Business Intelligence (BI)

Owned by Computer Science Department
Aug 03, 2023
2 min read

 

  • Business intelligence (BI) is a term that describes a comprehensive, cohesive, integrated set of tools and processes used to capture, collect, integrate, store, and analyze data

    • The purpose is to generate and present information to support business decision making

  • BI is a framework that allows transformation of the following:

    • Data into information

    • Information into knowledge

    • Knowledge into wisdom

  • BI provides a framework for the following:

    • Collecting and storing operational data and aggregating it into decision support data

    • Analyzing decision support data and presenting generated information to end users to support business decisions

    • Making business decisions which generate more data

    • Monitoring results to evaluate outcomes and predicting future outcomes with a high degree of accuracy

Business Intelligence Architecture

  • Master data management (MDM) is a collection of concepts, techniques, and processes for identification, definition, and management of data elements

  • Governance is a method of government for controlling business health and for consistent decision making

  • Key performance indicators (KPI) are numeric or scale-based measurements that assess company’s effectiveness in reaching its goals

    • General

    • Finance

    • Human resources

    • Education

  • A BI system’s advanced decision support functions come to life via its intuitive and informational user interface, and reporting capabilities. A modern BI system provides the following reporting styles:

    • Advanced reporting

    • Monitoring and alerting

    • Advanced data analytics

Business Intelligence Benefits

  • Improved decision making is the main goal of BI, but BI also provides the following benefits:

    • Integrating architecture

    • Common user interface for data reporting and analysis

    • Common data repository fosters single version of company data

    • Improved organizational performance

  • Achieving all these benefits takes a lot of human, financial, technological resources, and time

    • BI benefits are the result of a focused company-wide effort that could take a long time

Business Intelligence Technology Trends

The following technological advances are driving the growth of business intelligence technologies:

  • Data storage improvements

  • Business intelligence appliances

  • Business intelligence as a service

  • Big Data analytics

  • Personal analytics