Business Intelligence




Business Intelligence
The term Business Intelligence (BI)refers technologies, applications and
practices for collecting, integration, analysis, and presentation of business
information. The purpose of Business Intelligence is to support better business
decision making. Essentially, Business Intelligence systems are data-driven
Decision Support Systems (DSS). Business Intelligence is sometimes used
interchangeably with briefing books, reports and query tools and executive
information systems.
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Data mining
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Online analytical processing
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Querying
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Reporting
Benefits of Using Business Intelligence
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The potential benefits of business
intelligence programs include:
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Accelerating and improving decision making
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Optimizing internal business processes
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Increasing operational efficiency
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Driving new revenues
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Gaining competitive advantages over business rivals.
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Identifying market trends
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Spotting business problems that need to be addressed
Uses of Business Intelligence Systems and Tools
Business intelligence toolsare essentially data-driven
Decision Support Systems (DSS). BI is sometimes used interchangeably withbriefing
books,report and query tools,andexecutive
information systems. With these tools, business people
can start analysing the data themselves, rather than wait for IT to run complex
reports. This information access helps users back up business decisions with
hard numbers, rather than only gut feelings and anecdotes.
Tools Which Optimizes Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence software systems
provide
historical, current, and predictive views of business operations, most often
using data that has been gathered into a data warehouse or a data mart and occasionally
working from operational data. Software elements support reporting, interactive
“slice-and-dice” pivot-table analyses, visualization, and statistical data
mining. Applications tackle sales, production, financial, and many other
sources of business data for purposes that include business performance
management. Information is often gathered about other companies in the same
industry which is known as benchmarking.
Business Intelligence Software Solutions
Power BI
Microsoft’s Power BI is a cloud-based
business analytics service for analysing and visualizing data.
Cloud-based
business analytics service for analysing and visualizing data.
Power BI lets you be productive
and creative with the reports and analytics.Churning out useful
information fromthe data and creating a visuals reports is a multi-step
process.
Processes in Power BI
Connecting
to your data:
Power BI lets you connect to a wide variety of data sources.
And, you can either usePower
BI Desktop orPower
BIServicesto connect to your data.Your
options are toimportitinto Power BI or
touploadyour
file.
Connecting data from various
sources to Power BI
Shaping of data:
Once your data has been loaded, you can shape the data
according toyour needs. Shaping or transforming the data includes
renaming columns or tables, changing the text to numbers, removing
rows,setting the first row as headers, and so on.
Shaping
or Transforming of data
Modelling data:
This step is basically to enhance the data with
relationships, calculations, measures, hierarchies etc. that can be used to
find business insights. Also, you can write a query to enhance data for better
visualizations and analytics.
Data
Modelling
Data
visualization:
This is probably where you play around with data and
visualization types. With a variety of visual tools and custom visual gallery,
you can create stunningreportsfor
your organization effectively.So, a business user simply could mash up
the data without writing even a single line of code.Exactly, it’s that easy!!
Visualizing your transformed
data
Ways to share analytics reports with your organization
Publishing
data reports:
Well, usingPower
BI Services, you can export or publish reports securely and set
up automatic data refresh which provides near-real-time analytics of trends and
indicators for everyone.
Publish
your reports using Power BI services
With real-time power BI dashboards, you can get a 360-degree
view of your business and you can instantly check when your business needs your
attention.
Power BIgatewayslet
you connect with SQL Server databases, Analytical Services, and many other data
sources to your dashboard in Power BI and reporting portals, embed Power BI
reports and dashboards to give you a unified experience.
Tableau
Tableau
is a desktop BI system intended to help
you visualize and understand your company’s data. Instead of a chart builder,
it gives you a live visual analytics tool for unlimited data exploration.
Together with interactive dashboards, you can identify visual patterns faster,
discover hidden insights quickly and reveal opportunities that you can take
advantage to improve decision making and improving company’s performance. The
software is able to connect to multiple data sources –
spreadsheet, SQL database, cloud apps like Salesforce, on premise reports –
regardless of your data size. You can display and publish results with
dashboards and share them with anyone. If you’re already using Tableau Online
or Tableau Server, data can flow and move seamlessly from one platform to
another. This facilitates self-service analytics from whatever device, letting
you get instant answers for your business questions.