Beginners' Guide to Business Intelligence Tools
What exactly is Business Intelligence what is actually the utility of BI Tools? - political risk assessment
Business Intelligence (BI) is described as any real-time, current or past information that assists various business professionals including managers analyze current/past activities to help in predicting future course of the company's business. Business Intelligence is thus a stream of data and hence it requires sorting as well as analysis before it is suited to use in a company's decision-making process. Such sorting and analysis of relevant details are usually carried out by software solutions, to ensure superior speed and accuracy with the data collection and analysis procedure. Any and all software solutions aiding the whole process of generating Business Intelligence with an enterprise are termed as Business Intelligence Tools. So BI data can help an enterprise rapidly adjust to changing business environment, while BI tools ensure that the changing business environment is rapidly in addition to correctly identified and reported to facilitate an efficient decision-making process. In case of historic data, BI tools usually sort and analyze data, that was previously stored in the enterprise database.
Widely used Business Intelligence Tools
BI tools are generally classified into the following categories:
� Local Computer
� Business Performance Management
� Process Mining
� Dashboards
� Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
� Data Warehousing
� Data Mining
� Reporting and Querying Software
� Spreadsheets
These types of Business Intelligence technology and tools aside from spreadsheets are available included in software suitable for a specific industry, standalone solutions, ERP system components or as a BI software suite. These solutions tend to be developed by a custom development company in response to requirements specified by a client or detected following a thorough analysis of the company's business design. A few open-source business intelligence tools are offered also, however most enterprises prefer to use proprietary business intelligence technology to make certain adequate protection of critical data. The type of business intelligence architecture implemented by an organization varies on the industry, market conditions as well as specific market requirements. Some of the commonly available BI tool categories are described here:
Local Computer
The term Local Information System (LIS) originated in its use in people sector of the UK; other terms used synonymously with LIS around the world include - Data Observatory and Community human resources. In the global business intelligence technology market, LIS applications are generally limited to providing support for geographic reporting of enterprise operations. The functions supported by LIS tools often overlap with a few of the features of Geographic Information Systems and Knowledge Management tools. Unique functions of LIS include providing a region-specific database accessible by citizens, policy makers, managers along with data experts. LIS statistics are usually compiled with respect to a tiny area such as the National Neighborhood Statistics projects in the united kingdom. Currently operating Local Computer include the DarlingtonLIS, UK; Newcastle Council; New Zealand Ministry of Health and Fife Council, UK.
Business Performance Management
Business Performance Management (BPM) describes a set of management in addition to analytical processes made to facilitate improvement of the company's processes as per the preset goals with the organization. Such tools are designed for handling large amounts of data and help managers in determining fruitful interventions built to improve the functioning of specific business processes. Available today tools for BPM depend on the balanced scorecard framework and queries based on BPM tools include metric-related queries, customer/stakeholder queries, goal-alignment queries, cost/risk queries as well as much more.
Process Mining
Process Mining is commonly defined as a process management technique that allows decision-makers to analyze business processes on the basis of available event logs. These event logs are automatically generated by the enterprise event system and the aim of Process Mining would be to facilitate improvement of functionality by providing tools and techniques designed to identify social, organizational, control and process structures utilizing the event logs. The process is preferred if other conventional techniques fail of provide adequate comprehension of an enterprise process. Process Mining features in some contemporary management techniques such as Business Process Intelligence, Business Operations Management and Business Activity Monitoring. Current Process Mining techniques are categorized into the following categories: extension, conformation analysis and discovery.
Dashboards
Dashboards are thought as an easily read, real-time interface, which gives a snapshot of the current status of key business processes as a chart or graph. Dashboards are among the most prolific and traditionally used tools for supporting informed and instantaneous selection. Dashboards are capable of displaying a multitude of user-defined key performance indicators significant for various departments of an organization. A production dashboard can show the total number of units produced, the typical rate of production per hours, variety of produced units which failed inspection during a one month period and so on. The key benefit of a dashboard is its power to be customized to show only the relevant data, which ends up in significant time savings in the process of decision making. Available today dashboards are commonly classified into three categories- desktop widgets, web-based applications in addition to standalone solutions, which feature spark lines, bullet graphs, pie charts and/or bar charts to represent the data. Dashboards are also capable of being integrated into mobile business intelligence answers to ensure seamless connectivity no matter what user's location.
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
OLAP tools are created to help users interactively analyze multidimensional data from multiple perspectives. OLAP like a business intelligence method includes various areas of data mining and rational reporting. The word Online Analytical Processing is a derivative of OLTP (Online Transaction Processing), which is often used in reference to traditional databases. Key analytical operations done by these tools are- consolidation, drill-down and slice 'n' dice. The consolidation process refers back to the aggregation of data make it possible for its analysis on multiple dimensions. The drill-down technique enables users to traverse large quantities on data to sort out the relevant data. The slice 'n' dice technique allows users to remove (slice) a particular data set to permit closer inspection (dicing) from the selected data set. Databases with OLAP support utilize a multidimensional data model for supporting rapid execution of both ad-hoc along with complex analytical queries. - political risk assessment