In today’s blog lets dive into
other core topic ‘Business intelligence’.
With the help of BI system, a company can draw conclusions based on certain
facts like what is the net profit delivered by the product for first quarter
month and what are all the key factors to be concentrate on increasing sales
and the customer satisfaction for an enterprise by reducing the operational
costs. Here comes the role of BI system, where an organization may utilize BI
system to be unique in the market by exploring data, nature of the customers,
and how to increase its overall business efficiency for optimizing the revenue.
BI methods helps the company to organize the data in an analyzed manner and
convert that into useful information that promotes business growth.
What is BI?
Business Intelligence is nothing
but a collection of processes, tools and technologies helpful in achieving more
profit by improving productivity, sales of an organization. It answers very
basic questions such as, how business Is performing currently and how it will
be in future., How customers are ranked. BI applications and technologies can
help an organization to analyses on changing trends in market, change in
spending patterns and customer preferences.
There are some key areas where BI
focus on
·
Data
Sourcing
·
Data
Analysis
·
Situation
Awareness
·
Risk
Analysis
·
Decision
Support
Characteristics of BI:
·
A
system used for finding the patterns from existing data from operations.
·
It
is a combination of skills, processes, technologies, applications and
practices.
·
Data
is collected, integrated, analyzed and helps in better decision making for an
organization
·
It
provides clear business insights that leads to better, faster more relevant
decisions.
 |
| BI conceptual diagram |
BI architecture
 |
| BI Architecture |
A BI architecture is viewed as five-layer
stack with business at the top of stack and process at the bottom. There are
four slices of BI architecture – components, information management,
requirements, and technology - are
viewed orthogonally. The policies, procedures, practices, methods and workflows
of business rules and constraints that must be reflected through all of the
organizational and process components of BI. These vertical slices each provide
different perspectives into the business, data integration. At each
intersection the slices are responsible for:
·
Provide
frameworks, structures and guidelines to assure integrity of BI systems.
·
Define
standards to ensure regulatory compliance and to assure consistency among all
parts of BI systems.
·
Maintain
a map of the BI environment that enables smooth integration of few increments.
Formalizing the
definition, measurement, and tracking of key business performance indicators
Business
Intelligence users:
Executives: Information is summarized and
delivered to users. Here they have the opportunity to view static information
online and print to a local printer
Casual
users: Casual
users are users who require next level of detail from the information that is
provided to the viewers. They have the privilege to refresh a report and can
enter desired data for performing high level research and analysis.
Functional
Users
Functional users perform detailed
research and analysis which requires access to transactional data. They have the privilege to develop their own
adhoc queries and perform OLAP analysis.
Super
Users
The have strong understanding of
both business and technology to access and analyze transactional data. They
have the privilege to explore and analyze data with the BI applications
available to them.
Organization
structure
An effective strategy must be
implemented as a practice towards efficient and quality IT Services the below
techniques must be followed.
§
People:
Here it refers to the people who work in IT services where the managers must
ensure that ample resources (skills training, staff etc.) are available to
support the services.
§
Processes:
This deals with set of processes, IT governance policies, activities and
documentation involved in creating value to the customer or stakeholder.
§
Products:
It involves technology and specialized systems (ex: Automation tools) is used
to ensure critical business processes targets are achieved.
§
Partners:
To support IT service applications and assist them within the required time
frame is done by suppliers, vendors, partners associated with an organization.
 |
| ITIL Service strategy process |
Why
BI and Performance Management Mean for IT leaders
IT leaders must work with peers in the business to lead the BI and PM initiative to improve the performance of departments and business units. This means that IT leaders need to:
·
Assess the current
state, needs and opportunities for BI and PM. Drive innovation by communicating
what new solutions can make possible.
·
Create
cross-functional teams from IT and the business to lead the initiative. Strike
a balance between centralized and decentralized delivery of BI and PM.
·
Determine the
existing skills and technologies available to support the initiative. Where
necessary, procure new technology and support changes that will increase
business efficiency.
·
Prioritize requests
based on available resources. Recruit into the initiative business analysts who
are working independently. Use external services to augment internal skills.
·
Ensure business
engagement and sponsorship. Write a business case to secure funding for the
necessary BI and PM initiatives.
Capabilities
of BI system
- Data
Storage and Management:
- Data
ware house
- Ad
hoc analysis
- Data
quality
- Data
mining
- Information
Delivery
- Dashboard
- Collaboration
/search
- Managed
reporting
- Visualization
- Scorecard
- Query,
Reporting and Analysis
- Ad
hoc Analysis
- Production
reporting
- OLAP analysis
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