Abstract
Business Intelligence is a wide class of application programs and technologies which came together with store, analyze and provide access to data which will help users make better decisions in their businesses.
Business Intelligence applications will support data mining, statistical analysis, forecasting, OLAP, etc. BI will use the fact-based system to improve business decision making.
This paper will present an introduction of Business Intelligence and its importance to businesses.
Introduction
Business Intelligence is about providing value for our business based on data and facts. Due to a modern business-value point of view, Businesses use BI to increase decision making skills for managerial process (e.g. planning, budgeting, controlling, measuring, and monitoring) and to shows that computer systems are the tools that help businesses do that better, faster, and with more reliability.
Definitions
Business Intelligence is the art of reaching a business advantage from data by answering basic issues like the rank of different customers, the process of the business, etc. With a powerful BI companies can support decisions with more than just an inner sense.
Business intelligence is not just a modern idea. In his famous treatise The Art of War, Sun Tzu says,
“…what enables the wise commander to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits…” (Giles, 1994)
While Sun Tzu is not the father of business intelligence, his concept that foreknowledge breeds success applies directly to BI. Modern BI uses computers to gain foreknowledge by processing and analyzing information in support of business decisions.[1]
With the development of corporation’s scale, the traditional operational mode and the philosophy of management are facing great impact. The information which collected by corporation including corporation’s inner data and data related with clients are getting more and more. Corporations are covered by data progressively. How to make the best of this information, and how to serve for corporation’s decision-making? An effective methods is creating database of corporation, this can store and analyze a great deal of valuable data effectively. It can discover the trends of market’s changing and useful information of users. Business Intelligence can convert corporation’s current data into knowledge, it is a kind of advisable management decision-making which is great helpful for corporations.
The term of Business Intelligence was used as early as September, 1996, when a Gartner Group report said:
By 2000, Information Democracy will emerge in forward-thinking enterprises, with Business Intelligence information and applications available broadly to employees, consultants, customers, suppliers, and the public. The key to thriving in a competitive marketplace is staying ahead of the competition. Making sound business decisions based on accurate and current information takes more than intuition. Data analysis, reporting, and query tools can help business users wade through a sea of data to synthesize valuable information from it - today these tools collectively fall into a category called "Business Intelligence." [2]
Business Intelligence (BI) was put forward by Gartner Group at the soonest in 1996. He defined that Business Intelligence is a kind of subject which composed by data storage, report forms, data analysis, data mining, data backup and data restoration and so on. Business Intelligence is a kind of technology and application whose object is helping decision makers of corporation. Business Intelligence system is a kind of integrated system which directed by modern managerial theory and information technology; It including machine learning, pattern recognition, data base and statistics. Business Intelligence reaches some key factors which influence commercial activity form technology management and meaning of organization. These will help corporations to make sensible decisions. [2]
Importance of Business Intelligence
According to CFA [Conditioned for Accomplishments] one of the scariest aspects of doing business is the failure to come up with the right decision. This is one of the reasons why many businesses have failed because of one small wrong decision. In business, it is important to know everything about your product, market and competitor, so it cannot hurt you.[3]
Business intelligence refers to technologies, process, skills and the right application and use of this information to make a sound decision. No matter how great your products are, if you failed to make the right decision in marketing those products then your chances of failing is huge.
Big or small companies can benefit a lot from good and strong business intelligence and from the proper use of this information. After all, no matter how good your information is, if you do not know how to use it properly to make your business grow, then it is pretty useless.
Keep in mind that no matter how many hours you’ve worked on your business or how great and awesome your product lines are, if you have no help to prepare for the future and your vision only reaches today and not tomorrow, then you have busted your tail for nothing. All your hard work will definitely go to naught and you might even end up full of debts.[3]
Vision is very important, and it becomes even more powerful if backed up with a good information, technology and skills. Whatever shortcomings or difficulties you may be having right now; it can be overcome with the right business intelligence.
Moreover, if things appear to be moving faster for you or you no longer know which way or what to do next, and the funny things is that you can’t even find the time to sit down and analyze your plans, then there is no way that you can improve on other things, when you have no idea about it in the first place.
Understand this; you already know that passion, salesmanship, great products, marketing know-how, hard work and good vision is what brought you to where you are right now. However are all these, is also the way to become part of the next 500 top company. Is it really that simple, why not? After all, if business is really that simple and uncomplicated then every businessman must be making loads of money and living a more comfortable life.[3]
Conclusion
Although we are convinced that business intelligence is the way to go, it will still be quite a journey. The work here is only a part of related research piece. Business intelligence System should provide not only the capabilities to analyze what happened, but more importantly to tell the users what is going to happen in enterprises, with intelligent information processing techniques. Expected business intelligence is closed to ubiquitous tools that people use every day, like some familiar desktop applications. Once the goal is reached, we can see an intelligent business helper as well as our returns on the investment.
References
1.Giles, Lionel (1994 translation). Sun Tzu on the Art of War, Ward Lock, 1910 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence
2.Gartner Group, the definition of business intelligence, September 1996
http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/business-intelligence
3.CFA [Conditioned for Accomplishments] GBATA ON IN BUSINESS
