Business Intelligence (BI)

What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

•  Business Intelligence is a generalized term applied to a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and providing access to data to help enterprise users make better business decisions
• Business Intelligence applications include the activities of decision support systems, query and reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data mining
• An alternative way of describing BI is: the technology required to turn raw data into information to support decision-making within corporations and business processes

BusinessIntelligence Architecture

Business intelligence has become a critical element of information technology. It’s an old term with general or even ambiguous meaning. It has been used synonymously with decision support, analysis, and data warehousing, but today business intelligence has a more specific definition and a better understood application. Taken literally, business intelligence is just that—intelligence or understanding of your business. You get that understanding by analyzing your business operations.

This business intelligence process can deliver significant, bottom-line results. Implementing its technologies and applying its process can help make your business more effective and more efficient, increasing revenue, decreasing costs, and improving your relationships with customers and suppliers.

   Why BI?

• BI technologies help bring decision-makers the data in a form they can quickly digest and apply to their decision making.
• BI turns data into information for managers and executives and in general, people making decisions in a company.
• Companies want to use technology tactically to make their operations more effective and more efficient - Business intelligence can be the catalyst for that efficiency and effectiveness.

By definition, the moment any given business is operating, it begins generating data. Some obvious examples are sales, bookkeeping, production data, warehouse information, transportation and logistics, personnel, etc.In addition there also exists large volumes of data which are important to the business but not directly generated by business operations. Examples are market data, competitive data, tenders and proposal, legal information, raw material prices, etc.

As such, none of the above described information can be used in its raw form by corporate management to make decisions although the information is critical in helping make those business decisions.Therein lies the necessity for Business Intelligence. BI technologies help bring decision-makers the data in a form they can quickly digest and apply to their decision making. BI turns data into information for managers and executives and in general, people making decisions in a company.

     Benefits:

 The benefits of a well-planned BI implementation are going to be closely tied to the business objectives driving the project.

1. Identify trends and anomalies in business operations more quickly, allowing for more accurate and timelier decisions.
2. Deliver actionable insight and information to the right place with less effort .
3. Identify and operate based on a single version of the truth, allowing all analysis to be completed on a core foundation with confidence.