What Is Business Intelligence?

Definition Of Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI or Business Intelligence) is the set of computer technologies that allow decision- makers and business leaders to analyze data and subsequently make decisions. The goal of BI will be to connect your data to software in order to analyze them precisely using dashboards and graphics. In the era of big data, business intelligence is increasingly used. Learn more about the history of business intelligence.

What Is Business Intelligence Used For?

Overall, the role of business intelligence is to increase profitability by enabling all different parts of the business to access and use data. By using BI practices, the company will be able to understand its data and translate it into information for each process. This information is going to be used in making strategic business decisions to improve productivity as well as growth and revenue.

How Business Intelligence Works

To do Business Intelligence , we will need tools that can be compatible with your ERP. First, before being used in business intelligence applications, raw data from different sources ( SQL Server , CSV files , Excel , etc.) must be integrated (data collection), consolidated and then cleaned using data integration tools.

This is an important step which guarantees users accurate and consistent information.

Once processed, this data will be imported into analysis tools such as Tableau Software . It is at this stage that we will be able to choose the KPIs to study and create our own visual analyzes and dashboards.

What Is Business Intelligence?

Then comes the analysis of this data by different parts of the company, such as the business analyst, data scientist, manager, or other relevant professions. This is the stage where we will be able to study performance, monitor it over time, and then draw conclusions.

Finally, after analyzing the data using our decision- making tool , we will be able to make the necessary decisions and see the results on our next analyses.

To better understand how Business Intelligence works and the process, you can find more explanations on our dedicated webinar.

In Which Situations Should BI Be Used?

BI is used in a variety of situations, let’s take an example. A logistics company would like better management of its supply chain, for this it will use Business Intelligence to know when delays occur, where there are changes in the shipping process. Thanks to Business Intelligence, this company will be able to better manage its delays by being aware of the products and modes of transport that are most often linked to delays.

We could also have taken the example of a team leader or manager who wants to assess the performance of these salespeople, as for our webinar .

Initially, BI tools were mainly used by specialists in the field, they are called business analysts , business intelligence consultants or BI experts. Other IT professionals also performed analysis and created reports for business users using query results.

However, today, the evolution of different Business Intelligence software has allowed managers (and other people who need it) to easily use these decision-making tools . No need to write lines of code to be able to create visual analyzes and relevant dashboards.

The BI market and solutions dedicated to business intelligence should continue to evolve. These tools integrate more and more functions, and now use methods such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning.

Which Tools For Business Intelligence

Today, companies can choose their solutions from a comprehensive list of Business Intelligence tool vendors . In its 2017 Magic Quadrant report, Gartner identifies nearly two dozen BI and analytics vendors, with Microsoft PowerBI , Qlik and Tableau as leaders. But there are also others like Information Builders , Sisense and Zoomdata.

All tools are not equal according to the needs of the company. Indeed, the company will choose its decision-making system according to its size, the complexity of the operations, and the type of technologies which it uses.

How To learn BI?

As discussed earlier, Business Intelligence becomes increasingly accessible in the process of creating twist charts and visual analytics . However, to process the data upstream and allow you to connect it to your decision-making software , computer skills (database processing) and knowledge of your Business Intelligence software are recommended.

You can learn from A to Z, through Business Intelligence training , and become a BI specialist ! Today the needs of companies are growing, and each year training courses with the specialty of BI are created.

Also Read: Importance Of Visual Communication For A Business