What Is Business Intelligence?

What Is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI), also referred to as “decision support,” allows organizations to better understand, analyze, and even predict what’s occurring in their company. Business Intelligence helps your organization turn data into useful and meaningful information and then distribute this information to those who need it, when they need it—so they can make timely and better-informed decisions.

Business Intelligence allows organizations to combine data from a wide variety of sources and see an integrated, up-to-date, and 360-degree view.

Do I need Business Intelligence?

The following scenarios represent typical situations that could benefit from improved Business Intelligence (BI):

• Multiple versions of the truth. Interdepartmental meetings frequently turn into shouting   matches as participants argue about whose spreadsheet has the correct figures.

• Inability to perform in-depth analysis. Your company knows which of its stores have   the greatest sales volume, but it doesn’t know which products have the highest sales.

• Unable to locate important information. Someone in accounting mentioned that a   report showing year-over-year growth for each customer has been posted to the   company’s intranet. But you have no idea how to find it.

• Business Users are forced to become technical “experts”. One of the more technical   business users in the marketing department believes he has mastered SQL, but when   trying to run a query to the most profitable customers per each product line, wrong results   are returned, or worse – the entire database chokes.

• Historical values are not being retained. The sales department is conducting account   reviews and wishes to compare each customer’s sales-to-date this year with its sales-to-   date at this time last year. Sales maintains a spreadsheet for this year’s results, but the   person who maintained the spreadsheet last year has left the company—and no one has   any idea what happened to last year’s spreadsheet.

• Existing BI technology is too complicated to use. Your company’s sales manager   used analysis tools at her former job that she insisted be used in your company as well.   Although your company has invested in several licenses, users who have tried to use   these tools have given up in frustration and rely exclusively on spreadsheets instead.

• Weak or non-existent BI technology limits your company’s operational flexibility.   Your company has grown to the point where its customer base has expanded to the   hundreds. While it values every customer, it would like to identify the top 10 in sales   volume each month and offer them extra attention and special incentives.

• Inability to comply with government reporting requirements. While your company   is still relatively young, it hopes to one day go public. However, with the software   infrastructure you have, it is difficult to provide proper audit trails and data lineage to   ensure that your CEO and CFO have confidence in the accuracy of your company’s   financial numbers.

• Your IT department spends most of its time servicing business requests from   users.
  You’ve started to hear complaints from your users that their report requests are not   being resolved in a timely manner—and by the time they receive their reports, they no   longer need them.