What is Business Intelligence?

• Platform that makes the right information available to the right decision makers at the right time
• Provides the ability to access enterprise-wide data for better decision making
• Effective way to consolidate data from various systems into a single view
• Provides answers to employees to make decision making quicker and easier
• Provides reporting and data analysis in a multi-dimensional fashion
• Allows employees to spend more time analyzing and acting on data, rather than gathering and interpreting raw numbers
• Provides a means of solving the problem of gathering data from disparate systems

What are your needs?

• To retain and expand your client base, improve cross-selling opportunities, and increase customer profitability through a better understanding of behavior, needs, and preferences?
• Improve tracking of services and product lines?
• Combine data from a variety of sources to more accurately conduct market forecasting and system planning?
• Analyze the effectiveness of marketing initiatives?
• Manage call center activity and increase response time to customer inquiries?
• Improve your budgeting process from the field level up?
• Monitor cost performance of all facilities and plants?
• Track quality issues from the point of origin (customer complaint or warranty claim) to their initial source, so the root cause can be identified and resolved
• Manage the supply chain to increase profits and market share, provide a stronger competitive position, and enhance company value
• Keep inventory costs at a minimum, while ensuring that enough stock is on hand to prevent severe negative consequences to either production operations or customer order fulfillment

Common Issues

• Data Rich, information poor systems
• With investments in newer and legacy applications, organizations are data rich
• Getting information out is usually single reports from various systems with various perspectives
• Interpretation of such data is hard since reports are usually two dimensional
• Getting reports out in a multi-dimensional manner is not possible
• The Enterprise Challenge -  Event to knowledge period
• In a business environment, information users require on-demand reports on events
• Statistics shows that it takes a long time for decision makers to see a report or the effect of an event
• Monthly financial reports are examples.  By the time the report is reviewed, action can no longer be taken

Benefits of a BI solution

• Increased productivity
• Empowers decision makers
• Improves event to knowledge period
• Solves the “data rich, information poor” problem
• Helps users view the enterprise in various dimensions
• Minimizes the need for enterprise application integration
• Leverages existing infrastructure of hardware and software - using MS SQL Server’s analysis services or Microsoft Office pivot-tables
• Controlled access to statistical data for example, a VP of Sales will see performances of all sales reps in the field, while a sales rep will see details of his sales by customer.
• Using your existing data formats—any ODBC compliant database
• Dynamic graphs, charts, and tables
• Access information via a powerful web interface
• Integration with a portal solution for on-demand viewing

Conclusion