format to the Decision makers.
Typical BI infrastructure components are as follow:
software solution for gathering, cleansing, integrating, analyzing and sharing
data. Business Intelligence produces analysis and provides believable
information to help making effective and high quality business decisions.
The difference between
data and information
Data is row material for analysis. Data is always related to transactions or events. Once the data is analyzed it's considered to be meaningful information.
Data is row material for analysis. Data is always related to transactions or events. Once the data is analyzed it's considered to be meaningful information.
Categories of BI:
Business Intelligence is generally divided into four
different categories which are comprised of different types of BI that business
working with data should be aware of.
1.
Reporting
2.
Analysis
a.
Spreadsheet Analysis
b.
Ad-hoc Query
c.
Visualization Tools
3.
Monitoring
a.
Dashboard
b.
KPI (Key Performance
Indicator)
c.
Business Performance
Management
4.
Prediction
a.
Data Mining
b.
Predictive Modeling
The Goal of BI is to allow for the easy interpretation of these large volumes of
data. Identifying new opportunities and implementing an effective strategy
based on insights can provide businesses with a competitive market advantage
and long-term stability.
Benefits of BI: - Making your Business Intelligent will always help in every field
whether saving time, increasing revenue, to do forecasting, making profit, etc.
There are endless benefits of BI, some of them are listed below:-
- Helps in providing more accurate historical data by
eliminating guess work. As analysis is mainly done on huge volume of data.
So, accurate historical data will make sure that we get the correct
result.
- We can analyze customer’s behavior and taste (i.e. what
he thinks, what he likes the most, what he hates, etc.) which can enhance
your business and decision making power.
- We can easily look where our customer needs more
attention and where we dominates the market in satisfying client’s
needs.
- Complex Business queries are solved with a single click
and at a faster rate which saves lots of time.
- Improve Data Security
- Reduce resources and Labor Costs
- Help to Develop and Deliver better Forecasting
- It removes Guess work
- Gives you quicker responses to your business-related
queries.
- Gain a better understanding of your business past,
Present and future.
- Identification of problem areas.
Improve efficiency using
forecasting. You can analyze data to see where your business has been, where it
is now and where it is going.
Success factors of
implementation
Although there could be
many factors that could affect the implementation process of a BI system. The
following are the critical success factors for business intelligence
implementation:
- Business - driven methodology and project management.
- Clear vision and planning.
- Committed management support &
sponsorship.
- Data management and quality.
- Mapping solutions to user requirements.
- Performance considerations of the BI system.
- Robust and expandable framework.
Business Intelligence,
when properly implemented and used, delivers many benefits. Some of the key
advantages include:
- Alignment of an organization around a consistent set of
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Metrics
- Correct, Quicker, fact-based and Relevant decision
making
- Simplified graphical presentation of KPIs and metrics
- Reliable presentation of information
- Combination of multiple data sources (ERP, CRM,
Spreadsheets, Budgets, etc.)
- Faster collection and dissemination of information.
- Easier and Quicker access to Information
- Time Savings.
Some of the major
Business Intelligence disadvantages are:
- Piling of Historical Data
- Cost
- Complexity
- Muddling of commercial settings
- Limited use
- Time Consuming Implementation.
The most common kinds of Business Intelligence systems are:
EIS - Executive Information Systems
DSS - Decision Support Systems
MIS - Management Information Systems
GIS - Geographic Information Systems
OLAP - Online Analytical Processing and multidimensional analysis
CRM - Customer Relationship Management
EIS - Executive Information Systems
DSS - Decision Support Systems
MIS - Management Information Systems
GIS - Geographic Information Systems
OLAP - Online Analytical Processing and multidimensional analysis
CRM - Customer Relationship Management
Steps involved in BI
end to end Solution are:-
Integration of data from different data stores using ETL (Extract Transform Load), on which analysis is to be done.
Loaded data is then
analyzed for BI engagement.
Representation of the
analyzed result in the form of reports, scorecards, dashboards etc.
Business Intelligence:
There are various BI
vendors offering end-to-end solutions in the market:
Other BI tools: