Effectiveness of Business Intelligence Tools for Supporting Decision-Making

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

Information – business intelligence – is no longer the exclusive domain of IT or research departments. From marketing and finance to management and operations, intelligence is applied strategically throughout the enterprise. And professionals who know how to gather and leverage it are the ones who will lead organizations, control decisions, and be relied upon to steer their companies.

2. Business intelligence: Delivers synchronized, business-critical data in a variety of diagnostic tools to view market trends and build relationships that help facilitate timely decision making (Microsoft Dynamics NAV, 2011).

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

Business Intelligence can be defined as the combined form of developing and learning the data that has been collected from various sources and then analyzing it. Business Intelligence is also used to provide the data in an interactive access to the data which enables the business analysts to process out certain analysis by making necessary manipulations in the data. The data that gets manipulated and analyzed includes the historical data along with the current data along with the performance levels and the situations through which the analysts are able to make precious insights that can be used to provide solutions that can result in benefitting the organization. Thus, Business Intelligence is basically taking actions based on the decisions that are taken by considering the transformed or the manipulated data (Turban, Sharda, Delen, King, & Aronson, 2011, p. 08)

In the increasingly competitive global business environment, each organization needs to take advantage of every tool, opportunity, and advantage it can to achieve the best products and services, to gain and maintain market share, and keep stakeholders happy from investors and workers to supply chain and customers. The advance of data analysis has opened up new vistas to support decision making. Decision support systems (Sauter, 2010) have emerged that process various forms of data to build outcome models. These have been adopted in every segment of society, in the private and public sector, from political campaigns and the military to corporations and nonprofits alike. As a whole, the new set of tools involving the strategic use of data is called business intelligence. Within that general framework, the term analytics refers to the statistical, quantitative use of data to produce explanatory and predictive models for fact-based decision making. (Sauter, 2010).

Business Intelligence is a process which includes different technologies and methods process for analysing data and presenting information which is helpful for top level management.BI includes various tools, application, and methodologies that enable organizations to collect data from internal and external sources, prepare that for analysis develop and run queries against the data and generate different kind of graphs and reports. Business Intelligence can analysis large amount of data easily and affectively .Identifying new threats and opportunities and implementing an effective and profitable strategy based on insight can provide business a market stability and long term stability.

In the enterprise world, business intelligence has become a common necessity in every organization whether big or small. According to Shollo and Kautz (2010, p. 1), business intelligence is defined as ‘a process, a product, and as a set of technologies, or a combination of these’. Input from a wide range of corporate stakeholders is essential to implement an effective corporate business intelligence strategy. The purpose of a corporate business intelligence strategy is to aid business with planning in a long run, to aid middle management with tactical reporting, and help operations with daily decision making to efficiently run a business (Pant 2009). A stakeholder is anybody who has an interest in a particular decision which includes people who influence a decision, or could influence it, as well as those affected by it. Contribution of corporate stakeholders in corporate business intelligence strategy will result in the strategy to be successful as well as yield more positive stakeholders.

“Technology creates visibility across the business, and enterprise-wide operational practices are essential to optimal efficiency and effectiveness. The strategic implementation of business intelligence tools and analytics, along with cross-departmental alignment, can transform data into meaningful, useful information for critical analysis. Proactive and investigative BI reporting techniques can help recognize new business opportunities and provide firms with a competitive industry advantage.” - Scott Lundstrom, group vice president and general manager of IDC Financial, Government and Health Insights (Sungard, 2014a).

With the practice of data-driven marketing and decision-making becoming more mainstream in the business world, a new term, business intelligence (BI), has emerged. BI encompasses a mixture of applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data. Though it is much more than just comparing point A to point B, BI can be used to identify inefficient processes inside of businesses ready to be reengineered or uncover new revenue stream opportunities.

Business Intelligence is the gathering and analysis of large amounts of information so as to gain insights that propagate strategic and tactical business decisions. Business Intelligence is the mix of the processes and technologies which change data into information. It includes a wide category of technologies, including data warehousing, multidimensional analysis or online analytical processing, data mining and visualization, as well as basic queries and multiple types of analytical tools for reporting. These technologies allow business stakeholders to collect, store, access, and do the analysis of data to improve the business decision-making capabilities.

Traditionally, business intelligence (BI) has been used as an umbrella term to describe the concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based decision support systems. BI also includes the underlying architectures, tools, databases, applications, and methodologies. BI’s major objectives are to enable interactive and easy access to diverse data, enable manipulation and transformation of these data, and provide business managers and analysts the ability to conduct appropriate analyses and perform the actions [Turban et al. 2008; Wixom et al. 2011]. Successful BI initiatives have been reported for major industries, from healthcare and airlines, to major IT and telecommunication firms [Anderson-Lehman et al. 2004; Carte et al. 2005; Turban et al. 2008].

It involves business information and analysis that support strategic decision-making, and lead to improved business performance. Decisions based on Business Intelligence and Analytics can impact the bottom line by reducing cost and increasing revenues.

Business Intelligence (BI) can be characterized as the set of apparatuses which permits end-clients simple access to significant data and the office to examinations this to help

Business Intelligence, also referred to as BI, has been defined in many ways. The earliest definition comes from 1958. At this time business intelligence “was seen as the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide actions towards a desired goal” (Turning Data into Actionable Information). Business Intelligence encompasses the following elements: Reporting, Analysis, Data mining, Data Quality and interpretation, and Predictive Analysis” (Turning Data into Actionable Information). According to Ryan Mulcahy at CIO.com, “Business Intelligence, or BI, is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of