Business Intelligence in a Nutshell

Overview

Intelligence means collection of information worth great values from raw data. This involves a series of processes, if the same happens in Business, that’s Business Intelligence often referred as BI. Though the definition seems simple, the process involved is huugeee! Not only Fortune companies but small and medium business companies (SMB) are also investing millions and millions of dollars in BI already and ready to invest more on Big Data (BI is Bruce Wayne whereas Big Data is Batman, more sophisticated and helpful at a larger scale for larger organizations)

Evolution: Necessity is the mother of Invention

Earlier when there were no computers, all transactions were documented manually in papers and notebooks. Government offices in many third world countries still use the same procedure. The files and documents are then stored in racks and shelves in a closed room (like a protected library) occupying more space. 

Once computers started evolving, these physical data became logical occupying much lesser PHYSICAL space. However the process of accumulation did not stop. Companies had to invest more and more in Infrastructure to store and maintain all these logical data getting accumulated. They started building Data Centers which happen to be much bigger that those closed rooms with racks.

When they started thinking “Is this worth investing?” BANG! Someone somewhere said “well, we can analyze these data and get valuable information which are hidden within.” Now to say the same using technical jargons (Hold your Breath)

"Data from different sources like ERP system, Payroll Systems, Operational devices and other Enterprise applications are extracted, sorted and Integrated to build a comprehensive Data Warehouse which in turn can be divided in to multiple Data Marts to perform data mining to analyze them, create custom reports and visualize the same as graphs, KPIs and scorecards in order to improve Business Results and empower better Decision Making."

Offff! That’s Business Intelligence!

However, BI did not suddenly appear as a single step, it evolved as shown below

Who and Why use BI?

Any company in any industry doing any kind of business can leverage BI in order to achieve one or more of the following:

• Make Data Useful
• Reduced Labor Costs (through effective automation)
• Decision making – Better and Faster
• Balance Business Objective vs Business Goal
• Gain Insight - Customer Behavior, Sales, Revenue etc
• Identify Opportunities
• Eliminate wastage

Major BI Providers

There are hundreds of companies providing solutions and services related to Business Intelligence. However the most predominant are

SAP and Oracle are used by Large and Mid sized Organizations whereas Microsoft is used by Small and Medium Business Organizations.