Business intelligence has undergone a significant transformation in recent years in the modern business world. Business inteligence comes from the concept that companies with inaccurate or incomplete insights/information tend to produce poor results and decisions.
Businesses intelligence tries to solve this problem by analyzing existing data to support better decisions. However, do you know what business intelligence is, and how business intelligence can provide real benefits to your business?
Definition of Business Intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) is the process by which companies use strategy and technology to analyze data generated from company activities into actionable information. The term business intelligence often also refers to a series of tools that provide quick and easy access to the current state of a company based on existing data. The goal is to improve strategic decision-making thereby increasing revenue, increasing operational efficiency, and increasing competitive advantage.
BI can help companies make better decisions by showing current data and historical data. Business intelligence systems combine data collection, data storage, and insight management with data analytics to evaluate and transform complex data into meaningful and actionable information. This technology-based process will analyze data and convey information that leads to better decision-making.
Companies can leverage business intelligence to provide performance and benchmark competitors to make companies run smoother and more efficiently. Companies can also see market trends more easily to increase sales and revenue. In addition, if used effectively, the right data can help businesses understand customer behavior/preferences and also discover new business opportunities.
Functions and Roles of Business Intelligence
BI technologies use advanced statistics and predictive analytics to help businesses draw conclusions from data analysis, find patterns, and forecast future business operating events. Companies that do not implement BI are likely to have difficulty following through on data-driven decisions. Executives or workers may be able to make business decisions through experience, knowledge, intuition or gut feeling. However, this method has a higher error potential due to lack of supporting data.
Overall the role of BI is to improve the company’s business operations through the use of relevant data. Companies that effectively use BI tools and techniques can translate collected data into valuable insights into their business processes and strategies. BI functions in general include:
- Data visualization: provides a visual representation in the form of a chart or graph for easier data analysis
- Data mining: sorting large data sets using databases, statistics, and machine learning to identify trends and build relationships
- Querying: request for certain data or information from the database
- Data preparation: the process of combining and compiling data for analysis preparation
- Reporting: sharing analysis of business operations and financial data with decision makers to draw conclusions and make decisions
- Benchmarking: comparing current business processes and performance metrics with historical data to track the best performance
- Descriptive analytics: interpretation of historical data to see comparisons and better understand the changes that occur in the business
- Statistical analytics: collect results from descriptive analysis and apply statistics to identify trends
How BI Works in Business
In a BI architecture, companies can find more than just BI software. Usually, BI data is stored in a data warehouse (data warehouse) or in smaller rooms (data marts) that store bits and pieces of business information for each division or company unit. However, all of these parts are related to the company’s data warehouse as a whole.
BI data can include historical information and real-time data that is collected from the source system as it is generated. Therefore, the tools in BI can support the process of making strategic and tactical decisions. Before implementing BI, raw data collected from multiple source systems must be integrated, consolidated (aggregated), and cleaned using data integration tools and data quality management tools. The goal is to ensure that the company analyzes accurate and consistent information.
Broadly speaking, the BI process involves the following steps:
- Integration of data from various source systems into a data warehouse or data mart
- Preparation of data into analytical data models for analysis needs
- Application of analytical queries to data by BI analysts or professional business analysts
- Making data visualizations, dashboards, reports, and so on using query results
- Use of information for decision-making and corporate strategic planning
Business intelligence will continue to evolve according to business and technology needs. Initially, BI tools could only be used by BI specialists and IT professionals. However, with the development of the business world and technology, there are currently many BI platforms that can be used by business analysts, executives or employees. The application of BI in business can help companies get the right answers to problems that exist in business activities.
Why You Should be a Business Intelligence Engineering
In this section, the reasons why you should become a business intelligence engineer will be discussed. In the next section, we will discuss Binar Bootcamp Business Intelligence Engineering. Is it really that important? Of course! The following is a condition why the role of a Business Intelligence Engineer is so important.
- Companies have data, but cannot make full use of it without a specialist in the field of Business Intelligence Engineering
- The company must know how the performance and achievements of the company in a certain period of time. In this case, Business Intelligence will help companies focus on their main goals.
- Problems that occur in the company’s business must be identified and solved early so they don’t get bigger and tend to be easier to handle. This is one of the tasks of Business Intelligence Engineering, which is to provide an explanation of the performance problems experienced by the company.
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