Business Intelligence (BI)

Business intelligence is a technology-driven process for analysing data and presenting actionable information to help executives, managers and other end users make informed business decisions. It involves collecting data from various sources across the organisation (extraction) and transforming it into an actionable form (transformation).

The data, which is now available in a structured form, can be visualised in a dashboard (loading), for example, in order to improve and accelerate data-supported decision-making processes. Thus, final decisions are no longer made by gut feeling, but are well-founded and data-driven. Since the data is analysed descriptively, the decision-maker can fall back on a summary of the current data, but cannot make any predictions. If BI is extended by predictive analyses, we are in the field of business analytics.

Prerequisite for use

Data

As described earlier, BI systems use data as the basis for reporting. Thus, you should start early to collect extensive data in all areas of your business so that future decisions can be made based on data. For example, data from point-of-sale systems can be used to reduce inventory, identify good performing products, optimise the supply chain and much more.

Software

You now know what Business Intelligence is, but not yet how and with what Business Intelligence can be implemented. In the simplest case, Microsoft Excel can be used to create initial dashboards, for example from data of the operative business. However, it is somewhat easier to create dashboards using software developed specifically for BI.

One software example is PowerBI, which is also offered by Microsoft. With PowerBI Desktop, Microsoft offers a completely free version. It already has all the basic functions so that you can create your first reports. By using BI software, data from various sources (Access Database, CSV, Excel, ...) can be consolidated. The imported data can then be processed based on rules, so that even new data that is obtained via servers can be automatically converted into the correct form so that it can be processed satisfactorily.

The process of providing data for BI systems is carried out via a so-called ETL route. As already described, data is extracted from various sources(Extract), then transformed according to defined rules(Transform) and finally loaded into the BI system(Load).

Another example is the Tableau software from the umbrella organisation Salesforce, which also covers the aforementioned functionalities.

The tools already have a variety of possible ways of displaying your data. For example, bar charts, column charts, map views, sector charts, line charts, etc. can be created from your data with just a few clicks. Thanks to the server connection, your visualisations are always up-to-date. In addition, marketplaces are available through which very special chart types can also be downloaded and used. If the chart types available there do not meet your expectations, you can also create your own display types in the programming language"R".