BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Introduction:

Business Intelligence (BI) Systems provide support to decision-makers in an organization by analyzing huge volumes of historical information. An important component of a BI system is a data warehouse.

Business Intelligence (BI) uses knowledge management; data warehouse[ing], data mining and business analysis to identify, track and improve key processes and data, as well as identify and monitor trends in corporate, competitor and market performance.

Business intelligence is a set of methods, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes.

Business intelligence provides access to data, analysis data, gathers information, and stores the data.

Features:

Following are the main 6 key features of business intelligence:

1. Executive Dashboards: Personalized Dashboards deliver relevant, easily understood real-time data to business leaders, enabling faster and better decision-making whilst lowering response times to internal and external events. Executives need access to personalized dashboards that deliver easy-to-understand KPIs and summary information on a regular, scheduled basis. Personalized data delivery means executives are able to make decisions quickly, without any guesswork, and without having to wade through irrelevant information.

2. Location Intelligence: Location Intelligence is the ability to map and visualize data in geographical formats.

3. What if analysis: Allows businesses to assess the potential effects of critical business decision before they’re actually made. It helps management undertake accurate strategic planning.

4. Interactive Reports: Help users to better understand the analysis within the reports and those reports are based to support better decision making.

5. Metadata Layer: A meta data layer makes reporting easy and eliminates the need for coding.

6. Ranking Reports: Ranking reports let you view the best and worst performing aspects of your business.

Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing:

The difference between business intelligence and data warehousing are: -

1. BI helps you to control the data for decision making, forecasting whereas DW helps you to store the data.

2. BI is a set of methods, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful & useful information whereas DW is a large central repository of data, which helps in decision-making process of an enterprise which comprises of databases.

Business Intelligence Architecture:

The data from various OLTP systems is extracted in the data staging area. Here, the data is cleaned, transformed, and loaded into a DW by using the ETL process. Depending upon the specific requirements of the individual departments in an organization, data marts are created for analysis. Using data mining, the management is able to predict future business trends for the organization.

Applications of BI:

1. Measurement   – program that creates a hierarchy of performance metrics and benchmarking that informs business leaders about progress towards business goals