Do you have a business or a company and sell products or services? In this opportunity, we will tell you what Business Intelligence is, what types of tools exist and what their benefits are. Keep reading and know the most important information about BI.
What does the term Business Intelligence refer to?
Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the use of strategies and tools that serve to transform information into knowledge, in order to improve the decision-making process in a company. The important thing is to have the necessary data to decide on a path or an action that can be validated.
Well-processed information about the business is a differentiating factor that makes for competitiveness. If you know which aspects to see and which variables to read, you can define where to move forward with satisfactory results.
With the proliferation of the information age, data sources are becoming more diverse, which is why BI tools have become more sophisticated. They are, nowadays, quite powerful, capable of analyzing and processing an infinite number of data from an infinite number of sources, and helping companies to draw conclusions for decision-making that ultimately lead to improving their business figures.
What types of BI tools do we know?
- Data Management Tools: Tools for data management, namely: Data warehouse and Data mart. Information is obtained from each of the available sources, transformed and stored in these data warehouses.
- Data Discovery Applications: Predictive analysis techniques to make projections (Data mining). It is carried out in cases in which the information to be examined lacks obviousness, which is why a more in-depth study is required.
- Reporting: They help to visualize the information graphically. They are, for example, Balanced Scorecards (CMI) as dashboards with information; Decision Support System (DSS), that is: systems to help decision-making based on information analysis; Executive Information Systems (EIS) for strategic decisions.
What are the advantages of Business Intelligence?
- It allows combined analysis of internal and external information from different sources.
- It ensures greater depth of analysis and reporting, compared to manual studies.
- It offers the possibility of analyzing historical series of data to have a probability of data for future times.
- It has the ability to make future projections and forecasts based on all previous analysis.
- It offers greater work agility and data processing, thanks to being able to centralize and structure data.
- It ensures the opportunity to present the information in an intuitive and centralized work interface, which facilitates internal operations.
- It provides better optimization of teamwork, thanks to the use of internal encrypted networks that streamline communication and the exchange of data and reports.
- It increases the protection of business data through the incorporation of encrypted networks and systems.
- It allows the automation of processes, such as: the creation of reports.
- It helps to significantly reduce the time dedicated to certain processes, so that it can be used in others that need it.
Steps prior to launching a BI project
- To analyze the requirements considering the business.
- To select the BI platform based on costs and information available.
- To design the dashboards to implement.
Who uses BI successfully?
While all large companies have used or are using Business Intelligence to improve processes, we know of examples of smaller businesses that have implemented it to achieve better results.
Some famous companies are:
- Toyota: for the reduction of production costs.
- Firestone: to improve distribution logistics.
- Wal-Mart: to maximize sales.
Recently, we have included Quales Group as a specialist partner in Business Intelligence. For any questions, do not hesitate to contact us here.
