WHAT IS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE?

Business Intelligence is a broad array of applications or technologies designed for storing, gathering, analyzing, and processing information. BI is bringing the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format.

Business Intelligence
BI is neither a product nor a system. It is an architecture and a collection of integrated operational as well as decision-support applications and databases that provide the business community easy access to business data.

5-step process
1. Registering the right data correctly. 2. Collecting the data from multiple sources. 3. Transforming the data. 4. Combining the data 5. Storing the data in a warehouse.

BI Popularized
In 1989 Howard Dresner a Research Fellow at Gartner Group popularized "BI" as an umbrella term to describe a set of concepts and methods to improve business decision-making by using fact-based support systems

WHY DO WE NEED BI?

Business Intelligence is a decisions support system and database that can provide professionals with the information they need to make the most effective decisions for their organization. It also provides data about the organizations details, such as customers, products, and services. Business Intelligence is used to track a wide scope of unruly data.

WHO USES BI?

Business Intelligence software and applications are not easily affordable, therefore they are most commonly used in large corporations, rather then small business. Yet there are new companies on the rise that are providing Business Intelligence applications to mid-sized organizations for a some what affordable fee.

How It Works?

More data and data sources

Why BI solutions ?

BI applications and technologies can help companies analyze:

changing trends in market share changes in customer behavior and spending patterns customers' preferences

company capabilities market conditions

Suggested Methodology of Building BI Systems

Building and implementing BI systems require organisations which is related to: thorough and ongoing research into organisations informational needs (present and future); authentic co-operation of the users involved (i.e. decision makers and operational personnel)with organisations IT departments and knowledge management centres; information sharing; and abilities to interpret analyses and use such analyses in management properly. Using BI systems will succeed in business only when their users keep: identifying and modelling knowledge; monitoring and modifying data repositories; creating their own analyses and reports; learning how to interpret results and ask sophisticated questions; and improving business and decision making on the ongoing basis.

Suggested Methodology of Building BI Systems

BI creation is the most time consuming and this stage requires the greatest part of financial and manpower resources in the whole BI life cycle. BI creation consists of numerous stages including in particular: definition of the BI undertaking, i.e. determination of the BI system development strategies; identification and preparation of source data; selection of BI tools; designing and implementing of BI; and discovering and exploring new informational needs and other business applications and practices.

Development of management information systems

complexity level
reporting, data visualization

BI
data mining, OLAP, date warehouse

EIS

reasoning bases, knowledge bases

ES
data models, interface

DSS MIS

databases, algorithms of processing

Time

strategy of the BI System Development

The most important motives that support implementation of BI systems in enterprises may include: transitioning from instinct and intuition decision making to objectivism that is based on the analysis of facts, indexes, balanced score cards, managerial cockpits, etc.; forecasting enterprise development along with customers and suppliers behaviour; matching operational activities with realisation of strategic objectives (measuring development in the realisation of strategies, monitoring of business process effectiveness, matching budgets and investments with corporate strategies); implementing standards that are used as the basis for repetitive, regular and cyclical business processes within organisations; unifying informational transfers in order to make them more transparent and unifying roles of individuals who participate in decision making processes;

strategy of the BI System Development

rapid detecting of information that deviates from commonly accepted standards and procedures and that suggests some possibilities that new threats will emerge (dishonest customers, inflated material or energy usage, etc.); shortening time that is necessary to analyse information, and decreasing a number of participants who are involved in analysing and processing of information; and automatic and rapid reporting and preparing of plans and forecasts.

strategy of the BI System Development

Identification and Preparation of Data for the BI System Selection of BI Tools Designing and Implementing the BI System Exploring and Discovering New Informational Needs. BI consumption stage

Customer relationship management (CRM)

It is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a companys interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processesprincipally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service

The three phases in which CRM support the relationship between a business and its customers are to: Acquire: CRM can help a business acquire new customers through contact management, selling, and fulfillment. Enhance: web-enabled CRM combined with customer service tools offers customers service from a team of sales and service specialists, which offers customers the convenience of one-stop shopping. Retain: CRM software and databases enable a business to identify and reward its loyal customers and further develop its targeted marketing and relationship marketing initiatives.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

The use of a CRM system will confer several advantages to a company: Quality and efficiency Decreased costs Decision support Enterprise agility Types Sales force automation(SFA) Marketing Customer service and support Analytics Integrated/Collaborative Small business Social media Non-profit and membership-based

Implementation issues Poor planning Poor integration Toward a solution Adoption issues Choose a system that is easy to use Choose appropriate capabilities Provide training Lead by example Service Providers SAP Oracle Microsoft etc.

DATA SOURCES
In rst stage, it is necessary to gather and integrate the data stored in the various primary and secondary sources, which are heterogeneous in origin and type. The sources consist for the most part of data belonging to operational systems Also include unstructured documents, such as emails and data received from external providers

DATA MART

A data mart is a repository of data gathered from operational data and other sources that is designed to serve a particular community of knowledge workers. The emphasis of a data mart is on meeting the specific demands of a particular group of knowledge users in terms of analysis, content, presentation and ease-of-use. Users of a data mart can expect to have data presented in terms that are familiar.

Reasons for creating a data mart

Easy access to frequently needed data Creates collective view by a group of users Improves end-user response time Ease of creation Lower cost than implementing a full Data warehouse Potential users are more clearly defined than in a full Data warehouse

DATA WAREHOUSE

A data warehouse is a place where data is stored for archival, analysis and security purposes. Usually a data warehouse is either a single computer or many computers (servers) tied together to create one giant computer system. Data can consist of raw data or formatted data. It can be on various types of topics including organization's sales, salaries, operational data, summaries of data including reports, copies of data, human resource data, inventory data, external data to provide simulations and analysis, etc.

Types of Data Warehouses

Offline Operational Data Warehouses. Offline Data Warehouses . Real Time Data Warehouses . Integrated Data Warehouses.

DATA MINING

Data mining, a branch of computer science and artificial intelligence is the process of extracting patterns from data. Data mining is seen as an increasingly important tool by modern business to transform data into business intelligence giving an informational advantage. It is currently used in a wide range of profiling practices, suchs marketing, fraud detection, and scientific discovery.

What Can Data Mining Do?

Market segmentation - Identify the common characteristics of customers who buy the same products from your company. Customer churn - Predict which customers are likely to leave your company and go to a competitor. Fraud detection - Identify which transactions are most likely to be fraudulent. Direct marketing - Identify which prospects should be included in a mailing list to obtain the highest response rate. Interactive marketing - Predict what each individual accessing a Web site is most likely interested in seeing. Market basket analysis - Understand what products or services are commonly purchased together; e.g., beer and diapers. Trend analysis - Reveal the difference between a typical customer this month and last.

BI Tools:

In a recent poll on this website we asked our visitors to vote for what they think contributes most to the success of Business Intelligence. Most voters (approx. 50%) think that the success depends highly on using the best BI tool

 Principle tools include:

Software for database query and reporting Online analytical processing (OLAP) Data mining

Choosing and selecting a BI tool:

Create a business intelligence strategy Define criteria in business terms Create a short-list. Invite vendors for a live demonstration Perform a proof-of-concept (PoC) Negotiate with BI vendors Close the deal

Online analytical processing (OLAP)

Supports multidimensional data analysis Enables viewing data using multiple dimensions Each aspect of information (product, pricing, cost, region, time period) is different dimension E.g. how many washers sold in East in June OLAP enables rapid, online answers to ad hoc queries.

ETL Tools:
The term ETL which stands for extract, transform, and load is a three-stage process in database usage and data warehousing. It enables integration and analysis of the data stored in different databases and heterogeneous formats. After it is collected from multiple sources (extraction), the data is reformatted and cleansed for operational needs (transformation). Finally, it is loaded into a target database, data warehouse or a data mart to be analyzed. Most of numerous extraction and transformation tools also enable loading of the data into the end target. Except for data warehousing and business intelligence, ETL Tools can also be used to move data from one operational system to another.

ERP:

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrates internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, etc.

ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:

An integrated system that operates in (next to) real time, without relying on periodic updates. A common database, that supports all applications. A consistent look and feel throughout each module. Installation of the system without elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department

List of Business Intelligence (BI) tools:

Business Intelligence (BI) tools are widely used for reporting, dashboarding and analysis.
       

Oracle Enterprise BI Server SAP Business Objects Enterprise. SAP NetWeaver BI SAS Enterprise BI Server IBM Cognos Series 8 WebFocus. Qlik View Microstrategy

Future of Business intelligence:

Business Intelligence (BI) is slated to play bigger roles in all kinds of businesses in the coming years. This is not surprising as data analysis and smarter decision making has made the use of BI inevitable in all sizes of businesses across all sectors, including Real estate, IT, mobile devices, governmental agencies, scientific and engineering communities and R&D labs, banking and insurance, to name a few  Business Intelligence Forecasting - Predicting Your Way To Success ( Predictive Analytics)  Business Intelligence Paving Way For Information Democracy  Software as a Service Business Intelligence Broadening Usage of BI  Real-time Business Intelligence - Instant Information For Success

Who are NetApp?

They are a proprietary computer storage and data management company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Bangalore office located in Koramangla Member of NASDAQ-100 and rated the 5th best company to work for by Fortune magazine 2nd largest data storage co in the world (based on market capitalization)

Their clients

Google, Microsoft, ACNielsen ORGMARG, Mazda, Reliance Communications, Siemens Business Services

Implementation of BiS
NetApp use BIS to understand figures such as revenue, sales records, inventory, regular customers and customer buying patterns BIS provide historical, current and predictive views of their operations. BIS assists in decision making therefore it is a DSS.

Tools they use

ETL tools such as IBM Datastage OBIEE by Oracle operates at the presentation layer

IBM datastage
Is a tool that assists in ETL (extract, transform and load) Extracts data from sources which could be audit reports, sales reports, customer feedback, customer databases. Transforms data to fit operational needs eg (eliminating columns or rows that are redundant). Load phase loads data into data warehouse

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

It is a comprehensive business intelligence platform that delivers a full range of analytic and reporting capabilities. Designed for scalability, reliability, and performance Features such as rich visualization, interactive dashboards, animated charting options, OLAP style interactions and innovative search. Hot-Pluggable Used to display data in a meaningful way to the user