Business intelligence (BI) – Basic Know How?

1. What is Business intelligence (BI)?

Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help executives, managers and other corporate end users make informed business decisions. The set of processes, architectures, and technologies that convert raw data into meaningful information that drives profitable business actions.

2. What is the goal of business intelligence?

The goal of BI is to help decision-makers make more informed and better decisions to guide the business. Business intelligence software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions accomplish this by making it simpler to aggregate, see, and slice-and-dice the data.

3. Why Business intelligence is required?

Companies need to translate data into information to plan for future business strategies. ... Hence data can help maximize revenues and reduce costs. A Business Intelligence (BI) solution helps in producing accurate reports by extracting data directly from your data source.

4. How is business intelligence used?

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the tools, technologies, applications, and practices used to collect, integrate, analyze, and present an organization's raw data in order to create insightful and actionable business information. ... Data mining. Online analytical processing.

5. What are the best business intelligence tools?

Top 10 Business Intelligence Tools Leaders

1. IBM Cognos Analytics. ...
2. Oracle BI. ...
3. Sisense. ...
4. Dundas BI. ...
5. Microsoft Power BI. ...
6. MicroStrategy Enterprise Analytics & Mobility. ...
7. Tableau Server. ...
8. Domo.

        6. What are different categories of Business Intelligence?

• Business Intelligence is generally divided into four different categories which are comprised of different types of BI that businesses working with data should be aware of.
• Reporting: Reporting focuses on developing documents with valuable information, telling the reader what happened.
• Analysis: Analysis looks at why something happened. There are three common types of analysis.
  • Spreadsheet Analysis – Analyzing data contained in spreadsheets with the goal of evaluating or anticipating company wide, or specific unit performance. E.g., using Excel to track hours your employees work.
  • Ad-Hoc Query – Software that allows users to develop their own specific data queries. E.g., creating a query that displays how many of one item has been sold in a specific time period.
  • Visualization Tools – Software that takes raw data and creates a visualization that users can read and understand. E.g., a pie chart that compares the method by which customers contacted you in a one-month period.
• Monitoring - One of the more useful functions of BI is that you can often monitor data and information in real-time, or close to it anyway. This can be interesting for getting snapshots between reporting periods or when making decisions. The three main types of monitoring are:
  • Dashboard – A central location where all useful and actionable metrics and data are contained. They are usually represented graphically to make it easier for users to read. E.g., the new Google+ dashboards which can be accessed by logging into your business Google+ page and selecting Dashboard from the drop-down menu on the left.
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – KPIs measure the performance of a specific action or project. E.g., Return on Investment (ROI).
  • Business Performance Management – A system that is designed to ensure that performance goals for your organization or projects are being met and results are being delivered. E.g., number of new customers acquired. Some businesses and BI providers will call this the Balanced Scorecard.

• Prediction - The reason many businesses employ BI methodologies is to try and predict what will happen based on the data currently available and other trends. Prediction can be an incredibly complex form of BI, so many companies often contract this out to firms, or rely on software that automates much of the process. There are two main types of prediction:
  • Data Mining – Is the act of finding patterns and relations in and between large sets of data. The main goal of data mining is to extract or transform data into something we can understand and further use.
  • Predictive Modeling – Any modeling that sets out to predict the outcome of an action, or the probability of an outcome.

7. What is business intelligence in simple words?

• Business Intelligence (BI): In simple terms it is the accumulation, analysis, reporting, budgeting & presentation of your business data. The goal of utilizing business intelligence for your business is to improve your visibility of your organizational operations and financial status to better manage your business.

8. What can business analytics be used for?

• Business analytics is used by companies committed to data-driven decision-making. BA is used to gain insights that inform business decisions and can be used to automate and optimize business processes. Data-driven companies treat their data as a corporate asset and leverage it for a competitive advantage.

9. What is a career in business analytics?

• A Business Analytics Career. Those who work in business analytics extract information from large data sets, both structured data and unstructured data. Typically, this data is used to help decision-makers understand the past performance of a company, its current position and forecasts for future performance.

10. How do I become a business intelligence analyst?

• How to become a Business Intelligence Analyst – A complete career guide
  1. Step 1: Earn your undergraduate degree. ...
  2. Step 2: Complete an internship and gain entry-level work experience. ...
  3. Step 3: Get a professional certification. ...
  4. Step 4: Become a business intelligence analyst. ...
  5. Step 5: Pursue an advanced degree.