Contents

Part 1...............................................................................................................................................3

Produce a presentation which.......................................................................................................3

 Examines business process and supporting processes using specific examples...................3

 Shows the differentiate between unstructured and semi-structured data...........................3

 Evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of using application software for business
process.............................................................................................................................................3

Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3

Business process:....................................................................................................................3

Supporting process:................................................................................................................6

Unstructured and semi-structured data:.............................................................................8

Unstructured data VS semi-structured data within an organization:.............................10

Application software:...........................................................................................................12

Common types of application software:.............................................................................12

Benefits of using application software for business purposes:.........................................12

Drawbacks of using application software for business purpose:.....................................13

Conclusion:...............................................................................................................................14

Part 2 Write an article which.....................................................................................................15

 Compares the different types of support available for decision making at varying levels
within an organization.................................................................................................................15

 Justifies the key features of business intelligence functionality with reference to specific
examples........................................................................................................................................15

 Compares and contrasts different information systems and technologies that can be used
to support to support organizations at operational, tactical and strategic levels..................15

Introduction:.............................................................................................................................15

Decision making:..................................................................................................................15
 Level of decision making:....................................................................................................16

Support for business decision at various level within an organization:..........................16

Business intelligence:............................................................................................................18

Key features of business intelligence functionality:..........................................................18

Strategic Operational and Tactical Level Information Technology:..............................24

Range of information systems and technologies that can be used to support

organizations at operational, tactical and strategic levels................................................24

Strategic Level:.....................................................................................................................24

Operational level:.................................................................................................................25

Tactical Level:.......................................................................................................................26

Conclusion:...............................................................................................................................27

Part 3.............................................................................................................................................28

Prepare a report which includes the followings........................................................................28

Section1:........................................................................................................................................28

 In order to determine (establish) the concept what business intelligence is, illustrate the
concept with reference to specific examples. And, list out tools and techniques associated
with it............................................................................................................................................28

 Design a business intelligence tools/apps/program that can perform specific task to

support problem solving or decision making for your organization. Ensure how the design
is user friendly and has a functional ability..............................................................................28

 Write a few concluding paragraphs to provide a critical review of the design.................28

Introduction:.............................................................................................................................28

Business intelligence:............................................................................................................28

Example of BI system used in practice:..............................................................................29

Tools and techniques associated with BI:...........................................................................30

Part 1

Produce a presentation which

 Examines business process and supporting processes using specific examples

 Shows the differentiate between unstructured and semi-structured data

 Evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of using application software for business
process
Introduction:
A business process is a collection of linked tasks which find their end in the delivery of a service
or product to a client. A business process has also been defined as a set of activities and tasks
that, once completed, will accomplish an organizational goal. Since I am the founder as well as
Business analyst of my own IT company, it is my duty to run the company in profit by managing
the data in well manner with the help of some tools and techniques. In this part I am going to
present a Business Intelligence strategy for IT company, where I will examines business process
and supporting processes using specific examples as well as I will be showing the differentiate
between unstructured and semi-structured data and finally I will be evaluating the advantages
and disadvantages of using application software for business process for the growthiest as well as
betterment of my IT company.

Business process:
A business process is defined as a series of steps performed by a group of stakeholders to
achieve a concrete goal. These steps are often repeated many times, sometimes by multiple users
and ideally in a standardized and optimized way. A business process can be manual or
automated. If manual, the process is achieved without the aid of an automation or assisting
technology. If automated, a technology aid has been put into place which assists users in
implementing the process in a more accurate, standardized or optimized manner.

A business process can often be visualized as a flowchart or workflow of logical steps.

In order to progress in the business sector, it is much more necessary to analyze the data. Being
business analyst in IT company I have been able to analyze the business process with the help of
the data. The main policy of our company is to provide or manufacture the best application as
well as security system for the clients. So basically, I follow the three steps to examine the
business process.

 Talking with key personnel about the process:

While doing any kinds of the business there arises the different kinds of the problem,
once I identify a process to fix, I will discuss the process with the people responsible for
implementation. I always take the time to interview key participants, and ask them to
identify any potential improvements.
 I always ask my staff what they do and why they do it.
 I always determine the inputs needed to perform each task and where we obtain
each input. If our organization is manufacturing an application for a client, for
example, we need to know who supplies us products and how often the vendor
ships the product material to us.
 I always Identify the outputs of each task, and who receives the output. If I
manage an IT company, my company staff should document the work they
perform. The company staff should forward that information to our billing
department. The billing area produces a bill for the clients
 Ask for suggestions on how to resolve process inefficiencies that my staff
uncovers.
 Creating a business process flowchart for each process:
A process flowchart can help to visualize a business process. I can use the documentation
from my process discussions to create the flowchart. The flowchart should contain all of
the steps required to complete a particular business process.
  It is important to note that a business process flowchart should only contain the
defined procedures that employees must follow.
 Flowcharts may be prepared manually or with the use of software. Word
processors and spreadsheet programs with charting functionality can be used. I
can also find software that is designed to draw flowcharts.
 The flowchart is an excellent tool to clearly see the business process in front of
stakeholders. This visual tool can make it is much easier to identify and fix
inefficiencies.
 Once I make changes to a process, review the outcomes and see if the process
made the improvements my expected. If not, analyze the process again and try to
identify areas of improvement. Process analysis should be an ongoing task for my
business.

The above flow chart clearly describes the business process for my company.
Looking at the above flow chart we can under the way of doing business process
as well as the way of managing the business process.
 Conducting a brainstorming session to find process improvements:
Many processes involve more than one department in any business. Group sessions can
identify process inefficiencies that impact more than one department. These sessions can
 also validate the information provided during my one-on-one interviews with
participants.
 Summarizing the information, I have received and distribute it to process
participants. This should include both participants I have interviewed and others
that I did not interview. Asking for feedback from everyone. The feedback will
provide additional guidance for my analysis.
 Information received from participants in the process should provide me with a
clear idea how the process works, and what its issues are.
 The discussions with personnel become the basis for making changes to a process.
My changes may reduce costs, reduce cycle time, simplify a process or improve
customer service.

Supporting process:
Basically, support process is performed to maintain integrity of the product or service developed
by “primary processes” as well as it ensures that products and processes comply with predefined
provisions and plans. Supporting processes accompany the “primary processes”, which do not
typically result in final products of the organization, but rather indirectly contributes to the value
added. Documentation, configuration management, verification, training and audit process are all
supporting processes. For the profit the business process is not only enough there should be
supporting process. I am going to discuss about different supporting process in my IT company
with some examples.

 Administrative support process:

The administrative process is typically associated with finance, accounting, sales, or
human resources. The IT company has to manufacture the different kinds of the products
like software. So, in order to develop this kind of system the financial support is
necessary which is actually provided by the administrative. During this process the
administrative has to provide the best amount of money that is actually needed to
manufacture the product. As well as in order to do task in an organization employee is
much more necessary. Since the duty of the administration is to manage the human
resource. So, it has to provide the opportunity for the best employee who have the best
skills in IT fields. It should only appoint the best employee who have the capability to do
 the task. Since the administrative has lots of responsibility so, it performs the work only
analyzing the data or report. So, it can be said that the administrative support process is
much more necessary for doing the great business.
 Marketing support process:
In today’s world the marketing plays the vital role for the upliftment of the product.
Whenever the product is manufactured in an organization. The organization need to sell
the maximum amount of product but they cannot sell their maximum product in the
market because most of the people are unknown about their product that’s why marketing
is essential. So, the organization do the marketing of their product so that they can sell
their maximum stuffs. For ex: In my IT company we also follow the marketing policy.
Whenever we manufacture the product then we provide the detail of that product to the
marketing group of our company then they develop their plan by analyzing the pervious
marketing report and finally they do the marketing of the product according to the data
they have created by analyzing the pervious marketing data. So, that the people could
actually buy our product in huge amount. That’s why it can be said that the marketing
support process has a huge role for the upliftment of the business.
Unstructured and semi-structured data:
Data is information that has been translated into a form that is efficient for movement or
processing. It is considered as the key for doing any kind of business.

Basically, the data are of different types but according to the requirement of the task I am going
to discuss about the two types of data within an organization:

1) Unstructured data
2) Semi-structured data
 Unstructured data:
Unstructured data, in its simplest form means “Data in any form which does not easily
suitable into a data model or belong to a dataset of database tables.” Unstructured data
overcomes in formats including books, audios, videos, and even gatherings of documents.
Such unstructured data can be measurements of a building in the form of text, or chapters
within a novel, or markup on an HTML webpage.
Almost 40% to 80% of any enterprise’s data is in unstructured format. No matter the
actual percentage, there is slight doubt that the amount of unstructured data remains to
grow. Today our IT organization finds the capacity of data challenging, and integrating
such massive data with enterprise systems with the help of ill-equipped Data
Management tools is a challenging task. All said and done, unstructured data, for our
organization doesn’t necessarily have to be a problem.
Unstructured data, if managed appropriately, helps with new product development
(NPD), increased sales leads, meeting compliance requirements, improved Data
Governance, analyzing social media channels, and Business Intelligence system
integration. But before realizing the benefits of unstructured data, our organization should
identify unstructured data formats.
 Unstructured data formats:
1. Text documents:
 Several combinations of word documents or word files, text files, emails and alike
contribute to the largest amount of unstructured data. Our organization is already
on the run to manage unstructured data to cull out useful information from the
talisman of corporate email. Content management systems are only partially
useful in helping organizations manage and derive information from the data in
the form of unstructured text documents.
2. Web pages:
The immense growth of social media and interactive web are the next most
contributors to unstructured data. Websites which are data-driven usually leverage
fully normalized databases as their back end. Using unstructured data can keep
them away from desired results. These webpages also provide opportunities, but
only to organizations which are capable of managing and deriving value from that
data. Graph databases, a byproduct of data visualization, are also used to find
relationships between social media users and their consumer preferences.
Organizations can leverage revenue from these, but only by analyzing
unstructured datasets. That’s why our organization is doing so.
3. Audio, Video, Images (Media Formats):
Since, audio, video and images are all unstructured data formats. The only thing
that is common in these file formats is that they can be stored and managed
without the format of the file being understood by the system. It allows them to be
stored and utilized for future purpose in an unstructured fashion because the
content of such files is unorganized. Intelligent real-time analysis of audio data is
on the rise in digital audio recording and processing – but is used less as
compared to other two formats. Managing these unstructured data files really
helps; iTunes music store is an excellent example. Band names, genres, and
related artists drive Apple’s music recommendation services.
4. PowerPoint & MS Project Office: Common Software Data Formats:
Files created in Microsoft Office or any other office suits have a gamut of data
formats. MS Access creates and manages completely structured database files –
but in their own formats. PowerPoint and Microsoft excel have a proven history
of making it really challenging for organizations to include information from
 these formats and into their corporate reporting mechanism. Apart from office
suites, the other epicenters of unstructured data formats are commercial
applications such as customer management (CRM) tools, larger enterprise
resource planning (ERP) applications like SAP, or even architectural drafting
applications like AutoCAD; which come in with proprietary data formats.
Once any enterprise identifies the types of unstructured data to derive meaningful
information from the mass of unstructured data, they are now required to capture
that data. Data mining and data scraping is done for extraction of information
from data at its most basic level.
 Semi-structured data:
Semi-structured data is a form of structured data that does not obey the formal structure
of data models associated with relational databases or other forms of data tables, but
nonetheless contains tags or other markers to separate semantic elements and enforce
hierarchies of records and fields within the data. Therefore, it is also known as self-
describing structure. In semi-structured data, the entities belonging to the same class may
have different attributes even though they are grouped together, and the attributes' order
is not important.
Examples of semi-structured: CSV but XML and JSON documents are semi structured
documents, NoSQL databases are considered as semi structured.

Unstructured data VS semi-structured data within an organization:

Unstructured and semi-structured data have different meanings depending on their context. In the
context of relational database systems, unstructured data cannot be stored in predictably ordered
columns and rows. One type of unstructured data is typically stored in a BLOB (binary large
object), a catch-all data type available in most relational database management systems.
Unstructured data may also refer to irregularly or randomly repeated column patterns that vary
from row to row within each file or document.

Many of these data types, however, like e-mails, word processing text files, PPTs, image-files,
and video-files conform to a standard that offers the possibility of metadata. Metadata can
include information such as author and time of creation, and this can be stored in a relational
database. Therefore, it may be more accurate to talk about this as semi-structured documents or
data, but no specific consensus seems to have been reached. Unstructured data can also simply
be the knowledge that business users have about future business trends. Our IT company
naturally aligns with the BI system because business users think of their business in aggregate
terms. Capturing the business knowledge that may only exist in the minds of business users
provides some of the most important data points for a complete BI solution.

Now with respect to my IT company I am going to give the difference between the unstructured
and semi-structured data. In our company we prefer to use the unstructured data more than the
semi-structured data. Our company is doing the business and to do business the data is the
important thing. If our company need to develop the application for the clients then we need to
do the research on that particular application and we collect the data in the form of text, video,
etc. which are basically known as unstructured data. So, for doing the research purposes and
presenting the application for the client to make them clearly understand we use the unstructured
data. Even the unstructured data are in different formats like webpages, text, video, etc. it is very
difficult to search for the particular data but it makes the business process much easier. It is not
like that our company doesn’t use semi-structured data. Even semi-structured data are more
useful for ex: email. If we have to share any kinds of the file (research file based on application)
to our clients then with the help of the email we attached the file in the email and sends them.
Since, our IT company is mainly based on the research things so used to prefer unstructured data
more than the semi-structured data.

The difference between unstructured and semi-structured data on the basis of their properties
within an organization are as:
Application software:
Application software is that which is used directly by the user for the sole purpose of completing
a certain task. This type of software needs to be installed separately on a device, and it regularly
has interfaces that enables communication between the machine and the user, hence giving rise
to many different advantages and disadvantages.

For instance, considering a program that allows us to work with databases. This is a software that
is used for a specific application, so it falls under this category. It is universally assumed that
they have many advantages, and we will be hard pressed to find disadvantages for the same
because ultimately, the purpose of all these devices is to perform many tasks with their help.

Common types of application software:

The different types of application software are used by individual users and business enterprises
like our IT company as well, and they have many benefits of doing so. This includes word
processing software, database software, multimedia software, editing software, and many other
different kinds as well. All this software is either provided individually, or they are packaged
together and sold by business to business sellers. When a whole variety of them are integrated
collectively and sold to a business, they can take up the form of enterprise software, educational
software, simulation software, information worker software, etc.
Benefits of using application software for business purposes:
When we begin to compare, we will find that the pros outweigh the cons very easily. With that in
mind, here are some of their most popular and widely accepted benefits. In this scenario, I am
speaking of application software that is designed for a specific purpose, to be used for business
purposes.

 Their single biggest advantage is that they meet the exact needs of the clients. Since they
are designed specifically with one purpose in mind, the clients know that he has to use
one specific software to accomplish his task. for ex If a client come in our company
telling that he wants a video editing software having different features then according to
that our company will designed that application. Since, he knows the features of that
software so, it will become easier for him to handle it.
 The threat of viruses invading custom-made applications is very small, since any business
that incorporates it can restrict access and can come up with means to protect their
network as well.
 Licensed application software gets regular updates from the developer for security
reasons. Additionally, the developer also regularly sends personnel to correct any
problems that may arise from time to time.

Drawbacks of using application software for business purpose:

As is the case with all such matters, there are certain disadvantages of such software as well.
Though these are not spoken about very often, nor are they highlighted, the fact is that they do
exist and affect certain users. But people have accepted these misgivings and still continue to use
such software because their utility and importance is much more profound than their weaknesses.

 Developing application software designed to meet specific purposes can prove to be quite
costly for developers. This can affect their budget and their revenue flow, especially if
too much time is spent developing a software that is not generally acceptable.
 Some software that are designed specifically for a certain business, may not be
compatible with other general software. This is something that can prove to be a major
stumbling block for many corporations.
  Developing them is something that takes a lot of time, because it needs constant
communication between the developer and the customer. This delays the entire
production process, which can prove to be harmful in some cases.
 Application software that is used commonly by many people, and then shared online,
carries a very real threat of infection by a computer virus or other malicious programs.

So, whether we are buying them off the shelf, or whether we are hiring a developer to build
specific software for our organization, all of these points will seem pertinent to us. Many
individuals and organization have regularly found the need and the requirement for such
software, and the fact remains that any computing device will be utterly useless without such
software running on it.

Conclusion:
In this task I had successfully examined business process and supporting processes for my IT
company using specific examples. I had also shown the differentiate between unstructured and
semi-structured data within my organization. As well as I had evaluated the advantages and
disadvantages of using application software for business with suitable examples and justification.
Part 2 Write an article which

 Compares the different types of support available for decision making at varying levels
within an organization.

 Justifies the key features of business intelligence functionality with reference to specific
examples.

 Compares and contrasts different information systems and technologies that can be used
to support to support organizations at operational, tactical and strategic levels.
Introduction:
Being the founder as well as business analysist of IT company it my duty to run the business in
profitable order by taking the important types of decision. In this part I am going to compares the
different types of support available for decision making for decision making at varying levels
within an organization also I am going to justify the key features of business intelligence
functionality with reference to specific examples as well as I am going to compare and contrasts
different information systems and technologies that can be used to support organizations at
operational, tactical and strategic levels.

Decision making:
The definition of decision making is the thought process of selecting a logical choice from
among the available options.

A decision involves a choice that will produce the best possible outcome against the goal or
objectives being sought by the organization or individual. So, it is good to have first worked out
what our goals and objectives are first before decision making.

For effective decision making, a person must be able to forecast the outcome of each option as
well, and based on all these items, determine which option is the best for that particular situation.

It is one of the most important things or skills for a manager. Good decisions can make
phenomenal difference to the success of our organization. In the company in which I used to
work; decision-making was ranked as three times more than any other factor in job assessment.
(The other most important factors were relationships and responsibility.)

The eminent management consultant Peter Drucker states in his book The Effective Executive
that the first rule of decision-making is that we do not make a decision unless there has been
disagreement: encourage our staff to debate ideas and alternatives.

Level of decision making:

Managers at all levels must make decisions on behalf of a company. The difference between
decisions at various levels lies in the scope of the choices made. Long-term decisions affecting
the company as a whole belong to the highest management levels, while decisions affecting day-
to-day operations fall to bottom management. All decisions relate directly or indirectly to
broader management functions: planning, organizing, leading, staffing and controlling. Different
management levels spend more time on certain functions than on others.

All business and management activity follow from a company’s mission – its reason for being in
business. A company’s board or owners create the mission and write a mission statement for the
internal and external audiences. Success in accomplishing the mission could take many forms.
The form chosen gives a company its vision, an ideal the business seeks to actualize.

Support for business decision at various level within an organization:

Types of decision making:

 Strategic decisions are long-term in their impact. They affect and shape the direction of
the whole business. They are generally made by senior managers. The managers of the IT
company need to take a strategic decision about whether to remain in the custom-made
software business. Long-term forecasts of business turnover set against likely market
conditions will help to determine if it should close the custom-made software business.

 Tactical decisions help to implement the strategy. They are usually made by middle level
management. For the IT company, a tactical decision would be whether to add new
feature on the custom-made software to attract new customers. Managers would want
 research data on likely customer numbers to help them decide if adding features should
be done.

 Operational decisions relate to the day-to-day running of the business. They are mainly
routine and may be taken by middle or junior managers. For example, a simple
operational decision for the IT company would be whether to order more hardware
devices for next week. Stock and sales data will show when it needs to order more
supplies.

Upper Level Management Needs a Strategic Plan:

Upper level management must translate the vast scope of mission and vision into concrete
achievements over time. In other words, upper level management needs a strategic plan.
Decisions related to strategy involve company-wide matters enacted over the long term. The
goals are what the company hopes to accomplish at least a year – more often five years – into the
future.

Management then chooses a grand strategy, such as growth or diversification, to reach strategic
goals. Of all management levels, upper level managers spend the most time making decisions
involving plans. They also have decision power over middle level management.

Middle Level Management Accomplish Strategic Goals:

Once upper level management decides the overall direction of the company, it’s up to middle
level management to choose smaller tactical objectives that, put together, accomplish strategic
goals. Middle level managers create tactical plans, which have more detail than strategic plans.
The tactics often are geared toward some function or department such as production, where a
possible objective could involve some measurable efficiency or quality improvement.

Middle level management’s choices and plans see fruition in a year or less. Managers in this tier
oversee other middle level managers or operational level managers.

First-Line or Operational Level Management:

Also called first-line management, operational level management is the level directly responsible
for employees. By choosing their own goals on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, first-line
management accomplishes the objectives of middle level management. The scope of operational
level management covers departments, sections or teams.

Inventory, scheduling and budgeting are examples of plans and decisions that operational
managers adopt. Goals might include a certain number of sales for the day.

Business intelligence:
Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the
data analysis of business information. BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive
views of business operations. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include
reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, complex event
processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics
and prescriptive analytics. BI technologies can handle large amounts of structured and
sometimes unstructured data to help identify, develop and otherwise create new strategic
business opportunities. They aim to allow for the easy interpretation of these big data.
Identifying new opportunities and implementing an effective strategy based on insights can
provide businesses with a competitive market advantage and long-term stability.

Key features of business intelligence functionality:

Since, our company is in the market for BI software, it’s vital to know the essential business
intelligence features to look for. Here’s my recommended list of the 10 key features of business
intelligence tools that will help our as well as other organizations to improve their business
strategies.

The most important business intelligence features include:

 Ranking Reports:
Ranking reports let us easily view the best- and worst-performing facets of our business,
from products to marketing campaigns to salespeople. We can view rankings across
multiple dimensions and specify various criteria to focus our results. For ex: our IT
company is doing the marketing for different application for 2 years then with the help of
 the ranking report it can be found weather the marketing idea is doing best or worst
performance in terms of our business.

This is the ranking report of our it company in terms of marketing. From the above
ranking report, it is clear that our company has done 6% profit in the business. So,
marketing is good idea to uplift the business. Like this, with the help of the ranking report
one can easily compare the ranking of their company in terms of product, marketing etc.
and can generate the best idea to uplift their business.
 What-If Analysis:
If we’re curious about how a future decision will affect our business, we can run a “what-
if” analysis using past data to predict the potential impacts. Tools for what-if analyses
give us an objective view of the risks and rewards involved in each potential decision,
and allow us to plan better for the future.
 Executive Dashboards:
Executive dashboards give our organization’s leaders a real-time overview of our
business in the form of graphs, charts, summaries and other information reports. They
allow our company’s executives to make smarter, faster and better decisions.
 This above is the sales dashboard system of my IT company. In the above sales
dashboard system, every information related to sales can be seen like: number of sales,
profit, expenses incurred and sales of initial and final moth. With the help of this it will
be easier for me to take the better decision.
 Interactive Reports:
Basically, interactive reports allow us to condense the massive amounts of collected data
into a wide variety of possible views. We can take advantages of features like statistical
analysis and regression to identify trends, anomalies and outliers in the data.
 This above is the interactive reports of the product ordered in my IT company. With the
help of this report we can easily analyze the data and can make the better decision.
 Geospatial Mapping:
Applications using location intelligence can take our information and transform it into
graphical and cartographic representations, simplifying our geographical data. At a
glance, judging which regions are performing better than others and which ones need
particular attention becomes much easier. For ex: if our IT company wants to sell the
product to the different parts of the country then with the help of the geospatial mapping
it will be easier for us to sell the product to the different part of the country because
geospatial mapping takes the data from our organization i.e. data about the product and
gives us the result which parts of country has high probability to buy the product.
 Operational Reports:
At the end of each day, business intelligence features like these can provide our
organization’s executives with a detailed summary of the daily events, giving us the
information, we need to make critical decisions. For ex: if our IT company is doing the
testing on the custom-made application then with the help of the operational reports it
will be easier for me to get the daily reports on testing with the help of that reports, I
could make the better decision which helps in the upliftment of business.
 Pivot Table:
Pivot tables can automatically extract significant features from a large, messy set of data.
They can perform calculations such as sorting, counting or averaging the data stored in
one table, and show the summarized results in another table. Pivot tables are essential
tools for analyzing information and uncovering hidden trends. For ex: in our IT company
there are large amount of messy set of data with the help of the pivot tables we could
easily get the summarized results from those messy data because the pivot tables perform
calculations such as sorting, counting or averaging the data stored in one table, and show
the summarized results in another table.
 Ad-Hoc Reports:
Instead of burdening my IT department with requests for detailed reports, ad-hoc reports
are one of several important features of BI that let mine nontechnical end-users generate
 their own reports on the fly. Users can pick and choose the elements that they wish to be
included in the report, emphasizing only those aspects that are relevant to their query.

The above screenshot is the ad-hoc report on sales by category of my IT company. From
this report the data can be analyze perfectly and better decision could be made.
 User-Specific Security:
If we need to restrict certain users’ access to particular data sets, our BI tool should allow
us to personalize our BI features and applications to individuals or groups of users. Some
solutions provide user-specific data sources, where a single application pulls from
different sources of data depending on who’s using the application.
 This above screenshot is the example of the user-specific security of my IT company.
The above identity and access management software in my IT company first identify the
role of the person and provides the access of data to him according to his/her role.
 Open Integration:
Smart BI platforms will be able to access not only our organization’s own data, but
information from email, social media, websites and more. For example, instead of only
providing our internal sales data, our BI platform could accompany that information with
reviews and comments about our products.
With so many data formats and so many applications to pull from, it’s important that our
BI platform is able to integrate as many different types of data as possible under a single
roof, seamlessly combining disparate forms of information into an actionable report.
Strategic Operational and Tactical Level Information Technology:
It is the combination of Information Technology and people using it to carry out operations and
management. In a large sense it is frequently used with in people to process data and technology.
It is also referred to Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which is used in
organization, where people work with this to support business processes.

There is a clear different between information system, ICT and business process. IT is
completely different from information system; information system consists of ICT component.
Information system helps to control the performance of business process.

Information system is a special type of work system, which produces products or services for
customer, where human and machines perform work using ICT and resources. Information
system purpose is to process information.

Information system is a system which represents data and process as a form of social memory.
Information system supports human decision making and action.

Range of information systems and technologies that can be used to support organizations at
operational, tactical and strategic levels.
Strategic Level:
Strategic plans are designed with the entire organization in mind and begin with an organization's
mission. Top-level managers, such as CEOs or presidents, will design and execute strategic plans
to paint a picture of the desired future and long-term goals of the organization. Essentially,
strategic plans look ahead to where the organization wants to be in three, five, even ten years.
Strategic plans, provided by top-level managers, serve as the framework for lower-level
planning. Range of information systems and technologies that can be used to support
organizations at strategic level are:

 IS (Information system) and technology supports business processes and operations:

IS and technology helps managers to execute their daily activities and functions properly,
for example, in our IT company, creation of software, statement generation etc. take
place; and IS and technology helps managers control such activities with greater accuracy
and in a timely manner with the help of software.
 IS and technology supports decision making for managers and employees:
 IS and technology takes data as input and then processes it to generate information;
simply defined as Input Ĭ Process Ĭ Information. This information is used by the
managers for the improvement of their organizations, for example, existing historical data
about custom made software in our IT company can be analyzed by IS and technology
then an important information can be generated like bad custom-made software and good
custom-made software, etc. This information can be used by managers while deciding
whether to approve particular custom-made software or not.
 IS and technology supports in making strategic decision for competitive advantage:
By analyzing data collected from different sources, IS and technology can provide
valuable information such as which items to launch in which location; so that the
company can have advantage over their competitors using this information. IS and
technology can also help business houses; in carrying out their business processes
differently than their competitors.

Operational level:
They are the plans that are made by frontline, or low-level, managers. All operational plans are
focused on the specific procedures and processes that occur within the lowest levels of the
organization. Managers must plan the routine tasks of the department using a high level of detail.
Range of information systems and technologies that can be used to support organizations at
organizational level are:

 IS and technology promises Operational excellence:

In order to achieve higher profitability, businesses improve their operations’ efficiency.
Managers make use of IS and technology in business operations to achieve higher levels
of productivity and efficiency. An excellent example is the use of the Retail Link system
at Wal-Mart; this system digitally links every one of the Wal-Mart’s stores with its
suppliers; the supplier is monitoring the items and as soon as an item is purchased, the
supplier knows that a replacement must be shipped to the shelf.
 IS and technology helps create new products, business models and services:
In firms, Information system and technology is a crucial tool in creating new services and
products and new business models. Business models describe how the companies
produce, deliver and sells a product or service to be successful. An example is our IT
 company; it transformed an old business model which was based on its application
development technology platform that included android development, windows
application development and custom-made application development.
 IS and technology helps monitor & increase Supplier/Customer intimacy:
IS and technology helps monitor & increase Supplier/Customer intimacy: When a
customer is served well by a business, he usually responds by returning and purchasing
more from the business; this raises the profits and revenues of the business. The more the
business engages its suppliers, the better the suppliers are able to provide vital inputs;
which in turn lowers costs. For example: our IT company illustrate the use of IS and
technology to achieve better customer intimacy. We track customer preferences using
computers, such as their preferred application, delivery in time and extra features for their
ordered application.

Tactical Level:
Tactical plans support strategic plans by translating them into specific plans relevant to a distinct
area of the organization. Tactical plans are concerned with the responsibility and functionality of
lower-level departments to fulfill their parts of the strategic plan. Range of information systems
and technologies that can be used to support organizations at tactical level are:

 IS and technology helps making better decisions:

Many managers operate in an information bank and they never have the relevant
information at the right moment to make a learned decision; poor outcomes like these
loose customers and raise costs. Managers can use real time data while making decisions;
IS and technology allow managers to use real-time data from the marketplace while
making decisions. An example is my IT company, which uses a Web-based digital
dashboard that gives managers accurate real-time information on customer complaints
and software performances. By using this information, managers can rapidly inform
customers of the repair work, assign repair resources to the involved areas, and restore
service promptly.
 Competitive advantage:
When the firms achieve the business objectives, for example, customer intimacy,
operational excellence, improved decision making, new services, products and business
 models, then it is most like that they have achieved a competitive advantage already.
Accomplishing these things finer than their objects, responding to suppliers and
customers in real time, charging less for premium products all add up to higher sales and
profits. An example is My IT company which mainly focuses on organizing work to
make continuous improvements, eliminating waste; My IT company is based on what the
customers actually ordered.

Conclusion:
In this part I had compared the different types of support available for decision making for
decision making at varying levels within an organization also I had justified the key features of
business intelligence functionality with reference to specific examples as well as I had compared
and contrasts different information systems and technologies that can be used to support to
support organizations at operational, tactical and strategic levels.
Part 3

Prepare a report which includes the followings.

Section1:

 In order to determine (establish) the concept what business intelligence is, illustrate the
concept with reference to specific examples. And, list out tools and techniques associated
with it.

 Design a business intelligence tools/apps/program that can perform specific task to

support problem solving or decision making for your organization. Ensure how the design
is user friendly and has a functional ability.

 Write a few concluding paragraphs to provide a critical review of the design.

Introduction:
In order to run the business in intelligence way it is much more necessary to have the concepts
about the tools and techniques associated with BI. Being founder as well as Business analyst of
IT company I should have vey good knowledge about the BI to run the business in profitable
order. So, in this section of task I am going to determine, with examples, what business
intelligence is and the tools and techniques associated with it as well as I am going to design a
business intelligence tool, application or interface that can perform a specific task to support
problem-solving or decision-making at an advanced level also I am going to customize the
design to ensure that it is user-friendly and has a functional interface and finally I am going to
provide a critical review of the design in terms of how it meets a specific user or business
requirement and identifying what customization has been integrated into the design.
Business intelligence:
BI (Business Intelligence) is a set of processes, architectures, and technologies that convert raw
data into meaningful information that drives profitable business actions. It is a suite of software
and services to transform data into actionable intelligence and knowledge.

BI has a direct impact on organization's strategic, tactical and operational business decisions. BI
supports fact-based decision making using historical data rather than assumptions and gut
feeling.

BI tools perform data analysis and create reports, summaries, dashboards, maps, graphs, and
charts to provide users with detailed intelligence about the nature of the business.

Example of BI system used in practice:

Eample1:

In an Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) system information that could be fed into product
database could be

 add a product line

 change a product price
Correspondingly, in a Business Intelligence system query that would be executed for the product
subject area could be did the addition of new product line or change in product price increase
revenues

In an advertising database of OLTP system query that could be executed

 Changed in advertisement options

 Increase radio budget

Correspondingly, in BI system query that could be executed would be how many new clients
added due to change in radio budget

In OLTP system dealing with customer demographic data bases data that could be fed would be

 increase customer credit limit

 change in customer salary level

Correspondingly in the OLAP system query that could be executed would be can customer
profile changes support higher product price.

Example 2:

In my IT company I give my manager to access BI applications. It helps my manager to

determine who are the most profitable customers and which customers they should work on.

The use of BI tools frees information technology staff from the task of generating analytical
reports for the departments. It also gives department personnel access to a richer data source.

Example 3:

A hotel owner uses BI analytical applications to gather statistical information regarding average
occupancy and room rate. It helps to find aggregate revenue generated per room.

It also collects statistics on market share and data from customer surveys from each hotel to
decides its competitive position in various markets.

By analyzing these trends year by year, month by month and day by day helps management to
offer discounts on room rentals.
Tools and techniques associated with BI:
Today, Organizations & Enterprises in all domains have information-intensive processes.

Initially, they leverage the reporting capabilities with integration with spreadsheets. This only
created a pool of data which could not contribute to insight for decision –making. This approach
wastes time & resources on comparing & merging data from this data pool, where data is
unstructured and large.

When the boundaries and overheads of this approach become obvious, then an enterprise is ready
for BI technology that's free from their operational applications.

The level of the information that needs to be analyzed will vary by industry and enterprise size,
however, all domains can make efficient use of BI capabilities to grow their business. Some tools
and techniques associated with BI are as follows:

 Tableau:
Basically, tableau is one of the most popular types of BI tools. It is simple enough that
the non-technical users can easily create customized dashboards and other reports to find
valuable insights. Tableau is so popular that many people consider it the de facto BI tool
and search to understand the difference between Tableau and the competition. In my
company Tableau is mostly used by the non-technical staffs.
 The above screenshot is the screenshot of the dashboard that are created by my staff with
the help of the Tableau.
 Qlik:
Among the best tools used in business intelligence is Qlik, with its guided tool,
QlikView, and self-service business intelligence tool, Qlik Sense. This powerful program
offers fully interactive data operation, which allows users to explore data at all times
during input, processing and output.
QlikView also offers a system memory function that displays every action that took place
during analysis. QlikView is an extremely powerful BI tool with solid performance all
around. That’s why in my IT we are using the Qlik tool.

Qlik provides robust BI capabilities

 Microsoft power BI:
The main reason for choosing the Microsoft power BI in my IT company is that it has
earned a top score on our leaderboard in several areas, including interactive
visualizations, predictive analytics, mobile access, export of analytics reports, big data
integration and storyboarding, ensuring this solution is a powerful data visualizer.
 Microsoft Power BI’s customizable dashboard
 Sisense:
In my IT company from the long time my staffs are using the Sisense tools for a long
time the main reason is that the Sisense BI platform provides one of the most popular,
and one of our top-rated, all-in-one BI solutions. This solution offers a user-friendly
interface, powerful data visualization tools and interactive dashboards designed for quick
and easy use. Sisense also includes in-memory database tools and SQL server integration,
so that no matter where your data is, you can analyze it. Or rather, Sisense can analyze it.

Sisense helps users understand data through vibrant visualizations

  Oracle BI:
Oracle BI tool is also used in my IT company because it is considered as the another top
tool. While Oracle shares commonalities with QlikView, it also boasts especially strong
geospatial visualization capabilities, including advanced mapping controls and fantastic
dashboard integration. In addition, it performs exceptionally well when exporting
analytics reports.
With Oracle BI, we can easily and intuitively interact with each other; view reports
online; and publish, send and schedule reports to a variety of outputs such as SMS. While
Oracle has limited benchmarking capability, its Scorecard and Strategy Management
features allow us to establish goals and measure our success over a period of time, while
also communicating progress and information to my IT company.

Oracle’s BI interface

Business intelligence doesn’t have to be scary — there are a variety of resources to educate and
empower buyers. There are plenty of types of different BI tools out there to explore and
experiment with. The more educated the user base becomes, the more comprehensive and
powerful the options will become. BI is a versatile and powerful resource, and can be useful to
almost every industry.
Screenshots of business intelligence tool, application or interface that can perform a
specific task to support problem-solving or decision-making at an advanced level:
Codding:

Justifications:
In above I have presented the Screenshots of business intelligence tool, application or interface
that can perform a specific task to support problem-solving or decision-making at an advanced
level. In order to develop these tools, I have used excel. Using the developer function available
in excel I have designed this application. With the help of this application one can easily make
the decision according to his/her need and can uplift their business status. This application is
much more user friendly. It is easy to do. And the output from this tool will be hundred percent
effective.
Initial design:
Customized design:

In order to be user friendly, the interface should contain the following kinds of the features:

 Simple:
A user-friendly interface is not overly complex, but instead is straightforward, providing
quick access to common features or commands.
 Clean:
A good user interface is well-organized, making it easy to locate different tools and
options.
 Intuitive:
In order to be user-friendly, an interface must be making sense to the average user and
should require minimal explanation for how to use it.
 Reliable:
An unreliable product is not user-friendly, since it will cause undue frustration for the
user. A user-friendly product is reliable and does not malfunction or crash.
In the customized design there are lot more functionality like: client chart, profit chart, rank chart
and sells chart are presents, these functionalities can help an organization in decision making but
in the initial design only few functionalities are presents so customized design is much simple
than the initial design. Since more functionalities are present in customized design as well as all
the tools and options are easily located in the customized tools. The presence of necessary tools
will make sense to the average users and require minimal explanation for how to use the
customized design. The customized design doesn’t require internet access to operate so, there
will less probability of malfunction. Since, customized design has all the features of user friendly
and has a functional interface. So, it can be ensuring that customized design is user-friendly and
has a functional interface.

Screenshots of the additional functionality in customized design:

The screenshots of the additional functionality like sales chart, profit chart, etc. are as follows.

Fig: Sales Chart

Fig: Profit Chart