Business Intelligence Tools

Decision making and communication are at the center of business success and efficient business analytics would only be effective through the use of proper information systems and that are up to date with current trends as well as optimizing on the available channels.

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

1. What will be the biggest obstacles faced by the business intelligence implementation as it expands throughout SYSCO?

Currently, the dashboards I’ve created have not been successful in their goal because instead of providing actionable insight, they have simply been regurgitation and filtered views of the data. Due to my lack of a full understanding of the data and the business they have not provided the actionable insight, have left the interpretation to the Executives and are siloed to only

This report is an analysis of business intelligence systems currently available to our business. As an introduction, I will address in general terms why we need to purchase a business intelligence system and how it will aid our business. Then I will discuss several applications in detail, paying particular attention to the information and analysis capabilities of each, and the hardware and software required for each. Finally, I will conclude with a short evaluation of the products discussed and offer a recommendation as to the best application for our business. I will pay particular attention to IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle.

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.

Doing this will bring users to the most important pieces of information located on the dashboard. When doing this it is key to avoid clutter, such as visibly unnecessary chart types. With any unnecessary information or visuals it can distract and turn the users away from the data being shown. A practice that goes along with this is using “color appropriately and sparingly to achieve maximum contrast” (Lach, 2012). When designing a dashboard of reports the color selection should be thought out to enhance readability of charts. The precise selection and use of color will help bring the users’ attention to the significant trends, developments, and actions. Making data points different from one another and from the charts and backgrounds will help the important information be seen. On the other hand, if there are too many colors being used it can be hard to find and grasp the information. A cool trick is to relate colors to their symbolic or metaphoric meaning, such as red equals bad. Another practice is to select the best visualizations, not the best looking visualizations. Imagery should be kept simple and the focus should be on the data not the dashboard. Too flashy visuals and chart types should not be used when there are simpler alternatives for users to understand the same message. When designing, the dashboard context should always be provided. If there is no context, then the data visuals presented are basically useless. Finally, dashboards should have support and prompt action. “After drilling to detail to ascertain the root cause of a notable change or event, users must be enabled with a range of options to share the new information and their associated thoughts with others, in order to drive appropriate resultant action” (Lach, 2012). BI dashboards should be effective and efficient for businesses to view their data. These are the best BI dashboard practices I have researched that will

Data collected by a business includes internal data, such as financial or operational information, as well as external data, such as customer or website usage information. Properly analyzing and acting on this vast amount of data can transform the way companies do business and can become their biggest competitive advantage. Leaders of the organization no longer have to rely on their “gut instincts” to make key decisions, instead they will make decisions off historic data and will be able to more easily measure and track the effectiveness of those decisions.

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

Decision making refers to the process of finding and selecting options according to the priorities and values of the person making the decision. Since there are many choices involved, it is important to identify as many options as possible so as to pick the option that best fits a company’s target, goals, values and vision. Due to the integral role of decision making in company growth and financial progress, many firms such as Amazon.com and EBay are pumping in huge investments in business intelligence systems, which are made up of certain technological tools and technological applications that are created for the purpose of facilitating improved decision making process in

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

Companies are adopting business intelligence system within their organizations because by using the system reports they can gain the advantages of understanding their internal strength and weaknesses to face external competitors and challenges to increase profits and reduce cost on their everyday operations and processes.

Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world and handles more than one million customer transactions every hour and generates more than 2.5 petabytes of data storage (Venkatraman & Brooks, 2012). To put this into perspective, this data is equivalent to 167 times the number of books in America’s Library of Congress (Venkatraman & Brooks, 2012). So how can Wal-Mart use this massive amount of data and what useful information can this data provide? This paper will provide a brief overview of the importance of Business Intelligence (BI) and how the largest retailer in world, Walmart, is using it.

How much will organizations spend on business intelligence (BI) in 2016? According to Gartner, organizations are projected to spend almost $16.9 billion in 2016. That is an increase of 5.2% over 2015 sales . Business Intelligence plays a big role in today’s business, it now used in every part of the organization from supply chain to human resources (www.gartner.com). This paper will compare two business intelligence software tools. First, I will define business intelligence (BI). Then, I will examine the features of each of the BI tools. Next, I will discuss the pros and cons of each software. This paper will focus on the capabilities and costs for each BI software. Lastly, this paper will indicates which choice was made and an explanation of that choice.

The report focuses on data mining approach to predict human wine taste preferences. A large data set is considered with white and red wine samples (“Vinho Verde” wine from Portugal). The inputs include objective tests (e.g. PH values) and the output is based on sensory data (median of at least 3 evaluations made by wine experts). Each expert graded the wine quality between 0 (very bad) and 10 (very excellent). Due to privacy and logistic issues, only physicochemical (inputs) and sensory (the output) variables are available (e.g. there is no data about grape types, wine brand, wine selling price, etc.).