Brief History and Definition of Business Intelligence The first use of the term “business intelligence” was found in Richard Millar Devens’ 1865 work, Cyclopaedia of Commercial and Business Anecdotes. He used it to describe the understanding banker Sir Henry Furnese had of political issues, instabilities, and the market before his competitors. It was not until 1958 that IBM computer scientist Hans Peter Luhn recognized the potential of business intelligence. Since then, Business Intelligence has continuously evolved from when it started as an automated system to disseminate information to the various sections of any industrial, scientific, or government organization (BetterBuys).
The market for Business Intelligence and analytics
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The addition of a BI platform to an organizations existing software can greatly improve the functionality of those programs. In Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platform” article, they define the main uses of BI platforms as:
1. Centralized BI Provisioning: Supports a workflow from data to IT-delivered-and-managed content.
2. Decentralized Analytics: Supports a workflow from data to self-service analytics.
3. Governed Data Discovery: Supports a workflow from data to self-service analytics to systems-of-record, IT-managed content with governance, reusability and promotability.
4. OEM/Embedded BI: Supports a workflow from data to embedded BI content in a process or application. (Gartner)
These main uses are then broken down more into more categories and sub-categories of capabilities. Some of the more interesting categories are mobile, analytic dashboards and content, collaboration and social integration, free-form interactive exploration, and cloud deployment (Gartner). These specific functions and capabilities of BI are partly responsible for shifting the market of BI from IT-centric to user friendly for anyone. The capabilities that come with cloud deployment allow users to connect to both the cloud and on-premises data source at the same time. Cloud deployment has
Forecasting analytics will enable SYSCO to make appropriate upfront decisions and monitor customers as well as the industry. Extraction and data mining are also useful tools that will positively affect SYSCO’s decision-making process. Lastly, consulting support and employees’ training will facilitate the implementation of the new software in the company. For all these reasons, the use of BI at SYSCO can create a competitive advantage of the company in the industry. However, this competitive advantage depends on the competition – do the competitors use a similar software or by chance the same and do they already have a strong position in the market? Outperforming for example “U.S Food Service”, SYSCO’s main competitor, might be arduous if that company relies on a similar software and already has an eminent role in the
The BI tool can be used to analyze and understand the business risk from all aspects of its operations, if implemented and maintained well, this tool will help bring attention to areas that need improvement. (Kapoor,2010).The BI tool can be customized with dashboards that can track all corporate functions like human resources, recruiting, operations, security, information technology, customer relationship management and many more departmental dashboards.
As we discuss the possibility of emerging into business intelligence software we must keep in mind the overall purpose of using any type of software is to reach strategic goals in order to increase market shares. I will discuss how business intelligence software will allow us to meet those strategic goals. We will establish what type of information and analysis capabilities will be available once this business intelligence software is implemented. We will discuss hardware and system software that will be required to run specific business intelligence software. Lastly, I will give a brief synopsis on three vendors (IBM, Microsoft Microsoft and Oracle) that are dominating the business information software industry today.
We cannot all help but notice the steady decline in our market share for the past consecutive 11 quarters. Annual revenue has shrunk by 40% since we last saw a sales growth. Despite all the cost cutting measures that we have implemented we still continue to see a steep decline in sales. To make matters worse we do not know why, we do not know how and do not have any insight on what the competition is doing and how they are doing it. I’m proposing that we adopt a business intelligence system. This will allow us to see the state of our overall processes, and pinpoint areas of improvement or elimination. In short, business intelligence will allow us to better analyze the organization’s plans and results. I will provide us with insight into what is working correctly at the same time identifying potential problem areas
Twila Day left the meeting excited, but also a little nervous. Her Technology and Applications Group had just been given approval by the Director’s Council of SYSCO to proceed with a company- wide deployment of business intelligence (BI) software. The effort was intended to help SYSCO, the largest food distributor in North America, make better use of the information generated by its operations and serve its customers better. The Director’s Council, a group of senior managers with substantial power and influence, had been impressed enough by the results of a
In Business Intelligence sponsorship plays a vital role in its development and its implementation as it incurs a huge cost, hence an executive sponsor must be smart enough in dealing with such problems by understanding the limitations and generating a top-down approach for it. This paper will give you a glimpse of the roles and responsibilities of an executive sponsor, and how he can do more effectively. To explain it better I have cited two examples of Mobile BI and Healthcare Management BI and how each company sponsor has to carry out a set of activities to fulfill their task and lead by example. In a nutshell, every executive sponsor has to make sure that the BI project is in line with the overall company goals, required resources are available and necessary guidance is given when required by the project.
Business Intelligence projects start out as a simple report or request for an extract of data. Once the base data is aggregated then the next request usually is about summing data or creating more reports that have different views to the data sets. Before long complex logic comes into play and the metrics coming out of the system are very important to many corporate wide citizens. "Centrally managed business rules enable BI projects to draw from the business know-how of a company and to work with consistent sets of business logic they are what add the intelligence to business intelligence."(pg14)
Businesses have collected data for many years. Most of the data they collect has been for historical purposes, such as how much of an item has sold and what are the profits gained from those sales. Business intelligence allows one to take that data, manipulate as you see fit and generate reports. The data then has to be extracted and trends analyzed so that businesses can find more opportunities and new customer segments. This is known as business analytics. However that may sound simple, there are current business and technology conditions
Company’s current position and ability to compete on analytics: I had worked for a healthcare delivery organization whose mission is to enhance the quality of life through improved health, prepare future health care professionals and discover new medical knowledge through research. It is the only Academic Medical center in the region and enjoyed a monopoly for quite some time. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the payment model changed from Fee for Service to Bundled payments. The organization was challenged to lower the cost of providing healthcare services without compromising quality of care or research. It had to invest heavily on implementing Electronic Medical Records and systems for reporting to regulatory agencies and insurance companies. The table below highlights the differences between Analytics and Business Intelligence. Note that the organization is in the early phase of implementing BI solutions.
BI applications include the activities of decision support systems, query and reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting and data mining. ("Business Intelligence (BI)." What Is ? N.p., n.d. Web. 27 July 2013).
Recently, most of the organizations with BI Programs are making a paradigm shift to Agile BI which involves both process oriented and technical approach to implement BI projects. Agile BI constitutes organization’s ability to prepare its BI program to meet the evolving requirements of the business and its operations.
Business Intelligence is a computer-based system which is used by organizations for decision making purpose. In the United States, 500 enterprises which have more than 90% of enterprises use business intelligence software to help managers make decisions. In this report essay, we talk about the back ground of business intelligence first, and then defined business intelligence from different aspects, which are technology, application and data. In the part
Business Intelligence means the conversion of raw data into usfull & meaning full data for business process is known as Business Intelligence.BI application involes the actions of Online Analytical Processing, DSS, Data Mining.
BICS extends the feature set and functionality of on-premise Business Analytics to the Cloud (*)
Correct. In building a transformational BI business case, positioning of BI tools should focus on Convergence with Business Process Management.