What is Business Intelligence?
Two great definitions/quotes of What is Business Intelligence…
“Business intelligence is a way of delivering the right information at the right format in the right hands at the right time. A good business intelligence system collects information from all parts of the company, analyze them, and prepares required reports with delivery to people who need them.” Steve Murfitt
“Simply defined, a business intelligence is the process of collecting available internal and external relevant information and their conversion into useful information that can help business users in decision making. ” Vinod Badami
Business Intelligence Definition
In broader sense and that’s how business intelligence was defined at the beginning it was the synonym for data mining, data warehouse, decision support systems, OLAP, business performance management, management information systems and similar. Business Intelligence was actually any kind of corporate information intelligence technique and solution that provided competitive intelligence.
With the development of the tools, processes, corporate knowledge, and with stabilization of information environments, profiling of each previously named solution happened. Each of the solution became world of its own with specifics as independent solutions: software, vendors, IT experts, analysis experts, consultants, processes, and mindset. As a result of widely diverse development it does not make any sense to use wide definition of business intelligence but rather narrow… In following text will be defined and analyzed narrow definition of business intelligence, “naked” business intelligence.
Business intelligence can be defined as a very large set of tools, applications and technologies that are used to retrieve data from various sources, store data, analyze data, provide access to appropriate information in order to help users make better and faster business decisions and finally make quick and effective distribution of information within the company.
Business Intelligence solution effectively transforms data into information because data is placed in reasonable dynamic environment and that is the prime condition for transformation. Data is converted into information when it brings news to user and grows his knowledge. There is no better platform for bringing news then correlated dynamic set of data that brings news from many different views. This is the most important purpose of BI.
Another important task of business intelligence is that the final presentation of data is not customized for IT experts that can be quite alien information environment to be understood for “ordinary” business users. Data presentation is rather oriented more to business users who will upon the results of business intelligence do necessary decisions and actions.
The business intelligence from the standpoint of information system, allows users functional analytical data processing, monitoring and predicting trends, provides answers to business issues, etc. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the BI analysts, Business intelligence is the process of collecting relevant information, presenting particular area processes, facilitating insight into the business and help users make decisions. Business intelligence applications are part of, in manner of preparation and delivering information, Decision Support Systems for reporting and querying, online analytical processing or OLAP, statistical analysis, forecasting and data mining.
BI very effectively helps process of converting information into knowledge because it unifies and relates data of many sources. Quality data relations makes possible to compare and correlate information. This is the process of producing knowledge. Information becomes knowledge with: analysis, comparison, making relations and with cause effect connection. That’s why information needs to be accurate, on time, valid and usable. It is not any more problem to gather information but it is problem to interpret them and convert them to knowledge. Knowledge is set of information with power to create new meanings and data, goal is to be useful. Knowledge tells how to use information and Business Intelligence simplifies this process with its functionalities. Knowledge production can be discussed only when processed information get meaning and can be understood.
Systems for business intelligence can help for example organizations with creating information and knowledge to support decisions, improve processes and operations, reveal different information about customers, suppliers, internal operations and processes, products, employees, etc. An important part of the whole process is getting quality data as a result of business intelligence. Often before more further treatment of information data must be first cleansed, standardized and organized. This is the role of very complementary Information System also known as Data Warehouse. For the quality of business intelligence major importance has a user interface in a simple way of showing any information that is relevant for a particular user.
BI solutions are just first necessary steps in advanced and effective production of corporate knowledge and must-have corporate wisdom system. They have many limits and need to be properly understood and properly used in corporate Information Flow.
It is important to know what is Business Intelligence!
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- Competitive Intelligence vs Business IntelligenceThe three concepts or terms that are often mentioned in economic systems, theory and practice: competitive intelligence, business intelligence and industrial espionage, are not only frequently mentioned, but very often misinterpreted and mixxed. It is very important to explain the differences between these three concepts.
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- Data ForensicsIf company insists on investigating every aspect of business intelligence reporting errors then we are talking about data forensic. It is mandatory to be aware about reporting mistakes that happened but too big focus on every detail of generated error (who made mistake, who signed, who defined process, was everything under procedure, what is the error impact and etc.)
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- Decision ManipulationI like decision manipulation. Before decision is made I do like to play with possible scenarios, to manipulate with decision, and to fine tune best revenue share. In other words, it is easy to find profitability peak, because costs are more or less fixed for considered decision but revenues are changeable.It is not an empty phrase to say that for certain decisions costs are fixed and revenues are changeable. If changes are made in small steps and if they are directly related with fixed cost categories, they are indeed fixed. On the other hand, revenues can be changeable, depending on price & discount policy, bundled products and services, guarantees, delivery timing, product and services portfolio, and etc. All named factors can be modified without direct influence on cost side. Catch is, these are fine and sensitive steps.
- Enforcement of ReportsFrom time to time reports need to be pushed for using. Sounds weird, but it is true. It is hard to force users to use new reporting platforms. Sometimes it looks like invisible wall between exploitation of reports and users. It is very common event that reports are ordered and not being used. Reasons might be following...
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- Information InterpretationIn order to properly interpret meaning of information analytics need to know all elements of information structure together with information distortion effects, transformation of information from one media to another - from one IS to another.
- INFORMATION OVERLOAD - Problems and SolutionsManagement faces serious problems in the decision-making processes due to information overload. With financial and economic crises corporations generate internal information like never before. Information generation is forwarded toward decision makers, strategic decision makers. Management has to deal with hundreds of pages of key performance indicators presented in graphs, tables, projections and similar. It is overwhelming for persons to handle all information. It is almost impossible to correlate all information and to create knowledge of it, because everyday information overload includes thousands of Key Performance Indicators and Financial Ratios.
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- Limited KnowledgeExperts do not like to change solutions they've learned. Once they get used to certain solutions they do not like to switch to another radically different. It is their preferred way of solving problems, extending existing set of knowledge.Doesn't matter if IT experts seam very smart and eager to learn. They've used to be that and know they only extend safety knowledge set. No radical knowledge’s are allowed.
- Long long business intelligence journey
- My Business Intelligence OLAP cube DilemmaDilemma was to create small OLAP cube among the aggregated data or to create detailed - big cube with all the details. If deployment started first with small cube and if the aggregation structure is different than from detailed data I'll for sure through away money when aggregated cube will be created. The reason is that all the effort (code and programming) cannot be applied to the big OLAP cube.
- Naked Business IntelligenceStandard business Intelligence is simple business intelligence without mixture with finance and without applied specialized functionalities and coding according to specialized fields of usage. It's prime role is to deliver data from production systems properly filtered and formatted. User combines from prepared reports or cubes any ad-hoc query or standard report in no time. Only limit is methodology of data extraction, data quality and process-reporting transparency. That's it, nothing more like graphs, semaphores, comparisons, dashboards, comments and etc. Standard Business Intelligence provides pure data extraction and data presentation and that is the reason why we like to call it NAKED Business Intelligence.
- Redundant and Over Customized ReportingAt the beginning of the project many reports are required by users. They prepare specifications, list of wishes, explanations, descriptions, even business cases to justify their influence on company profitability. It is almost always huge amount of requests.All the business intelligence requests are made from users perspective and from what they know best, from the perspective of functionalities of table calculators. Those requests are very rarely checked and consolidated from decision or business intelligence experts. It is more like un-structured bunch of reporting requirements.
- Release of Great Business Intelligence ResourcesIf you need solution for information mess, Total controlling Concept provides model for handling any information chaos... even exponential information growth in dimensions, data quantity, reports, projections, financial statements. Any information complexity can be solved with Total Controlling Concept. What is even more important all important financial ratios and business key performance indicators can be quickly connected into one simulation platform. This simulation can provide ULTIMATE decision making solution for any management level. Everything is connected and everything influences everything in real time. That is Total Controlling Concept.
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- Waiting for stormIt is weird to see list of RfCs with action points for business who initiated RfC and to see it constantly in same status. For example business needs to make additional specification or to make prioritization of own requests. So, business ordered change but does not actively participate in its implementation like it is not interested.
- What is Business IntelligenceBusiness intelligence can be defined as a very large set of tools, applications and technologies that are used to retrieve data from various sources, store data, analyze data, provide access to appropriate information in order to help users make better and faster business decisions and finally make quick and effective distribution of information within the company.
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