What is Business Intelligence (BI)
Business Intelligence (BI) is a broad term for a software technology that provides reporting and analytical tools for pulling data from various sources to generate customizable reports and support decision making. It allows administrators and other business decision makers to view reliable, timely data.
Business Intelligence simplifies information discovery and analysis, making it possible for decision-makers at all levels of an organization to more easily access, understand, analyze, collaborate, and act on information, anytime and anywhere. BI helps move from just consuming information to developing deep contextual knowledge about that information. By tying strategy to metrics, organizations can gain competitive advantage by making better decisions faster, at all levels of the organization.
BI is the capability that transforms data into meaningful, actionable information.
Business Intelligence (BI) software consolidates, analyzes and displays the data collected or generated by your company’s transactional business systems to provide powerful insights into how your business works and how it can be improved.
BI software consolidates data from different sources and assembles it in “data warehouses” or “data marts” that eliminate distinctions in data formats. It then presents the results through a reporting, analytics or dashboard interface. BI software thus serves as a common platform for shared, company-wide insight. BI software makes analysis and report-making much faster and more reliable.
Using BI software, users can do things like profile customer behavior, monitor buying patterns, detect bottlenecks an opportunities to reduce costs, and pinpoint top customers. The data warehouse serves as a gateway to the underlying data systems. Users can drill-down into the source data to find the details behind a particular query.
Properly implemented, BI is a decision-support system that puts the entire wealth of your enterprise’s electronically stored information to optimal use.
What is Data Warehouse (DW)?
A data warehouse is a repository of your organization’s stored data. In essence, it is a place where content from different systems can be consolidated together in one logical location. A related term is “data mart”. Although there can be important design differences between data warehouses and data marts, in general a “warehouse” supports an entire corporation or enterprise, and a “mart” supports one specific business area. For the purposes of this discussion, we will not make a distinction between data warehouses and data marts.
What is a "Cube"?
A Cube is a data warehose in which data is partitioned in dimensions. This approach makes it much easier for users to understand and manipulate the data available to them. In BI data warehouses, data is stored in a multi dimensional cube that is optimized for analysis and reporting. You can have not just two or three dimensions, but basically as many as you need.
ETL is the name given to the software tools that create cubes from existing data sources.
Who can benefit from Business Intelligence (BI)?
Business Intelligence (BI) is for businesses that want to drive intelligent decision-making throughout their organizations and make it easy for everyone in the organization to collaborate, analyze, share, and act on business information from a centrally managed, more secure source. Business Intelligence (BI) supports IT professionals, information workers, and developers. BI can empower and cater to the needs of the business users of organizations of all sizes.
How can Business Intelligence (BI) be useful to my organization?
Business Intelligence (BI) connects the right people to the right information at the right time. With 1KEY BI, all the business users right from managers to the operational staff, frontline executives to back office team get the power to define ad hoc reports with intuitive, highly interactive & user friendly interface coupled with multi formatted visually stunning & flexible data presentation layers. It becomes easy to report on and analyze data to efficiently manage personnel objectives across key indicators. 1KEY end users can perform sales, category, and inventory analyses more effectively to track product sales, product mix, and inventory levels.
Does Business Intelligence (BI) works with existing applications and databases?
Yes. Business Intelligence (BI) solution like 1KEY is designed to interoperate with data that exists in virtually any enterprise data source, such as Oracle, IBM DB2, or Sybase. For example, you can use SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services to run reports on data stored in an Oracle database. Also, SQL Server 2005 Integration Services can be used to extract data to or from any OLEDB data source. 1KEY can connect to multiple database, multiple applications like ERP, CRM, SCM, HRM, financial accounting or any other core transactional application (SAP, Orracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, QAD MFG/Pro, Microsoft Dynamics, Navision, Ramco, Tally.ERP)
Does the BI accommodate requirements that organizations have to provide data across the organization?
The BI capabilities that 1KEY provides are geared more towards reporting and analyzing data rather than collecting the data.
Should BI projects be prioritized?
Organizations need to determine the tangible benefits such as eliminated cost of producing legacy reports, with BI. Secondly BI enforces access to data for the entire organization. In this way even a small benefit, such as a few minutes saved, will make a difference when it is multiplied by the number of employees in the entire organization.
Does BI project require Data Warehousing?
No. Not all BI projects require Data Warehousing. BI tools like 1KEY, can give reporting and analytics to the business users across the enterprise from any data source directly without having the need to build a data warehouse.
Data Warehouse facilitates reporting and analysis. It is used for an organisation's need for reliable, consolidated, unique and integrated reporting and analysis of its data, at different levels of aggregation. Data Warehousing is not just into accumulating historical data, but analyzing them as well to help Business Decision Makers make effective decisions that affect their company’s bottom line.
Benefits of Data Warehouse
- Data Warehouse provides a common data model for all data of interest regardless of the data's source. This makes it easier to report and analyze information than it would be if multiple data models were used to retrieve information such as sales invoices, order receipts, general ledger charges, etc.
- Prior to loading data into the data warehouse, inconsistencies are identified and resolved. This greatly simplifies reporting and analysis.
- Because they are separate from operational systems, data warehouses provide retrieval of data without slowing down operational systems.
- Data warehouses facilitate BI reports such as trend reports (e.g., the items with the most sales in a particular area within the last two years), exception reports, and reports that show actual performance versus goals.
What do various terms like Dashboard, KPI, Operational BI, Analytics, OLAP?
An executive dashboard is a user interface, usually Web-based and often with a BI system/data warehouse on the backend, that organizes and presents information in a way that is easy to read and interpret. Somewhat akin to an automobile's dashboard, executive dashboards often have graphical elements, such as color-coding, gauges and charts.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measure of performance which are commonly used to help an organization define and evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of making progress towards its long-term organizational goals. KPIs can be specified by answering the question, "What is really important to different stakeholders?". KPIs are monitored using BI to assess the present state of the business and to assist in prescribing a course of action. KPIs are frequently used to "value" difficult to measure activities such as the benefits of leadership development, engagement, service, and satisfaction. KPIs differ depending on the nature of the organization and the organization's strategy. They help to evaluate the progress of an organization towards its vision and long-term goals, especially toward difficult to quantify knowledge-based goals. A KPI is a key part of a measurable objective, which is made up of a direction, KPI, benchmark, target, and time frame. For example: "Increase Average Revenue per Customer from $100 to $150 by year end 2010". In this case, 'Average Revenue Per Customer' is the KPI.
Operational business intelligence is BI that is available enterprise-wide – to mid-level managers and front-line operational workers. Ideally, operational BI delivers timely information to employees at all levels, so important metrics and other data are delivered in the context of associated business processes.
Data analytics is the science of examining raw data, using sophisticated software and analytic algorithms, for the purpose of drawing conclusions about that information. Data analytics is often distinguished from data mining by the scope, purpose and focus of the analysis.
OLAP - Online analytical processing is automated processing and analysis of data, defined by olapreport.com as "fast analysis of shared multidimensional information.
What are the challenges faced while successfully implementing Business intelligence?
Most companies grasp the potential value of successful business intelligence applications. However, a common challenge that IT professionals encounter is how to find successful BI application that are adopted by users and make a positive impact on the organization and on the bottom line. It can be difficult to structure effective BI project teams, select the right BI application, manage business-IT communications and measure BI success. BI is robust application, developing and optimizing successful BI application is always a challenge which involves structuring BI teams and managing business-IT communication.
How much does Business Intelligence (BI) cost? Is there going to be a proven ROI?
Believe it or not, you can start benefiting from BI technology for much better than you may think (and much quicker than you may think). Let's take an example. Here are some ballpark numbers and timelines so you can have realistic expectations. For $9,000 and within 4 weeks, 1KEY BI can be implemented enterprise wide. The actual prices may vary depending on the modules you choose to implement from the BI stack and how many people you deploy them to. Please contact your local sales representative or MAIA partner for more information about Business Intelligence pricing.
In the early stages of a BI deployment, most companies measure value based on IT-centric, quantifiable criteria, including improved operational efficiency and minimized total cost of ownership. But today, as more BI deployments mature and companies focus on optimizing business processes, the metrics have changed and are more difficult to interpret. Measuring the value of BI is more of a matter of mind over money.
Which industries can benefit from BI?
Companies across all the industries like Manufacturing, BFSI, Retail, Service, Telecom, ITES, Pharma & Healthcare, Infrastructure & Construction, Automotive, Education, Government, Public Sector, etc. can benefit from BI.
Which business Processes / departments can benefit from BI?
Business processes / departments like Contact Centers, Field Service, IT Services Engagements, Human Resources, Marketing & Advertising, Supply & Demand Chain, Retail Operations, IT Operations Performance, Insurance Underwriting can get benefited from BI
What are the examples of BI Initiatives (Focus Areas)?
Customer Satisfaction, Problem Resolution, Loyalty & Customer Value, Up-sell & Cross-sell, Customer Churn, Customer Segmentation, Cost Control, Revenue & Profitability, Performance Management, Outage / Downtime, Defect, Marketing Effectiveness, Collections are some of the examples of BI initiatives.
Who are BI systems intended for?
For any member of the company who makes decisions based on transactional systems' data. Such systems may be oriented to different levels (analysts, managers, directors, auditors, etc.), providing different kinds of information in each case.
Can BI be integrated with any system active at the company?
Yes, BI can be integrated directly, through the development of interfaces that extract and update transactional systems’ data.
Does BI require a special technological platform?
No, BI can connect to database, because they generate their own repository to upload and transform the data that will be fed into the multidimensional cubes.
Is it necessary to have specialized staff for BI?
No, BI tool like 1KEY are available with easy to learn and use features for queries, automation of data extraction interfaces and distance support ensure their use rapidly, without engaging company’s staff specifically.
Can they be applied to any company area?
Yes, through transactional systems’ data extraction interfaces, you can resolve systems for: sales, auditing, suppliers, accounting, production, etc., and additionally, integrating key indicators for each area, summarizing the information required by the company’s first level decision-makers.
How do I recover my investment?
Companies that have not adopted a decision-making system yet have a “hidden cost” to access information: time to enter data in transactional systems, upload and transformation, presentation through reports, etc. Features provided by BI systems decrease such costs dramatically, because information is available in a timely manner, with integration, security and orientation to optimize decisions that empower the company’s activities.
Return on investment (ROI). A ROI can be achieved in a number of ways, such as:
- Lower cost – Costs could be lowered through better inventory management, fewer dollars spent on unproductive measures, product promotions, and so on
- Improved productivity – Greater productivity could be expected from both IT and the user. Today user analysts may spend 80 percent of their time gathering data and only 20 percent analyzing the data. The data warehouse should reverse those numbers. IT will still be responsible for developing complex reports, as well as writing reports for production systems. The data warehouse can provide reporting tools with a well documented, clean and easily accessible database. This capability should significantly improve IT productivity
- Increased revenue – This could be a result of greater market share and increased sales as marketing is able to more effectively target customers and provide the right products at the right time to the right market. The effects of costs and revenues may be difficult to assign to the impact of the data warehouse. As the data warehouse is being implemented, the organization is not standing still. There are both internal and external factors that impact costs and revenues, so the actual benefits of the data warehouse may be difficult to determine
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