Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence

What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

The term Business Intelligence (BI) refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. The purpose of Business Intelligence is to support better business decision making. Essentially, Business Intelligence systems are data-driven Decision Support Systems (DSS). Business Intelligence is sometimes used interchangeably with briefing books, report and query tools and executive information systems.

Importance of Business Intelligence tools or software solutions

Business Intelligence systems provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations, most often using data that has been gathered into a data warehouse or a data mart and occasionally working from operational data. Software elements support reporting, interactive “slice and dice” pivot-table analyses, visualization, and statistical data mining. Applications tackle sales, production, financial, and many other sources of business data for purposes that include business performance management. Information is often gathered about other companies in the same industry which is known as benchmarking.

How Business Intelligence works?                                           

Business Intelligence provides support to make strategic and smart decisions in your company. Business Intelligence (BI) supports decision making through a data capture process. The information is acquired from any system and written into a database modeled for your business.

What Are the Pros of Business Intelligence?

1. You can information wherever you happen to be.

Modern business intelligence has moved to mobile platforms. You can even have BI in the Cloud if you prefer. This means you can always have the information when you need it, whether you’re taking a long holiday weekend or meeting a prospect for lunch to close a deal.

2. People can go “hands-on” with the data. 

In the past, business intelligence was all about the creation of reports and spreadsheets. You could spend days pouring over that data, looking for nuggets of beneficial information. Thanks to many tech upgrades over the years, BI applications are more interactive than ever before. This allows you to see the data in more effective and efficient ways.

3. You get to manage big data in real time. 

Sometimes you need to make a split-second decision. This means you need to have the most up-to-date information that is available. Today’s BI applications can feed organizations information in real-time so that tactics or strategies can be changed immediately by those who are engaging with the data.

4. It is often freely scalable. 

When you’re using BI software and applications, then there are many solutions available today that can let you operate at a scale that is right for your organization. This includes pay-per-use options, subscription options, and other pay-as-you-go opportunities. Businesses are able to get the intelligence they need when they need it, but don’t have to pay for it during those times when they don’t need it.

5. It’s easier to track your KPIs. 

Business Intelligence allows organizations to better track how their Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] are being fulfilled. The umbrella of tools can look at the big data, help develop useful metrics, and this ultimately makes a company more effective at what it does.

6. You can visualize data more quickly. 

Modern BI applications can help put big data into understandable graphics almost instantly. Instead of comparing and contrasting figures on a massive spreadsheet, an entire executive team can look and graphical data which represents their KPIs and other actionable information. The end result is better reports and a clearer understanding of the big picture.

7. There are numerous helpful communities actively involved in BI. 

The number of forums where business intelligence is discussed is ever growing. There are 24/7 customer service lines that can help you with your preferred applications. Even if you’ve never really thought about BI before and working in IT hasn’t been your thing, there are still great user interfaces available today that can help you get going with better goals and decisions. You don’t need to hire a BI expert to get the most out of your big data these days.

What Are the Cons of Business Intelligence?

1. People can see different conclusions from the same data. 

The analytics provided by business intelligence applications are consistent. What business intelligence must counter is the inconsistency that comes from the human decision-making process. Different people will look at the data umbrella and see two very different outcomes, which means an organization must spend time finding middle ground.

2. It blends professional and personal boundaries. 

Business intelligence may require employees to use personal devices to access this information. The data collected on a targeted demographic may be considered private information by some that they don’t want to have used by an organization. Even when all care is taken, there is still a blending of boundaries within BI that can make some people quite uncomfortable.

3. Data security is questionable. 

If you’re using mobile BI applications, then the threat of hacking can put your sensitive or proprietary information at risk. Data hacks at Target, Home Depot, and other retailers prove that other systems aren’t 100% safe either. Unless your system is completely disconnected from an online portal, the threat of have a security breach is something which must always be proactively considered.

4. Cost will always be a potential issue. 

Even companies that use mobile or Cloud-based solutions for their BI applications may struggle with the costs involved in data management. Business intelligence as an industry has several vendors and their software as a service can be very different from one another. Not every vendor has transparent pricing either. Add in the data overages or premium services and even a cheap pay-as-you-go system might be too much.

5. Regulations are evolving for business intelligence. 

Precedents for litigation over unsecured data are being set right now. Legal sanctions or regulatory sanctions can even be placed on organizations who experience a data breach. As technologies change, the regulations also change, and if a company isn’t evolving their BI applications, they could put themselves at risk for a catastrophic loss should a security event occur.

6. Availability may also be an issue. 

Business intelligence is available for most companies today, but not every industry is well-developed. Some are just starting to embrace what BI applications can provide. Others have been managing their big data for decades successfully. Not every business will experience this disadvantage, but those that do could find limited availability for some time to come.

7. You may need multiple BI applications. 

There are numerous business intelligence options available today. Many of them will provide one specific surface. To get the most out of your big data, you may need to invest into an entire umbrella of services to make sure your BI is fully integrated.

The pros and cons of business intelligence generally show that the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages that come from implementing big data solutions. Look for software applications and interactive tools to get the most out of the information you already have so you can make the good business decisions that will keep you in the black year after year.

Applications of Business Intelligence:

• Executive Dashboards - Basically a top-down view of the entire business
• Marketing Dashboards - Tracking leads, conversion rates, website traffic, etc.
• Sales Management Dashboards - The sales pipeline, average deal sizes, funnel conversion rates, etc.
• Dashboards - Portfolio management, churn rate, revenue/expenses, etc.
• Sales Leaderboards - Detailed looks at the performance of each sales rep, to drive competition among your sales team
• Support Dashboards - Tracking customer support metrics, like customer satisfaction scores, response times, ticket volumes, etc.
• Financial Dashboards - Bank accounts, burn rates, customer LTVs, budgets, etc
• Operations Dashboards - Employee productivity and satisfaction, figuring out how long specific projects and processes take, etc.
• Human Resources Dashboards - Payroll analysis, employee productivity, and finding patterns in employee turnover