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Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence
A data-driven decision maker who helps transform data into insights
OVERVIEW:
Business intelligence (BI) combines business analytics, data mining, data visualization, data tools and infrastructure, and best practices to help organizations to make more data-driven decisions.
Business Intelligence is rather an umbrella term that covers the processes and methods of collecting, storing, and analyzing data from business operations or activities to optimize performance. All of these things come together to create a comprehensive view of a business to help people make better, actionable decisions.
How business intelligence works
Businesses and organizations have questions and goals. To answer these questions and track performance against these goals, they gather the necessary data, analyze it, and determine which actions to take to reach their goals.
On the technical side, raw data is collected from the business’s activity. Data is processed and then stored in data warehouses. Once it’s stored, users can then access the data, starting the analysis process to answer business questions.
The difference between traditional BI and modern BI
Historically, business intelligence tools were based on a traditional business intelligence model. This was a top-down approach where business intelligence was driven by the IT organization and most, if not all, analytics questions were answered through static reports. This meant that if someone had a follow-up question about the report they received, their request would go to the bottom of the reporting queue and they would have to start the process over again. This led to slow, frustrating reporting cycles and people weren’t able to leverage current data to make decisions.
Traditional business intelligence is still a common approach for regular reporting and answering static queries. However, modern business intelligence is interactive and approachable.
While IT departments are still an important part of managing access to data, multiple levels of users can customize dashboards and create reports on little notice. With the proper software, users are empowered to visualize data and answer their own questions.
A few good BI Tools for reference
