Why One Needs Business Intelligence (BI)?
In the old times, humans operate every industry, factory, and company. Accounts were taken care of by a group of people. Some group of workers makes a product. Also, some other people handle the marketing and so on.
The problem which companies have to face is the accuracy of work. Because whenever employees get tired, they lose their quality of work. As a result, the company needs to face some losses. Also, the company has to pay more as the number of people increases.
Therefore to tackle such problems, BI came into play. It is a type of software that can take care of business operations. Not only business operations, but it can also give company’s data in a proper way.
Further, BI is able to make decisions and improve the business process. So, it also improves the quality of work taking place. As a result, BI helps to increase profits and makes the competitors weak.
BI also uses storage to keep the data used by it. This storage is called Data Warehouse (DW). It collects data from various other sources other than simply storing it. Also, DW supports BI to make strategies and use logic to make a decision.
Types of BI
1. Mobile Business Intelligence (MBI)
Before MBI, websites were showing data of BI. But MBI deals with mobile applications to show this data. MBI benefited users by allowing them to see the data anytime and anywhere. The source of data for MBI is the same as that of BI websites.
Therefore, the BI server gives data to websites as well as to mobile applications. Also, the screen (also called dashboard) to show BI data in website and mobile apps are different from each other.
2. Real-Time Business Intelligence (RTBI)
Since normal BI may take days to show any changes, therefore RTBI came. RTBI gives benefits by increasing the speed of operating the business.
RTBI makes BI give faster results. It monitors the changes in data taking place from various sources. These sources can be data of accounts, market, production units, etc. RTBI changes its data at small time intervals like seconds, minutes, hours, etc.
3. Operational Business Intelligence (OBI)
OBI is used for viewing and checking business operations. It gives real-time data to make plans for increasing the quality of business operations. OBI functions on the front side of the business. For example, the way of advertising the business.
OBI is generally given to handle by fresh and new employees. Experienced and old employees usually do not handle this.
4. Software-as-a-Service BI (SaaSBI)
SaaSBI is a BI that runs on Cloud Storage. It offers the same services as that of a BI. These are BI tools, dashboards, etc.
In simple words, cloud storage is storage that is provided by the internet. Such storage is not physical. We can also say that it is virtual storage.
Some vendors offer Such BI. They allow to use it by taking subscriptions and price from users. Since SaaSBI is provided by the internet, hence it is present in a different location. Also, SaaSBI offers various benefits over normal BI. These are low cost, easy to execute, and less complex to operate and handle.
Adding new employees to SaaSBI is easy and light as compared to normal BI.
This is Because adding a new employee to SaaSBI only requires him/her to pay for its services. Whereas adding new employees to a normal BI requires adding new software to the computer and upgrading it. Not only this, the new software is to be synced with other computers.
5. Open Source Business Intelligence (OSBI)
OSBI is a BI that allows users to modify its features as per the company’s use. Users can either change the source code or use its tools to make the changes. Such BI is also platform-independent. This means users can install OSBI on any computer having any software and hardware features.
So, Users can expand and improve the product. Most of them are available for free.
6. Collaborative BI (CBI)
CBI merges different BI software using some tools and a team operates it. This will improve the decision-making using the data. CBI is used for sharing business data and is used on reports at the enterprise level.
It improves business problem solving by allowing team members to check and exchange the data. The data is displayed using dashboards, reports, etc.
Business Intelligence Tools
1. Enterprise Reporting (ER)
ER helps to understand the company’s report to an end-user. This was not the case before a person needs to have the technical knowledge to understand the report. ER gives data in charts, tables, widgets and uses other methods to show the data.
This helps users to understand important things about the company. This data is also used to improve the running of the company.
2. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
OLAP allows users to easily take the data and see it in different ways. OLAP can show data in a spreadsheet which can be made by OLAP for different options. These options can be spreadsheets of different months, dates, years, etc.
Users can also see spreadsheets for different products for the same time period. For example, showing spreadsheet for selling of football and bat at the month of June.
OLAP not only shows data but also compares it with other data of the same type. This comparison will help to decide which product needs improvement.
3. Ad Hoc Analytics (AHA)
Ad Hoc means not having the main control. So, every device controls each other. AHA helps to answer chosen questions. AHA helps to create reports which have not been made before. This is done by going more deeper into a business report. Inner details of accounts or records are taken out using AHA.
OLAP helps AHA by giving fast and easy access to data. So, OLAP gives a screen to control AHA by just clicking on the options given on the screen. There is no need to request data. This helps AHA to respond quickly and users can make decisions quickly.
Reports and analyses created by AHA are meant to be used once. But users often use it regularly. This increases the time of creating reports by the system. Therefore, AHA should be used on a regular basis.
4. Predictive Analytics (PA)
PA uses current and old data to predict business conditions. So, PA predicts the trend of business and how the business will behave. It checks the statistics, asks some queries, and uses machine learning to predict. PA is used to find the behavior of something.
As an example, Insurance Companies use PA to predict their customers. PA can check whether he/she can give premiums timely or not. The prediction is based on the age, gender, address, salary, etc of the person.
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