BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

DEFINITION:
Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of
applications and technologies for gathering, storing,
analyzing, and providing access to data to help enterprise
users make better business decisions.

BI applications include the activities of decision

support systems, query and reporting, online analytical
processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data
mining.
 BENEFITS OF BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE
• Eliminate guesswork
• Get faster answers to your business questions
• Get key business metrics reports when and where you need them
• Get insight into customer behaviour
• Identify cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
• Learn how to streamline operations
• Improve efficiency
• Manage inventory better
• See where your business has been, where it is now and where it
is going
 DISADVANTAGES OF BI

• Piling of Historical Data

• Cost
• Complexity
• Limited use
• Muddling of commercial settings
• Time Consuming Implementation
 Types of Business Intelligence Tools

• Spreadsheets
When it comes to crunching financial data and summarizing key
accounting numbers, spreadsheets are a terrific business intelligence tool.
• Querying software tools
The power comes from the package's capability to quickly extract, sort,
summarize and present data that is extremely important to management.
• Data Mining
Data mining,useful for extraction of data which is commonly used for
marketing, surveillance, and fraud detection. This business intelligence tool
is divided into four key processes: classification, clustering, regression and
association rule learning.
• Business Performance
This type of business intelligence tool has given way to
organize, automate and analyze key business methods and
processes that greatly impact business performance.
For example, applying business performance management
allows corporations to optimize the use of financial, materials
and human resource capital.
• Digital Dashboards
Decision makers can instantly get a visual display of
performance measures, identify key trends, generate detailed
reports and gain insight into all of the company's systems
from their desktops
Business Intelligence-Applications in
an enterprise
Business Intelligence can be applied to the following business
purposes (MARCKM):

 Measurement
 Analytics
 Reporting/Enterprise Reporting
 Collaboration/Collaboration platform
 Knowledge management
 Success Factors for the Implementation
of BI projects
Before implementing a BI solution, it is worth taking different factors into
consideration before proceeding. They are:
• The level of commitment and sponsorship of the project from senior
management
• The level of business need for creating a BI implementation
• The amount and quality of business data available.
• Implementation should be driven by clear business needs.
• Before the project is implemented is whether or not there actually is a
business need and whether there is a clear business benefit by doing the
implementation. The needs and benefits of the implementation are
sometimes driven by competition and the need to gain an advantage in the
market.
• The acquisition of other organizations that enlarge the original
organization it can sometimes be beneficial to implement DW or BI in
order to create more oversight.
• The amount and quality of the available data.
 7 crucial success factors for the implementation of a
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE project

• Business-driven methodology and project

management
• Clear vision and planning
• Committed management support & sponsorship
• Data management and quality
• Mapping solutions to user requirements
• Performance considerations of the BI system
• Robust and expandable framework