Why One needs Business Intelligence (BI)?
In the old times, humans operate every industries, factories and companies. Accounts were taken care by a group of people. Some group of workers make a product. Also, some other people handles 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 company needs to face some loss. Also company have to pay more as number of people increases.
Therefore to tackle such problems, BI came into play. It is a type of software which can take care of business operations. Not only business operations, it can 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 the 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. 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 it to see the data anytime and anywhere. The source of data for MBI is same as that of BI websites.
Therefore, BI server gives data to website as well as to mobile application. 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 give 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 the business operations. It gives real time data to make plans for increasing the quality of business operations. OBI functions at 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 which runs on Cloud Storage. It offers same services as that of a BI. These are BI tools, dashboards, etc.
In simple words, cloud storage is a storage which is provided by internet. Such storage are not physical. We can also say that it is a virtual storage.
Some vendors offer Such BI. They allow to use it by taking subscriptions and price from user. Since SaaSBI is provided by internet, hence it is present on 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 employee to SaaSBI is easy and light as compared to normal BI.
This is Because adding new employee to SaaSBI only requires him/her to pay for its services. Whereas adding new employee 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 which allows users to modify its features as per the company’s use. User can either change the source code or use its tools to make the changes. Such BI are also platform independent. This means user can install OSBI on any computer having any software and hardware features.
So User 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 are used on reports at enterprise level.
It improves the 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 as person needs to have 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 of the company. This data is also used to improve the running of the company.
2. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
OLAP allows user to easily take the data and see it in different ways. OLAP can show data in spreadsheet which can be made by OLAP for different options. These options can be spreadsheets of different months, dates, years, etc.
User can also see spreadsheet for different products for 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 same type. This comparison will help to decide which product needs improvement.
3. Ad Hoc Analytics (AHA)
Ad Hoc means not having a main control. So, every device controls each other. AHA helps to answer chosen questions. AHA helps to create reports which has 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 options given on the screen. There is no need to request a data. This helps AHA to respond quickly and user can make decisions quickly.
Reports and analysis 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 in the 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 business will behave. It checks the statistics, ask some queries and uses machine learning to predict. PA is used to find the behavior of something.
As an example, Insurance Companies uses PA to predict its customers. PA can check whether he/she can give premiums timely or not. The prediction is based on age, gender, address, salary, etc of the person.