This publication seeks to explain what business intelligence is, its history, usage in modern business operations and prospects into the future of BI.
The publication also mentions relevant software tool that help deliver business intelligence solutions.
2. Business Intelligence(BI) is about delivering
relevant and reliable information to the right
people at the right time with the goal of
achieving better decisions faster.
What is Business Intelligence?
Going from raw data into organized information
3. How it works
•BI takes the vast amount of data presented by
businesses and presents it in a meaningful and
actionable way.
•To do this, BI requires special methods and programs
to collect & structure data convert it into information
and present it to improve business decisions.
4. Fields of Business Intelligence
• Performance management
• Reports
• Reports Interface, Steps to answer, Graphs and charts, Score Cards
• Self Service
• Calculated Fields, Filter based on data columns, Data Discovery, Search,
Collaboration/Workflow, Auto modeling, Data & Text Mining
• Advanced Analytics
• Predictive Analytics, Data Visualization, Big Data Services
• Building Reports
• Data Transformation, Data Modeling, WYSIWYG report design
• A lot more
5. A Story…
Train station is like your business’s data
• You need to collect information on metrics.
• Consult 4 different experts and ask them where/how you can find this
information.
• Then you would have to go to your intern and ask them to compile all this
data for you.
When travelling home and you walk into a train
station, do you have to ask an attendant where the
train to your route is? The train station include labels
signs to help travelers wait on right platform.
Goal = To make it simple to navigate
6. Lesson from story
• Colored lines on the floor to guide
you to your train boarding platform,
payment machine, exit gate and in
simple terms, to help you navigate
your data on your own and find
what you need without relying on
others.
BI
7. Lesson from story
Organizations no longer have to dig through complex webs of linked
spreadsheets, analyzing the data manually and mashing together
reports.
Instead, employees can use BI systems to REQUEST THE INFORMATION
THEY NEED!
BI = Tidy Organized Train Station
How about Physical and online stores?
8. Strategic Decision Making
• BI them comes in a great deal when there is a need to make strategic
business decisions.
• Anytime access to organized data means that:
• You can discover inefficient business processes & hidden patterns
• Identify areas of strength and weakness
• Discover new opportunities
• All these contribute in your better understanding of business operations and
challenges.
9. If you need Accurate,
understandable and actionable
information on demand, then
Business Intelligence might be right
for you
10. The History of BI
• Richard Millar Devens’ 1865 work, Cyclopaedia of Commercial and
Business Anecdotes contains the first known usage of the term “business
intelligence.” He uses it to describe the way that a banker, Sir Henry
Furnese, succeeded: he had an understanding of political issues,
instabilities, and the market before his competitors.
Business intelligence existed before technology.
“Throughout Holland, Flanders, France,
and Germany, he maintained a complete
and perfect train of business intelligence,”
Devens writes of Furnese. “The
news…was thus received first by him.”
Furnese ultimately used this advance
knowledge to duplicitous ends and became
renowned as a corrupt financier.
The idea of gathering information on business
conditions, however, was a seed that would
grow.
11. Origins & Development until 1958
• Technology did not advance to the point where it could be considered
an agent of business intelligence until well into the 20th century.
• Howard Dresner coined the modern definition of the term “business
intelligence” in 1989, at least in the sense it is typically used in the
industry today (“end user access to and analysis of structured content,
i.e., data”).
• But especially now that text analysis is becoming part of mainstream BI, the real credit for the term
should go to an earlier pioneer: Hans-Peter Luhn, who wrote a 1958 IBM Journal article titled
“Business Intelligence.
• Luhn also cited Webster's Dictionary definition of intelligence: “the ability to apprehend the
interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal.”
• Hun was, a prolific inventor and an expert in text analysis. Today, he is popularly recognized as
the “Father of Business Intelligence.” This year, July 1st 2016, would have been his 120th birthday
12. Advancements into the late 1980’s
• IBM’s invention of the hard disk in 1956 revolutionized data storage. Floppy discs,
laser discs, and other storage technologies meant that just as more and more data
was being created, so too were there more and more places to store it.
• This spawned the creation of the first database management systems, collectively
referred to as decision support systems (DSS). By the 1970’s a few BI vendors
popped up with tools that made accessing and organizing this data possible.
• But it was a new and clumsy technology. Most importantly, it was very difficult to
use.
• A 1988 international conference aimed to streamline data processes. The Multiway
Data Analysis consortium, held in Rome, was a landmark in simplifying BI analysis.
13. Turning Points in the 80’s & 90’s
• In 1989 Gartner analyst Howard Dresner again brought the phrase “business
intelligence” into the common vernacular. He employed it as a general term
to cover the cumbersome-sounding names for data storage and data analysis,
names like DSS and executive information system (EIS).
• Competition from more vendors in the field led to advances including data
warehouses. Along with this development came supplemental facets of data
warehousing that are staples of BI today. These included Extract, Transform,
and Load (ETL) tools and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) software.
• In later years, this phase of development became known as business
intelligence 1.0.
14. Business Intelligence 1.0
• During this period, there were two basic functions of BI:
• Producing data and reports
• Organizing it and visualizing it in a presentable way.
• Yet there remained two significant issues holding back this developing phase
of the technology:
• Complexity
• Time.
• Existing BI tools had not been developed with anyone but experts in mind,
and extensive analytics training was required to gain insights. Only technical
experts were able to utilize advanced data analysis software. Tools began to
evolve to cater to non-technical users, but it happened slowly
15. Business Intelligence 2.0
• The dawn of the 21st century marked a distinct turning point:
• Complexity and speed
• Onset of Cloud-based programs that expanded and simplified the reach of BI platforms.
• Real-time processing, which incorporated information from events as they happened
into data warehouses, allowing companies to make decisions based on the most recent
information available.
• Self-service access for non-expert users
• The exponential growth of the Internet.
• Facebook, Twitter, and blogs gave users very simple and very quick ways of sharing ideas
and opinions.
• (2005)Keeping abreast of the competition, and understand what their consumers wanted
and what they thought of their company.
16. Empowering End Users into the
Modern Day
These are three of the most important traits of the next frontier of BI
evolution.
Improving visualization
Tool specification
Expanding self-service
options
17. Cloud BI and Mobile BI
• Vendors experimented with faster and cheaper tools.
• One way to achieve both was through cloud BI, which hosts the software on
the Internet, reducing storage costs and making access to organizational data
and insights faster and more convenient.
• Tangential to the cloud is the rise of mobile-empowered platforms, which
allows users to work with BI on-the-go on smartphones, tablets, and other
devices.
• As tools are perfected and improved, they are also being made simpler and
more convenient, encouraging wider adaptation.
19. Business Intelligence Tools
Business intelligence tools are a
type of application software
designed to retrieve, analyze,
transform and report data for
business intelligence. The tools
generally read data that have
been previously stored, often,
though not necessarily, in a data
warehouse or data mart.
• Spreadsheets
• Reporting and querying software: tools
that extract, sort, summarize, and present
selected data
• OLAP: Online analytical processing
• Digital dashboards
• Data mining
• Process Visualization
• Data warehousing
• Local information systems
Standalone tools | suites of tools | Components of ERP systems |
Components of software targeted to a specific industry | Data warehouse
appliances.
21. Buying Considerations for BI Software
• Data Consumption and Compatibility
• Database and Data Warehousing
• User Adoption
• Performance and Scalability
• Cloud vs. On-Premise
22. The Future of BI
• Big data as a driver
• Realizing the future
• Training
• Organization
• Workload management.
• Technological advances
• Big data
• Education induces
simplification
• Infrastructure changes
• Workload automation
• New technologies
• Data discovery
• Data visualization
• Mobile
• The cloud
23. References
1. ELLIOTT, T. (2013, Juy 1). "Happy Birthday to the "Father of Business Intelligence". Retrieved February 25, 2016, from SAP Website:
http://scn.sap.com/community/business-intelligence/blog/2013/07/01/happy-birthday-to-the-father-of-business-intelligence
2. G2 Crowd Admin. Best Business Intelligence Software. Retrieved 2 25, 2016, from G2 Crowd Website:
https://www.g2crowd.com/categories/business-intelligence
3. Gartner Inc. (2016, February 24). About Gartner. Retrieved February 2016, 2016, from Gartner Website:
http://www.gartner.com/technology/about.jsp
4. Hitachi Solutions Canada. (2014, June 26). What is Business Intelligence (BI)? Retrieved February 19, 2016, from Youtube Website:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJdkcdG1iA
5. IENCO, D. A. (2014, November 6). The Future Of Business Intelligence. Retrieved February 25, 2016, from Datacomy Website:
http://dataconomy.com/the-future-of-business-intelligence/
6. Random House, Inc. (n.d.). siloed, in Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved February 2016, 2016, from Dictionary.com Website:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/siloed
7. SAP. (n.d.). Business Intelligence (BI) Solutions. Retrieved February 19, 2016, from SAP Website: http://go.sap.com/solution/platform-
technology/business-intelligence.html
Editor's Notes
When travelling home and you walk into a train station, do you have to ask an attendant where the train to your route is? The train station include labels signs to help travelers wait on right platform.
What is the goal of this? To make it simple to Navigate.
Now imagine the train station is like your business’s data and you need to collect information on line filling rates, passenger alighting and embarking, peak times and route-specific characteristic eg the busy routes at which time of day, nature of cargo. For these, you are likely to consult 4 different experts and ask them where/how you can find this information. Then you would have to go to your intern and ask them to compile all this data for you.
BI is all about taking your messy information and turning it into a tidy and accessible train station with colored lines on the floor to guide you to your train boarding platform, payment machine, exit gate and in simple terms, to help you navigate your data on your own and find what you need without relying on others.
Maybe for Underground Metro they have lines on the floor guiding them to their desired train, as long as they have the boarding time and train number.
Organizations no longer have to dig through complex webs of linked spreadsheets, analyzing the data manually and mashing together reports.
Instead, employees can use BI systems to REQUEST THE INFORMATION THEY NEED!
BI is all about taking your messy information and turning it into a tidy and accessible train station with colored lines on the floor to guide you to your train boarding platform, payment machine, exit gate and in simple terms, to help you navigate your data on your own and find what you need without relying on others.
Maybe for Underground Metro they have lines on the floor guiding them to their desired train, as long as they have the boarding time and train number.
Organizations no longer have to dig through complex webs of linked spreadsheets, analyzing the data manually and mashing together reports.
Instead, employees can use BI systems to REQUEST THE INFORMATION THEY NEED!
G2 Crowd helps you select the best Business Intelligence Software product for your business. The G2 Grid rates products based on the Business Intelligence products customer satisfaction and market presence. You can select any of the products for a more detailed Business Intelligence comparison. Only products with 10 or more reviews are shown in the Business Intelligence Software Grid.