Business Intelligence and its few Applications

 

Business intelligence

Introduction:

Business intelligence or commonly known as BI is a useful tool for an organization to make data driven decision. With the help of data mining, data virtualization, data tools and infrastructure. It is known to be the best way which helps a modern business in making different decision. Business intelligence gives an organization comprehensive view of the organizational data and help it to make decisions regarding supply chain, market trend etc. it also help the organization to pinpoint inefficiencies and predicts change. In the year 1960 when Business intelligence was developed it purpose was to share information over the years BI has evolved and it is helping government organizations and large business in making decision ( Pratt and Fruhlinger, 2019).

The business intelligence is consisted to different parts of a process. The process includes:

·    Data mining: is the use of the data stored in the database along with statistics and machine learning help to understand the new trends in large data set.

·    Reporting: with the help of data analysis an organization can draw conclusions and make decisions.

·    Benchmarking:  this helps in creating a benchmark and then comparing data of the organization with that benchmark. It is efficient in keeping in track the goals of an organization.

·    Querying: this helps an organization in asking data specific questions. Business intelligence pulls the right answer form the dataset.

·    Statistical analysis:  this gives an organization to drive descriptive analytics and statistics to understand the reason of a latest market trend.

·    Data visualization: this helps in converting the data gather from large data sets and turn it to charts, graphic and other tools which helps in understanding the consume data.

·    Visual analysis: helps in exploring the data which in a flow and helps the user to understand in the form for a story.

·    Data presentation: it complies different data sources, identify dimension and prepare the data for analysis (Tableau, 2021).

      Reasons for using business intelligence.

Business intelligence (BI) brings various benefits for an organization. it can help the management to monitor the business performance and make timely decisions regarding an issue, upcoming opportunity, or possible market trends. With the help of analysing the consumer data an organization can make decisions regarding sale, supply chain or any upcoming financial huddle. It is also a useful tool in keeping track of employee productivity.

Benefits for using business intelligence in an organization.

·       Speed up the decision making.

·       Increase the business productivity and operational efficiency.

·       Helps in developing effective business strategies.

·       Help in cost analysis and increase the sale and revenue.

·       Helps in identifying business problems.

·       Helps in analysing consumer behaviour.

·       Predicts and spots the possible market trends.

·       Helps in tracking performance of employees and organizational goals

·       Helps in comparing data with the competitor (Stedman,2020).

Business intelligence, data analytics and business analytics:

Data analytics and business analytics are part of business intelligence.  Business intelligence uses data analytics and business analytics to draw conclusions. With the help of advance statistics and predictive analytics future patterns can be predicted for a business, this is done by scientist and data specialties. After that business intelligence uses these models and presents the results which make patterns and are easy to understand. Organization use business intelligence for the purpose of data mining, applied analytics and statistics.  Business intelligence helps an organization in making strategies and answer related queries. Each question generates a linear process and leads to follow-up questions.

Use of business intelligence in different industries:

Many industries use business intelligence such as healthcare, information technology and education. Almost all the industries can use business intelligence for their operations. Charles Schwab provides financial services to its customers; they use business intelligence to keep of the performance of all their branches working in America. Business intelligence helps Charlea Schwab to understand the performance metrics and indicates the area of opportunity for them. This centralized system has helped the organization to understand the shift in the investment needs of the clients. The management can track each region and evaluate its performance. This has helped the firms in discovering more opportunities and optimize their customer service. Its also helps the managers to see the performance of the branches and their effect on regions performance.

 Benefits of visual analytics and data visualization:

Data visualization helps in understanding the results presented by business intelligence model. These visuals are available in different patterns and colours which helps in understanding the results. The visual displayed on the dashboard in the form of pattern which tells a story and highlight the patterns. For visual presentation on a dashboard is very important otherwise it would be difficult to analyse the raw data.  This enables a business to find patterns and trends and have broader business impact.

Self-service business intelligence (SSBI):

The business intelligence is progressing rapidly now modern businesses prefer self-service approach to data. This approach has helped the business intelligence in data preparation, data analysis and discovery on desktop and on serve or online. It has helps to empower the user for visual exploring and sharing their insight (Stedman,2020).

 

Applications and tools for business intelligence: Here is a list of business intelligence technologies that are available in the market.

Ad hoc analytics:  also known as ad hoc querying. This application includes key features of self-service business intelligence tools. It helps in writing, running queries and incorporate the dashboard and results (Stedman,2020).

Online analytical processing (OLAP): uses multiple dimension data analysis. It is suitable for complex queries and calculations. It extracts data from data warehouse and store in multidimensional OLAP cubes (Stedman,2020).

Mobile BI: application make the dashboard available on smart phones and tablets. This is mostly use for data view (Stedman,2020).

Software as a service BI: which is also known as SaaS BI uses the cloud computing system. it provides its service in the form of priced subscriptions (Stedman,2020).

Location intelligence (LI): this application helps a business to analyse its locational and geospatial data. Location intelligence offers inside of geographical elements in business data. It can be used for retail stores and location-based marketing and logistics management (Stedman,2020).

Role of business intelligence in future business:

World is constantly evolving so are the businesses. It is important for a business in the modern age to keep track of current trends and keep themselves up to date with innovation. Artificial intelligence can help the business to broader business intelligence strategy. This will help a business to be more data driven, sharing of data and effective data visualization. BI can help business to stay up to date with the new trend and changes in business.

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References:

• Tableau. (2021). Business Intelligence: What It Is, How It Works, Its Importance, Examples, & Tools. Available at: https://www.tableau.com/learn/articles/business-intelligence.
• Stedman, Craig, (2021). Definition business intelligence (BI). Available at: https://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/business-intelligence-BI
• Pratt, Mary K. and Fruhlinger, Josh. (2019). What is business intelligence? Transforming data into         business insights. Available at: https://www.cio.com/article/2439504/business-intelligence-definition-and-solutions.html

- Jazil Shahabudeen, November of 2021