Business Intelligence Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications

Business Intelligence is the tool that enables organizations today to gain a better understanding of their processes. Without a clear understanding and end-to-end insights into their operations, it would be difficult for companies to prosper and grow in their areas of expertise.

Internal and external operations of a company, both require a structured format of handling. Business managers will be able to assess the data only when it is in a format they can analyze. There are various functions that can be fulfilled by understanding this data. From internal employee management to understanding market trends, or even observing opportunities, BI can be a tremendous catalyst that can assist businesses in achieving all this.

This post will allow us to get to the depths of the concept of Business Intelligence and all the nuances that it encompasses.

Introduction to Business Intelligence

Business intelligence is an extremely impressive approach that lets business managers utilize and leverage the power of technology to obtain insights from the data. This data can be represented in formats and reports that can be easily understood by the managers. BI tools help them get these reports.

There is a wide variety of tools, processes, and methodologies that are utilized in the process of creating reports from the data. BI tools are instrumental in converting the raw data into insightful pieces of information. The users of this data could scrutinize it further to gauge a lot of essential awareness required to create new strategies and growth plans for the business in the future.

Concepts of Business Intelligence

Business intelligence involves concepts that play a critical role in its implementation. Let’s learn about the various concepts of business intelligence in this section.

• Data Warehousing: As the name suggests, data warehousing refers to the process of data collection and analysis. The data management happens with the data being gathered into a central hub, from where it is structured for further examination and scrutiny.
• Data Integration: In a company, data can be gathered from a lot of sources such as databases or spreadsheets. This is in a raw format and cannot be analyzed or used for decision-making. Once the data from such different sources is combined, it can be presented in a solid and consistent data set. Not only can this guarantee data accuracy for businesses but also facilitates a thorough assessment.
• Data Mining: The process refers to extracting trends and insights using statistical techniques. Data mining is instrumental in offering predictive analytics.
• Data Visualization: It becomes easier to read and assess the data when it is in a format that appeals to the user. Data visualization is a technique in which data is presented as graphs, charts, statistics, or any other format that makes decision-making easier.
• OLAP or Online Analytical Processing: OLAP makes it feasible for users to understand data from different perspectives.
• Reporting and Dashboards: Dashboards are an effective way of representing data in a consolidated and comprehensive manner. The users can get all the information from the single dashboard. Reporting tools make it possible to generate crucial reports that could aid decision-making.
• ETL: Extract, Transform, Load, as the name goes, are the tools that assist the data users with transforming the data into a format that makes it easier for the team to work on.
• Self-service BI: Data users or readers may not always be experts or technically sound people. Self-service BI tools are meant for users who may not be technically adept at handling data, yet can proceed with analyzing it. This helps them be less dependent on the IT teams.

Methodologies of Business Intelligence

As we have learned so far in the post, BI methodologies encompass certain approaches to facilitate structured information from the raw data. This is valuable to the organizations in business decision-making. There is a host of tools and processes these methodologies comprise to present data in a meaningful format.

Here is a list that enumerates the predominant methodologies that BI makes use of:

• Descriptive analysis
• Diagnostic analysis
• Data Mining
• OLAP
• ETL, among others.

Amongst so many methodologies available to companies, the choice depends on the core necessities of the business.

Tools and Applications of Business Intelligence

There is a wide variety of business intelligence tools that companies utilize for efficient decision-making. They can use more than one of these tools and can also use a combination of them. The choice and combination depend on the outcomes or reports they desire.

Let’s look at some of the most common business intelligence tools that are used:

• Spreadsheets: Tabular look and format make it easy for the users to analyze and work with numbers and data.
• Dashboards: These are an effective mechanism to report and present data comprehensively on the same page. The dashboards can be customized to suit the viewing preferences of the users. A holistic representation lets the managers get an update swiftly and in a graphically or visually appealing manner. Dashboards can be depicted in pie charts, Gantt charts, and many other useful charts and diagrams.

Besides these, companies can use Real-time BI, Data visualization software, and Reporting and Query software.

About BPX

Business Process Xperts – BPX – holds over 11 years of experience serving 500+ companies from a variety of domains. With specialization in creating SOPs and process automation. If your business requires expertise with IT solutions such as Signavio, SAP, and Celonis, then get in touch with us today!