Businesses are turning to business intelligence as the cornerstone of the decision-making process in the age of digitization and data analysis. We discuss what business intelligence is, the many types of business intelligence tools, and how business intelligence relates to data analytics.
If you manage or work for a firm, you’ve probably heard of and used business intelligence on a regular basis. Business intelligence is already used by almost all businesses, particularly when making choices.
Business intelligence, or BI, has evolved into the foundation upon which all organizational pillars are constructed. Making well-informed decisions based on reliable data is essential to ensuring business success and standing out from the competition in a market that is becoming more and more competitive.
Business intelligence (BI): What is it?
The term used to define business intelligence is significant since it is not at all abstract and practically describes business intelligence in just two words. Literally, business intelligence is the capacity to produce insightful business intelligence.
Business intelligence is more specifically the ability to turn information into knowledge that is useful to an organization, or, in other words, into productive intelligence that aids in decision-making, the creation of business opportunities, and the optimization of tasks, operations, and processes.
The evolution of business intelligence throughout time
The phrase “business intelligence” first appeared in the Cyclopaedia of Commercial and Business Anecdotes, which was published in the United States in 1865, despite the fact that it seems to be a notion created in the twenty-first century.
In the 1960s, business intelligence was already in use. The system that allowed organizations to share information at the time was referred to by this phrase. With the introduction of the Internet in 1983, business intelligence began to be associated with technology and computer models in the 1980s.
Business intelligence was utilized to support the business decision-making process in the 1960s and 1980s, albeit in a far more primitive and ineffective manner than it is today. Businesses in the 1960s used business intelligence to learn more about rivals, forecast market trends, and modify their offers in response to those of rival businesses. Although it was still far from achieving the level of correlation with data and IT that is prevalent today, business intelligence (BI) began to grow in the technical and digital world in the 1980s.
The early commercialization of business intelligence technologies and the spread of BI as we know it now started in the 1990s. However, business intelligence was not widely available in the 1990s since the tools at the time were extremely challenging to use and required IT expertise.
The availability of business intelligence software and apps increased as software providers began to recognize the potential of BI and analytical tools at the start of the new millennium in the 2000s. A rise in supplies was accompanied with advancements. Vendors were aware of the need for intuitive, user-friendly solutions that let business and non-technical people gather, integrate, and analyze information and data without depending on the IT department.
Firm intelligence is now almost as essential to running a corporate as a computer because to advancements made in business environments over the past ten years. In this setting, business intelligence tools and systems have proliferated and seen a significant increase in their functionalities.
However, difficulties persist. Despite technological advancements, we now produce more data than ever before, thus the complexity that once revolved around accessing data now rests in figuring out which data is important in the huge processing of data and in knowing how to maximize the value of the data that is available.
Organizations are gathering more data than ever, but the process of turning that data into useful information is also more difficult than ever. It gets harder to grasp and be able to draw inferences from the more information we have—data assets, data sources, systems, data repositories, etc. Since data processing techniques and tactics like interoperability, data integration, system integration, data governance, etc. are now necessary for business intelligence, this is why.
analytics for business intelligence
Naturally, gathering business insight necessitates complicated procedures intricately entwined with technology and data. These days, it is impossible to discuss business intelligence without also bringing up data analytics.
The cornerstone of business intelligence is data analytics. When it comes to creating knowledge and useful information, data has evolved into an organizational commodity. Companies turn data into information and information into insights through the process of data analysis.
However, as a result of technological advancement, we now live in a world where business intelligence extends far beyond data analysis and already includes more intricate procedures like data mining and various forms of artificial intelligence like machine learning and deep learning, among others. Today, businesses have countless options for gathering intelligence.
However, they all ultimately have the same goal in mind: leveraging data to improve data-driven decisions, optimize business strategies, create opportunities, promote continuous improvement, address productivity challenges, and respond as soon as possible to market and consumer changes.
Business intelligence is a lengthy project that begins with data collection, progresses through data analysis, and ends with data visualisation and the presentation of the information through dashboards, reports, or other interactive reporting and visualisation systems. The project is practically endless and always cyclical.
Discover how to organize a project for business intelligence here.
Tools for business intelligence
There are many different business intelligence tools available, as we have already mentioned. It is more difficult for businesses to select one tool due to the abundance of available ones.
Businesses must choose the best BI tool by taking into account their needs, the amount of data they have, the complexity of the processes they want to run, and each tool’s capabilities.
View our battlecard for business intelligence tools here.
The major technological advisors serve as a disseminator and provide assistance to organizations when choosing a tool. One of the largest consulting firms in the world, Gartner, releases an annual report that lists the top business intelligence (BI) and analysis tools in use today. Microsoft established itself as the sole leader of the last Gartner Magic Quadrant thanks to its suite of Power BI tools.
Large technology consultancies serve as a middleman and aid businesses in tool selection. One of the biggest consulting companies in the world, Gartner, releases an annual study that lists the top BI and analytics solutions available. Thanks to Power BI, Microsoft was rated as the clear leader in the most recent Gartner Magic Quadrant.
Look at the Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence (ABI) platforms published by Gartner in 2021.
Bismart focuses on Power BI and Microsoft technology as a preferred Microsoft Power BI partner to design business solutions and provide the greatest customer support and technical capabilities. But not every business is the same, and not every business need the same tools. There are many options, but making wise decisions is essential.
Unsure of which BI tool is best for your business? Our knowledgeable staff can assist you!
