Business Intelligence Software

What is Business Intelligence Software?

BI, or business intelligence combines specific services and software to turn data into intelligence capable of providing information regarding the tactical business decisions and strategies of a business. The BI tools first access, then analyze the current analytical findings and data sets in graphs, reports, maps, charts, dashboards and summaries. This provides critical details regarding the state of the business.

The Differences Between BA and BI

Business intelligence is also referred to as descriptive analysis because it describes either a current or past state. Instead of telling the business what to do, it states what is occurring. When this definition is compared to BA, or business analytics, a process assisted by technology so data can be analyzed by software to make predictions about what could happen depending on the approach used, the difference is clear. This is the reason BA is often called advanced analytics.

The Specifics of Business Intelligence

Despite the fact BI will not tell a business what needs to be done, or what will occur if specific actions are taken, BI is about a lot more than just generating reports. BI provides the means for business to derive insights and understand current trends by examining data. Data is essential for many individuals to perform their jobs functions better. The tools of business intelligence take people's efforts and streamline them. When a person conducts a search concerning merge and query data because they need specific information, BI will help them make a much better decision for their business.

A good example is a business wanting to have better management regarding their supply chain. BI has the capabilities to figure out exactly where the delays are occurring, and examine all the variables within the shipping process. Business intelligence can be used by the company to figure out which products are most often delayed, and what type of transportation is generally responsible for creating the delay. This will enable the business to make a better situation by eliminating the delay.

BI has the potential to go far beyond the metrics of ordinary business. Business intelligence can reduce the costs and improve the sales of the business. BI tools are effectively being used to examine a wide variety of data points. A good example would be a college. BI can be used to examine everything from the performance of the students to the attendance rates. This data can increase the number of students who graduate from high school, and improve the learning quality of the students. Business intelligence is equally effective regardless of the specific field of the company.

The Tools for Business Intelligence

There are a lot of vendors currently offering BI tools to the modern business. In 2017, there were approximately two dozen business intelligence tools to choose amongst. The leading vendors were Tableau, Microsoft and Qlik, although the tools were additionally available through Zoomdata, Sisense and Information Builders.

There are a lot of different factors a business considers prior to choosing their BI platform. This decision is usually based on the operations complexity and size, and the type of technology the business is using. This may be SAP, SAS, Oracle, or IBM, and BI tools are offered through all of these. The business must look at all the tools available, and base their decision on what would work best for their specific business needs.

Business Intelligence in Action

The IT professionals have generally been the main users of business intelligence applications. Since the tools for BI have changed and evolved, they have become much more user-friendly and intuitive. This makes it easier for a large quantity of users throughout all different types of organizational domains to successfully use these tools. There are essentially two different types of BI. The first is considered the more classic or traditional BI. This is where reports are generated using the in-house transactional data by the IT professionals. The second type of BI is more modern, and data can be analyzed much faster due to the interaction between the intuitive, agile systems and the business users.

Most of the organizations will choose the classic BI for specific areas of reporting including financial or regulatory reports. This is because the accuracy factor is critical, and the data sets and questions used are both predictable and standard. The more modern BI tools are generally used by organizations when new insight is required by the users. This can be for marketing events, or an event with a quickly changing dynamic. In these instances, the speed is considered far more valuable than the data being 100 percent correct.

Having access to effective business intelligence is crucial when strategic business decisions must be made. Unfortunately, there are a lot of businesses struggling to make efficient business intelligence decisions. This is due to tactical errors, poor data practices and more. If a business is failing at their strategic decisions, the first step is understanding why.

Self-Service BI is on The Rise

The software vendors have risen to the demand of the businesses for multiple capabilities. The modern and classic BI, and the predictive and descriptive have been re-engineered. The products now have platforms with multiple functionalities. All of the vendors have been doing some retooling so the needs of the business can be successfully met. From the perspective of the business owners, not all business users had a reporting function or access to IT support. These businesses have started acquiring the printing and technology necessary to fulfill these important needs.

Many workplaces and organizations still require IT professionals because their roles are vital. In a lot of these situations, business users are using self-service BI enabled by the IT team. The biggest difference is, IT is responsible for setting up and managing the enablement, governance and policies around the data. IT additionally accesses the data, and makes certain the BI tools are providing the insights necessary for the business by working with the users on a consistent basis. Just like with the tools for BI, there are a wide variety of self-service tools available for business intelligence.

The Value of Business Intelligence

Despite all the current talk regarding advanced analytics, big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence, BI has a lot of relevance for numerous reasons. According to the experts, there are still a lot of organizations struggling with how to manage their data, and obtain the full potential from their BI tools. This has resulted in many businesses having areas where the capabilities of BI are being implemented instead of the platform encompassing the entire business.

There may be one BI tool being used by an executive to provide vendor performance, and an executive dashboard providing information such as the prices according to the region. These organizations need to place their focus on fine-tuning in order to achieve a maximum effect from their BI initiatives. Once this has been accomplished, the business can start to use analytics capabilities that are much more advanced. This is one of the predominant reasons for the current growth of BI tools in the market. Organizations are trying to meet the growing demand by adding capabilities across a wide range of areas.

According to a report ascertained in January of 2016, research done in the field of advisory and global technology predicted the global market for business intelligence would show a ten percent increase in the annual rate of growth by the year 2020. This research considered the increasing usage of data analytics, and data implementation and availability of cloud business intelligence as the markets three major driving factors.

The second point was businesses will always need to have a good understanding of the current state and past events. This is why the experts believe that as advanced analytics are used more by businesses to predict the future, one of their most important investments will be in their BI operations. Both aspects are necessary because it is critical the business understands what is happening. If there is no knowledge of the current state of the business, it will be impossible to determine what will occur in the future. This ensures capabilities of BI will still be necessary to organizations in the future. As analytic functions continue to advance, and more capabilities continue to be added, these analyses will need to be validated.

BI tools cannot be simply placed into a black box, and the reports ignored. If a business simply increases their inventory or changes their prices this will result in the BI tools being given far too much in the way of trust. Everything must be checked, and people can be kept in the loop with the use of BI tools.

The Future of BI

Many individuals are certain another wave of disruption will be part of the future. This is referred to as augmented analytics by the research firms. This is when software will have the capability of guiding the users concerning their data queries because the software will have machine learning baked right into it. This will result in a highly intelligent combination of analytics and BI.

The software packages will contain combinations designed to increase the power of each function. This will provide an extreme value to the business using this software. For example, the reports from the previous year's sales will be looked at with BI, but next year's sales will be predicted according to business analytics. If a what if capability was added, and applications were developed as all inclusive instead of requiring multiple platforms, a single application would be capable of providing all of the different functions.

This would establish a system capable of delivering recommendations with higher values, and the decision maker would become more accurate and have more power. BI is going to retain its value, but organizations must do more than adopt BI, they must begin using advanced analytics also.

The prediction is by the year 2020, businesses will be offering their users access to external and internal data through a curated catalogue. This data will provide double the value received from investments in analytics. The need for reporting will remain, but this alone will not be sufficient. Any organization doing nothing but reporting has already fallen behind. The reporting must be both agile and smart or the user will become a laggard.