Business intelligence gives organizations the ability to ask questions in simple language and get answers they can understand. Instead of using the best guesses, they can base their decisions on what their business data tells them, whether related to production, supply chain, customers, or market trends.
Business intelligence is
the process of bringing to light and analyzing an organization's data to make informed business decisions. BI encompasses a wide spectrum of technologies and methods, from the way in which data are organized and analyzed to the way the results are presented.BI is used to answer how a company performed in the past and why those results were obtained. Business intelligence (BI) is the set of processes, technologies, skills, and software applications that are used to make informed, data-driven business decisions. BI includes data collection, data aggregation, analysis, and meaningful presentation that facilitates decision making. BI can help narrow it down to what's relevant from a business perspective, helping to avoid situations where decision makers are overwhelmed by the amount of information.
Business intelligence data is typically stored in a data warehouse created for the entire organization, or in smaller data markets that contain subsets of business information for individual departments and business units, often linked to an enterprise data warehouse. Training on the proper use of tools is necessary to ensure that users extract accurate information from the data. BI initiatives also offer more limited business benefits, including making it easier for project managers to track the status of business projects and making it easier for organizations to gather competitive information about their rivals. With the number of options available, it can be difficult to decide which platform will work best for your company.
Often, data requires a joint effort before it represents real business value that can then be exposed through BI. Consider the following tips to ensure that, when you invest in a BI strategy, the information you return is valuable to your company. While ETL loads data into a warehouse, online analytical processing (OLAP) retrieves it for high-speed multidimensional analysis on large data sets from a data warehouse or a unified, centralized data repository. With a product that is both intuitive and effective, Tableau offers an advanced experience based on visual elements for exploring data.
Also known as cloud BI, the SaaS option increasingly offers support for multiple clouds, allowing organizations to deploy BI applications on different cloud platforms to meet user needs and avoid dependency on a vendor. In real-time BI applications, data is analyzed as it is created, collected, and processed to provide users with an up-to-date view of business operations, customer behavior, financial markets, and other areas of interest. Modern business intelligence tools use self-service solutions to make it easier for interested parties to access and explore their data on their own. Advanced BI and analytics systems use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to automate and streamline their processing and reporting.
Data storytelling, which is an essential part of business intelligence, explains knowledge and the context that surrounds them, helping to connect them naturally to intuition and professional experience. Data analysis associated with business intelligence provides companies with an up-to-date and holistic overview of the financial situation.
