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Business intelligence emerged as an information-sharing system across an organization in the 1960s. It developed further for decision-making, turning data into insights. Soon it became a specific offering from BI teams with service solutions that relied on IT. Modern business intelligence solutions prioritize empowered business users, flexible self-service analysis, speed to insight and governed data on trusted platforms.
We’ll discuss business intelligence applications and definition, benefits and some business intelligence examples.
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What Is The Modern Definition Of Business Intelligence?
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Business Intelligence Applications
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Benefits Of Business Intelligence
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Examples of Business Intelligence
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Business Intelligence Trends And Its Future
What Is The Modern Definition Of Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) is a set of architectures, technologies and processes that can drive profitable business actions by converting raw data into vital information. It’s a suite of services and software that transforms data into actionable knowledge and information. At the core of BI lies reporting, with dashboards acting as standard tools for providing concise summaries. Dashboards allow us to examine data and understand trends by looking at underlying details. Dashboards also consolidate and streamline the time and effort required to search, query or merge the data.
Business intelligence examples tell us that the idea behind its need is that, on average, managers will make poor decisions due to incomplete or inaccurate information, which may not happen if the information is better. Business intelligence applications can solve such problems by analyzing current data to present on a quick-metrics dashboard designed to facilitate good decisions.
Business intelligence software can convert vast volumes of data into compressed insights for informed decision-making. An organization’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other data sets feed data to the software using Application Programming Interface (API) or sync tools. These data sets are then analyzed and the findings are presented on dashboards and in reports. BI helps employees obtain a simple summary of a business’s tracking and address areas of opportunity and concern.
Business Intelligence Applications
BI software and tools come in a variety of forms. Let’s quickly look at some common business intelligence applications:
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets like Google Docs and Microsoft Excel are probably the most widely used applications for processing volumes of data regularly and efficiently.
Data Mining
Data mining tools use machine learning, statistics and databases to discover trends and patterns in large datasets.
Benchmarking And Performance Metrics
Customized dashboards can be used to track goals against performance by comparing historical and performance data.
Reporting Software
A reporting software is used to display, filter, organize and report data.
Data Visualization Software
Easy-to-read and graphical representation of data can help gain insights quickly. Data visualization software represents data visually as graphs or charts. Visual analytics explores data to communicate insights with the help of visual storytelling.
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
Online analytical processing allows users to analyze datasets from every aspect of various business perspectives.
Implementing business intelligence systems involves these three major steps:
- First, corporate databases are used to extract raw data that can be spread across multiple heterogeneous systems.
- The data is then cleaned before transforming into the data warehouse and forming data cubes.
- Lastly, this system is tested for performing analyses, clarifying queries and preparing ad-hoc reports.
BI systems and applications help create a comprehensive view of a business to ensure better and actionable decisions. They directly impact an organization’s tactical, operational and strategic business decisions.
Benefits Of Business Intelligence
Business intelligence is especially effective because it uses historical data to support decision-making based on facts instead of relying on assumptions and human intuition. Four key players use BI systems and applications:
Professionals Or Data Analysts
Since data analysts dig deep down to analyze data, BI systems prove extremely helpful in getting fresh insights to develop unique strategies for businesses.
IT Users
IT users have to constantly work with BI systems and applications to monitor data, trends, changes, or bugs to maintain the BI infrastructure.
Heads Of Organizations
CEOs and CXOs find BI tools extremely useful in improving the operational efficiency of their businesses and significantly boosting profits.
Business Users
Business users can be either casual BI users or power users. A casual user needs to use dashboards to evaluate a predefined set of data, while a power user is capable of working with data sets that are sophisticated and complex.
BI tools can perform data analysis and create summaries, reports, graphs, charts and dashboards. They offer detailed intelligence to users about the nature of their industries and businesses. Here are some of the benefits of business intelligence:
Boosts Productivity
A business intelligence program enables a business to save resources and time when analyzing data and creating reports. It boosts employee productivity while performing a task.
Improves Visibility
BI helps in identifying areas that require attention by improving the visibility of processes.
Fixes Accountability
A BI program assigns ownership and accountability to individuals when mapping performance against an organization’s set goals.
Streamlines Business Processes
Complexities associated with business processes are taken out. Analytics are automated through benchmarking, computer modeling, predictive analysis and other such methodologies.
Easy Analytics And A Better View
BI simplifies data to an extent where even non-analysts and non-technical employees can efficiently collect and process data. Features such as scorecards and dashboards offer a better view of tasks and processes related to an organization’s performance and goals.
One perceived disadvantage of business intelligence is that it’s time-consuming. It can take up to 18 months to completely implement a data warehousing system. Although cost and complexity may also be considered significant drawbacks, in reality, the benefits of business intelligence far outweigh its disadvantages.
Examples of Business Intelligence
Here are some examples of business intelligence:
Coca-Cola Bottling
One of the well-known business intelligence examples is Coca-Cola Bottling. To deal with the problem it was facing with its daily manual reporting processes, Coca-Cola Bottling restricted access to real-time operations and sales data. The organization streamlined the process completely by adopting an automated BI system and saved 260 hours yearly.
Lowe’s Corp.
Lowe’s Corp. is one of the big names that adopted business intelligence tools early. They did so to analyze products, identify potential fraud, optimize supply chain and solve issues related to collective charges for delivery from its stores.
ICU Medical
ICU Medical is a leader in global medicinal accessories and devices for oncology, critical care and vascular therapy. The organization uses industry-specific BI software to track sales performances to manage the vast variety of products on its portfolio. They use a BI tool to build dashboards and determine declining customers, low-margin customers and most profitable customers. Accessing consolidated data allows everyone in the organization to step up, which aids in making effective tactical and strategic decisions.
More and more organizations are adopting the BI model due to its self-service approach to data. While IT governs the data, people are empowered to visually explore them and share insights.
Business Intelligence Trends And Its Future
To understand the future of business intelligence, managers have to first be aware of the trends in BI and analytics that will pave the way for businesses in the days to come:
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
With each passing day, machine learning and AI are increasingly taking on complex business tasks that previously relied on expert intervention. By leveraging AI capabilities, businesses are now achieving dashboard reporting and real-time data analysis.
Embedded BI
To enhance and extend reporting functionality, BI software or some specific features of the software can be integrated into other business applications.
Collaborative BI
Collaboration tools like social media can be combined with BI software and other technologies to enhance the working and sharing of information for collaborative decision-making.
Cloud Analytics
As far as BI applications are concerned, cloud analytics is the future. Soon, BI applications will be offered on the cloud as businesses quickly adopt this technology for superior data management. It’s predicted that investment in cloud-based analytics will increase by more than four times in the coming two years.
Almost every BI organization has the same goal — offering a simple user experience. But this reduction in steps, clicks or builds doesn’t mean that the technology is not sophisticated. In fact, it’s the opposite because it requires sophisticated technology to provide self-service solutions to users and enable them to access, analyze and query organizational data independently.
Based on technology and business needs, business intelligence continues to evolve. As the influence of machine learning and AI continue to increase and their grip on the world becomes firmer, businesses have to integrate them into their strategies for growth, productivity and surviving the competition. With the far-reaching impacts of a global pandemic, the future of business intelligence looks brighter than ever as more business leaders accept that data and technology will be fundamental in the coming days for strategic decision-making across all operations.
To survive in dynamic markets, managers need to actively engage in cognitively challenging tasks to purposefully seek knowledge. Harappa’s pathway, Understand Design Thinking, is devised to prepare managers for building an elaborate thinking pattern. It’ll allow you to alter your perspective and let you analyze data and information in the best possible ways. Draw inferences that are useful to your business in different scenarios. Join and cultivate a structured approach to solving problems.
Explore Harappa Diaries to learn more about topics such as Meaning Of Lean Six Sigma, Importance of A Business Environment, Principles Of Bureaucratic Management and How To Develop Business Skills to build strong professional networks.
