Reintroduction to Business Intelligence
This article gives an overview of what BI is and how it can provide actionable information for a business. It provides a brief testimonial on a single case study and a well-done video giving examples of how it can be used. A key point from the article is that the activity of conducting BI can be more broadly dispersed throughout organizations rather than left to a small cadre of analysts with special technical skills who "owned" the data but did not necessarily understand how different departments and departments and managers could best use it. Constantly evolving dashboards and data packages make analysis more accessible. However, it is still important not to let the data be used randomly by anyone with access, as the results may not be sound.
Consider when you could have used big data to answer a manager's question. Did you have instant access to all the information you needed, or did you have to ask an IT or other area specialist? Was it difficult to obtain? Did you end up getting what you needed? Did you have to spend a lot of time manipulating the data to put it into a usable form? How does your organization collect, organize and disseminate its data?
Learning Outcomes
- Explain Business Intelligence (BI) and its impact on business success.
Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting useful information to help executives, managers and other end users make informed business decisions. The potential benefits of using BI tools
include accelerating and improving decision-making, optimizing internal business processes, increasing operational efficiency, driving new revenues and gaining competitive advantage over business rivals. BI systems can also help companies identify
market trends and spot business problems that need to be addressed. In short, BI technologies allow a business to view their operations, past, present and future.
BI technologies handle large amounts of data to help identify, develop and otherwise
create new strategic business opportunities. Identifying new opportunities and implementing an effective strategy based on insights can provide businesses with competitive market advantage and long-term profitability.
The video below will provide
you with an overview of how a company can use BI to improve its outcomes and attain its goals.
Practice Question
What is Business Intelligence (BI)?
- The process of protecting sensitive business data from malicious users.
- The capability to analyze large quantities of business information and present it in a manner that facilitates better business decisions.
- The smarts gained from an advanced business degree.
- The ability to forecast business trends using only intuition.
Other ways a business can use BI to improve performance include:
- Business Process Management. Performance metrics and benchmarking inform business leaders of progress towards business goals. BI tools can help a business boost internal productivity by focusing their efforts on what is important.
- Decision Making. BI analytics such as data mining and statistical analysis quantify processes for a business to make the best decisions. BI can help a business identify areas to cut costs or how to distribute budget allocations.
- Business Planning. Businesses can use BI data to develop both short term goals and long term strategy. Businesses can gain insight into their customers and market trends, allowing them to make decisions about current and future operations, products, goods or services.
- Collaboration. BI can facilitate collaboration both inside and outside the business by enabling data sharing and electronic data interchange. Many businesses use BI tools to communicate with suppliers, reducing lead times and inventory levels. By
sharing data among partners, each business has up-to-the-minute information on everything from delivery times to price changes.
If BI is so powerful then why hasn't it always been used by businesses? It has been used widely by businesses for decades, but in the past, only the information technology experts within a business had access to a few, highly complex BI tools and
applications. As technology has evolved; however, there now exists a broad range of BI tools that a company can employ. Additionally, this new generation of BI tools are typically fairly simple to use so now a broader range of users within the business
are able to get involved in analyzing and using data to make decisions. The result is that rather than the historical approach of just a few highly specialized data people being the only ones with visibility into the data, now people such as managers,
supervisors, sales associates, and marketing specialists can leverage the power of internal and external data to their benefit and to the benefit of the organization.
Maidenform and BI
One example of how business intelligence systems have been maximized is at women's underwear manufacturer Maidenform. Their CIO Bob Russo said recently after implementing BI, "Providing targeted information at the right place and time is central to improving
the decision-making process. This would allow us to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace as well as increase retail customer, shopper and shareholder value. We want to make sure that we are able to deliver 'one version of the truth' and
deliver information that is actionable. We do not want to just deliver data".
Source: Linda Williams, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-introductiontobusiness/chapter/business-intelligence/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.