Why is it a BI solution

" Business Intelligence  is defined as the  ability to make decisions , which is achieved through processes that make use of methodologies, technologies and applications that allow gathering, understanding and managing information in order to  improve the performance of a business ."

Why is it a BI solution?

A single point of access to information

Thanks to BI systems, every company can release the information stored in its databases, through the use of a single access point, a BI portal . No matter where the information is located, stored in their ERP systems, in the CRM, Datawarehouse,

Datamarts, or any specific business application, users will be able to generate their reports, and perform an exhaustive Drill-Down of the information in order to understand the motivations of your company, without the need for technical knowledge regarding the underlying data structures. The most successful BI applications allow this process to be done with a graphical interface without technicalities and easy to use.

Timely answers to company questions

The problem in many companies is the difficulty that most employees find in accessing information, a territory reserved for the IT department.

Although IT teams can perform searches and generate the reports requested by users from transactional systems, this approach to reporting is characterized by limited flexibility and high execution times, a self-service approach in relation to information provides some major benefits. Understand that the analytical query executions required by BI consume a lot of resources. For example, let's imagine that a business user needs to perform a query that analyzes the evolution of orders for the top 10 products over the last five years. In a transactional system, this query would not only require enormous processing effort, but also execution should use the resources commonly used by billing systems at points of sale, customer orders, or purchases from suppliers. Processes that on the other hand are key to the day-to-day of the company.

However, using a BI application that allows direct and easy access to information, users can answer questions that arise on the fly. In addition, by having accurate and up-to-date information, the responses generated will be more effective and will contribute in a more notable way to the achievement of the goals set.

The key to unlocking information lies in giving users the tools they need to find answers to their questions quickly and easily . Some of the users will be satisfied with standard reports that are updated regularly, such as reports of current company inventories, sales by channel, or reports of the status of their customers.

However, the answers provided in these reports may lead to new questions. In turn, other users may be more interested in dynamic access to information. This fact can again lead to additional questions, which cannot be answered, in this case, by a predefined report.

It should be noted that users spend a large amount of their time accessing standard or custom reports, while a small part of their tasks require consulting an external source for additional information, which was not available in the original report. In order to meet this demand and avoid user frustration (and the consequent delay for IT teams), a BI system is required that allows users to make information requests autonomously from data sources with those that the company has.

Towards a definition of BI

Despite the increasingly daily use of the term Business Intelligence , or its translation into Spanish, Inteligencia de Negocios , there is no consensus regarding its definition.

Next, different approaches contributed by different authors will be listed, in order to gradually unravel the criteria that define the essential characteristics of the term Business Intelligence:

The first to popularize the term was Howard Dresner, who in 1989 defined it as the transformation of company data into knowledge to obtain a competitive advantage .

In the 2002 book, Analysis Techniques for Strategic Decision Making, Vitt, Luckevich and Misner define Business Intelligence as a multifaceted concept that empowers organizations to make better decisions faster, turn data into information and use an intelligent strategy. for business management .

A third definition of Business Intelligence is provided by the TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute), in which it states that BI brings together data, technology, analysis and human knowledge to optimize business decisions and, ultimately, drive the success of a company . BI programs often combine a corporate Data Warehouse and a BI platform or set of tools to transform data into actionable and useful business information.

In the digital magazine CIO, Ryan Mulcahy, defined BI a generic term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze the raw data of an organization . Comprised of various related activities, including data mining, analytical processing, querying, and reporting.

As common points of these definitions, we can observe two of the first main characteristics of BI, such as the ability to convert data into information in order to promote more efficient decision-making, and obtain a strategic advantage. But what then is BI?