In these modern times, the amount of data produced, processed, and managed increases every second of the day. Data is a gateway to driving innovation and creating novel solutions to problems businesses or corporations face.
Data plays a pivotal role in the optimal functioning of businesses, and it’s paramount to allowing business managers to make informed decisions.
Insights from Forbesopens PDF file show that a large fraction of business leaders feel that using big data to their advantage will significantly improve the way they run their companies – and yes, they’re right.
The concept of business intelligence (BI) entails a holistic approach to understanding which datasets are relevant to particular goals, strategies, and initiatives in your business. BI has become increasingly used as a tool across various industries, with graduates holding qualifications like a business analytics masters online being highly sought after. As a result, managers must endeavor to know the pros and cons of BI to smooth its implementation into the workforce.
This article will take you through a quick dive into the essentials of business intelligence, the why behind it, and what every manager must know.
The genesis of business intelligence
Business intelligence refers to a collection of tools and processes to help companies manage their data from the collection stage through to the reporting stage. Through this, organizations can discover valuable trends and insights to inform their strategies and ensure continuous growth.
Usually, the collected data can be customer demographics, sales for different periods, production volumes, and inventory, among many others. Up until now, business managers made decisions at their whim without recognizing the power of the data they had at their disposal.
With the help of BI technologies, real-time, historical, and predictive views of internally structured data relating to all departments within an organization can be obtained. Business managers wouldn’t need to rely on their intuition anymore, thanks to the advanced insights made available by professional BI tools.
What makes business intelligence valuable?
BI runs in a self-service mode, this provides an opportunity for technical and non-technical users to dive into the world of intricate data without the need for complex analytical skills.
The majority of software used for BI allows users to collect and monitor data simultaneously with ease. It also allows for the visualization of data via interactive graphs and charts, which makes information easier to understand.
The importance of business intelligence
Approximately 328.7 million terabytes of data are created each day in the US, and there are about 2,700 data centers spread across the US. This, however, reiterates the solid point that BI should be a top priority for business managers.
Now let’s explore the reasons why BI concepts and solutions are so important today.
- 1. Prevention against drowning in data
Data sizes have reached petabytes, exabytes, zettabytes, yottabytes, and googolbytes. These sizes of data are what we call big data.
The human brain, or basic Microsoft Excel, does not have the power to analyze data of this size. BI can process data of any size without having to drown in the plethora of data.
BI technologies also remove redundant data in the form of noise, which helps manage large amounts of data and expedite the process of producing actionable insights.
2. Provision of a wealth of insights
The use of BI in your business provides insights that help improve the efficiency of various departments and facilitate problem-solving processes with no bias.
BI’s self-service run mode makes the technology accessible to everyone in the department, not just the IT department.
3. Prediction of business future
The insights obtained from BI offer a viable means of predicting future outcomes and putting plans in place to be armed should there be any cyber attack.
These insights also provide businesses with an unparalleled lead in the business world against competitors.
Insights from BI enable businesses to plan new product launches and better understand their customer base.
4. Provide powerful data visualization
Data visualization is of great importance to the performance of a business. The visualization of data provides one with an interactive dashboard to understand business trends effectively.
Dashboards offer a centralized view of the most important KPIs to support meetings and discussions.
Concepts of business intelligence
This encompasses the nitty-gritty components of BI. They include the following five items:
- The business
- The raw data
- The data warehouse
- Data access, analytics, and presentation
- Data dashboarding and reporting.
Software for business intelligence
Let’s explore the various software packages available for BI.
- 1. Tableau
Tableau provides you with everything you need to access, visualize, and analyze your data.
The interface of Tableau is drag-and-drop and this enables uncovering the hidden insights needed to make impactful business decisions faster, even when you are offline. All while leveraging trusted and governed data in a secure self-service environment.
Tableau provides the avenue for powerful real-time data exploration, driving smarter decisions, sharing and collaborating securely, and acquiring faster and deeper insights.
2. Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI allows access to data from hundreds of supported on-premises and cloud-based sources.
This saves time and makes data preparation easier with data modeling tools. It provides tools that dig deeper into data and find patterns you may have otherwise missed that lead to actionable insights.
Microsoft Power BI incorporates AI into its workflow, which allows for deeper data insights and creates more interactive reports that are customized for your business.
Other software packages
In addition to the popular BI software packages (Tableau and Microsoft Power BI) other available software include Qlik Sense, Looker, Beebole, Tibco Spotfire, MicroStrategy, Sisense, Domo, and Yellowfin.
These additional software packages offer tools that offer powerful analytics that drive innovation and boost financial revenue.
Conclusion
These basics in the world of business intelligence will serve to benefit business managers tremendously.
Managers must endeavor to incorporate this technology into their blueprint to soar higher than before.
In a nutshell, BI is an opportunity to further place businesses on a pedestal that attracts exponential acumen.