The term Business Intelligence (BI) refers to technologies, applications and practices for the

collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. The purpose of

Business Intelligence is to support better business decision making. . Business Intelligence
is sometimes used interchangeably with briefing books, report and query tools .
Every company today relies on data. Given the variety, volume, and velocity of data, the best
outcomes from data can only be achieved by embracing Business Intelligence (BI). Like
every other technology, BI trends are constantly evolving. From early days when BI was
confined to spreadsheets bursting with numbers, today, technology allows for insightful
visualization and immediate action. Today, BI provides organizations with new and novel
ways to improve productivity, increase profits, and understand customers. As technology
advances with the blink of the eye, the future of BI looks extremely promising.

FUTURE OF BI:
1. DATA GOVERNANCE- In the realm of BI, data governance will become a top priority for
organizations big and small. This will also be driven by the number and complexity of data
sources and data types needed to support analytics initiatives that are increasing
exponentially. A sound data governance strategy will not only help improve ROI from BI
investments, it will also enable a healthy balance between data consistency and
transparency – setting the foundation of accurate, ethical, and evidence-based decision-
making.

2. SELF SERVICE BI- Although self-service BI is already popular, it will become a global
norm in the coming years, enabling users to get the insight they need to tackle challenging
business problems in a timely fashion. It will help optimize the decision-making capability
across the organizations while powering users with a single version of the truth – in whatever
they do.

3. PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS- Prescriptive analytics will examine data or content to

determine what steps need to be taken to achieve an intended goal. By gauging the impact
of future decisions, it will enable organizations to adjust the decisions before they are made
– thereby improving decision-making accuracy.

4. BI THROUGH NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING- As the relationship between

humans and machines becomes more and more profound, the growth of NLP is
unprecedented. In a few years, NLP will be used not just in the customer service
department, but also in other business areas. For example, NLP will allow not-so-savvy
employees to make sense of complicated systems and digital tools. It will also make BI-
based data more accessible and enable non-technical users to connect to data – quickly and
easily.

5. BI AS A SERVICE- Companies with humongous amounts of data, but having difficulty

accessing the data or driving insights from it, will look out for BI-as-a-Service options. This
model will deliver all the benefits of a full-fledged, end-to-end BI solution, but with the ease
and simplicity of a cloud deployment. BI-as-a-Service will enable organizations to get a BI
solution up and running in no time while freeing their IT staff from carrying out complex
analysis tasks.
6. COLLABORATIVE AND INTEGRATED BI- The coming years will witness collaborative
and integrative BI become increasingly mainstream. Unlike today when stand-alone BI tools
must be purchased and implemented separately, most enterprise systems will have built-in
BI capabilities, so users can unearth insights and make decisions – without ever leaving the
platform.