Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) encompasses technologies, applications, and practices for collecting, integrating, analyzing, and presenting business data to support better decision-making. It focuses on tools for data curation, summarization, visualization, and reporting, enabling organizations to derive insights from data.
THE IDEA
Business Intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) comprises the tools and practices used to collect, combine, analyze, and present business data. Its purpose is to help people make decisions. Software supports much of this work, including cleaning data, querying it, and producing reports and visualizations.
A company investigating supply-chain delays could use BI to locate bottlenecks, compare shipping times, and identify products or transport methods frequently associated with delays.
Common BI capabilities include:
- Importing data through files, database queries, and application connectors.
- Transforming data into a model that users can understand and analyze.
- Combining and exploring datasets.
- Creating useful reports and visualizations.
- Building and deploying internal analytics applications.
The source cites Gartner’s distinction between (1) traditional BI, in which IT professionals produce reports from internal transactional data, and (2) modern BI, in which business users explore data through more interactive tools. Standard financial or regulatory reporting often follows the first pattern; ad hoc marketing or risk analysis may follow the second.
The book’s vendor list dates to late 2017/2018: MicroStrategy, Tableau, Sisense, QlikView, Dundas BI, Business Objects, Oracle BI, SAS BI, IBM Cognos, and Easy Insight. Tools differ in analytical capabilities, learning requirements, and price.
When to use it
Supply chain management: monitor delays, variability, and inventory levels.
Marketing analytics: track campaign performance and customer segmentation dynamically.
Risk management: identify emerging risks through data patterns and exceptions.
Financial reporting: generate accurate, standard reports for regulatory compliance.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Supply Chain Delay Analysis
Using a BI system, a company can determine where delays and variabilities exist in the shipping process, identify which products are most commonly delayed, and find which modes of transportation are most often involved in delays.
Marketing Insight Extraction
A marketing team uses modern BI to analyze customer behavior and adjust strategies in real time based on changing purchase patterns, enabling rapid response to market trends.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How can BI be used to identify bottlenecks in your organization's processes?
What types of decisions are best supported by traditional BI versus modern BI?
How would you evaluate a BI tool for your team based on needed capabilities and user skill levels?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Evidence-Based Decision-Making How to Leverage Available Data and Avoid Cognitive Biases (Andrew D. Banasiewicz)