Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) is the process or infrastructure that collects, stores, and analyses data from a company’s day-to-day operations. It presents easy-to-understand reports that assist users in making better business decisions. It encompasses data mining, process analysis, performance benchmarking, and data visualization.
Scanning through hundreds of pages of annual reports to assess performance is a thing of the past. Business intelligence focuses on all areas of your organization, allowing you to quickly identify areas for improvement and be proactive in making decisions.
BI tools come with self-service capabilities and allow decision-makers to quickly identify performance gaps, market trends, or fresh opportunities. Business intelligence often produces weekly, monthly, and even yearly reports.
What are the benefits of Business Intelligence?
Some benefits you can get by integrating business intelligence include faster, more precise reporting and analysis, enhanced data quality, lower costs, and higher revenues.
What are the technological advancements in Business Intelligence?
Static reports
A static report provides a snapshot of data belonging to a specific period. It is a rigid form of reporting that restricts the user from drilling down further into the data; hence it can only be used in the manner it is produced.
Interactive dashboards
A picture is worth a thousand words and can easily cut through an audience. An interactive dashboard enables you to drill down and filter data so that it can be viewed from multiple angles or in greater detail. Dashboards enable data-driven business decisions by providing a simplified and clear presentation of overall business figures.
Ad hoc analysis
Ad hoc analysis is like ad hoc reporting, which provides instant answers to specific business questions as and when they are triggered without involving the IT department. In a nutshell, it means delivering something now or at that moment.
Natural language processing (NLP)
The domain of artificial intelligence, known as natural language processing (NLP), enables computers to understand written and spoken words in a manner that is similar to that of humans. Users can now access business information in new ways. Instead of manually digging through the data to find the answer, consider typing a question into your self-service BI or directly asking it, “Which is the hottest-selling product of this month?”
Predictive analysis
Predictive analytics uses historical data to forecast future outcomes. The accuracy and usability of predictive analytics are determined by the granularity of the analysis and the assumptions used.