The fast-paced and competitive atmosphere of the modern business world makes fast and effective decisions one of the most important key factors for success. To make such informed decisions, the first and most important requirement is solid and consistent data and insights, and this is where Business Intelligence (BI) comes into play. In this blog post, we will examine the definition, benefits and scope of business intelligence and explore ways to strengthen companies with actionable strategies.
What is Business Intelligence?
Forrester Research defines business intelligence as “the set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making.” Business intelligence solutions help businesses better understand their competitors, market trends and customer behavior patterns. In this way, companies are able to create plans that can facilitate adaptation to innovations while encouraging growth by making informed decisions based on current information and data.
In summary, the ultimate purpose of business intelligence is to serve as a strategic compass to achieving business goals by providing insights that will help companies optimize their strategies and increase their efficiency. To better understand how business intelligence works, let’s examine its basic components and related processes:
1. Data Collection:
Raw data lies at the basis of business intelligence systems. Companies can collect data from many sources, including internal databases, external data providers, customer feedbacks and social media platforms. This data can be structured, such as sales figures, or in a free-form format, such as customer reviews and images.
2. Data Integration:
Once the data collection process is complete, the data must be consolidated into one place that is usually called a data warehouse. Thanks to this integration process, information from different sources can be analyzed together and more comprehensive insights can be obtained.
3. Data Conversion:
Raw data must go through a process of cleaning and standardization to provide consistent results. This step is necessary to ensure the accuracy and consistency of the analyzes and the insights.
4. Data Analysis:
Business intelligence uses a range of analytical techniques to transform integrated data into valuable information and insights. Examples of these techniques include data mining, statistical analysis, machine learning and predictive modeling.
5. Data Visualization:
Business intelligence tools present analyzed data to users in understandable and interesting formats such as charts, tables and reports. These visualization methods make complex data more understandable with a simple and effective narrative style and easier to use for quick decisions.
6. Reporting and Control Panels:
Business intelligence platforms help users create interactive dashboards and reports customized to their wants and needs. In this way, individuals who determine strategies and road maps in organizations can follow their progress simultaneously by monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs).
Business Intelligence Tools:
There are many software tools and platforms available to facilitate all these business intelligence processes like Tableau, Power BI, QlikView, IBM Cognos, Looker and Domo. These tools, each offering different features and services, facilitate data analysis and reporting; making data more accessible to users with different levels of technical expertise.
Long story short, business intelligence plays an extremely important role in today’s business world by transforming raw data into the information and analysis necessary for organizations to progress. Since this is a broad, ongoing process, business intelligence solutions must evolve to deliver up-to-date insights as business conditions and data change and new opportunities and challenges arise. For this reason, it is predictable that as businesses continue to produce data in larger amounts and in different formats, the potential of business intelligence solutions will increase in time and play much more important roles in the business life of the future.
