The traditional reporting cycle is slow, costly, and inefficient. Modern business intelligence is interactive and accessible. With the right software, users can visualize data and make more informed decisions. So, how does it work?
What is a BI platform?
Business analysis is a relatively new area of analytical work. Today, it is becoming increasingly relevant as organizations understand that decision-makers, at all levels and in all departments, need access to appropriate and complete information to help make the right strategic decisions, ensuring long-term company success. Business analysts are engaged in finding out the problems in the organization’s work and developing proposals for their solutions.
BI platform is based on the SaaS model. As a result, companies are not charged with installing and maintaining software. Instead, users simply pay a subscription fee to access the software, a turnkey solution.
The BI program systematically collects information from all existing departments of the company and, in a concise form, passes the most important data, verified against the established indicators, to the responsible specialist. At the same time, the application allows you to display information of any level, including primary documentation. A business analysis system is necessary to monitor the results of the organization’s work online and, if necessary, act immediately if the project processes deviate from the set indicators or the established plan. Both serious companies and organizations of medium and small businesses need to obtain important data from primary raw information. BI platforms are multifunctional, so they are suitable for solving many issues in all areas of activity.
Why does a business need the BI platform?
Today, there are many BI solutions with varying degrees of readiness and a whole range of implemented functions of both large global vendors such as Microsoft or IBM and small companies specializing in developing BI platforms. According to Gartner, today, BI platform developers are tasked with meeting the needs for access organization and analytical data processing tools of both simple business users and advanced IT specialists.
The BI platform helps business leaders to:
- Conduct detailed business analysis, based on which and will be used as a platform for development.
- Increase the efficiency of projects for the consideration of process automation.
- Select information about clients and use it wisely.
- Automate the sales process.
- Designate a skin client.
- Increase the quality and speed of service.
- Manage company documents.
The most preferred BI platforms in the IT market are:
- Tableau
- Tibco Spotfire
- Deductor Studio academic
- Prognoz Platform
- IBM Cognos
- QlikView
- Microsoft Power BI.
Common BI processes
Over the past few years, business intelligence has expanded to include more processes and activities to help improve productivity.
- Data mining: Using databases, statistics, and machine learning to discover trends in large datasets.
- Reporting: Sharing data with stakeholders to make the right decisions based on findings.
- Performance Metrics and Benchmarking: Compare current to historical performance data to track performance against goals (using customizable dashboards).
- Descriptive analytics: using preliminary data analysis to find out what happened.
- Queries: By asking questions about specific data, BI extracts answers from datasets.
- Statistical Analysis: Get the results of descriptive analytics and further explore the data using statistics, such as how this trend came about and why.
- Data Visualization: Transform data analysis into visual representations such as charts, graphs, and bar charts making data easier to use.
- Visual Analysis: Explore data with visual storytelling to instantly convey insights and stay in the analysis flow.
- Data preparation: compiling multiple data sources, defining dimensions and measurements, and preparing them for data analysis.