There are numerous definitions of business intelligence and some of it are extremely complicated. BI is best defined as a computer-based strategy used to identify, extract, and analyze business data. A wider meaning of this system application refers to the skills, processes, technologies, applications, and practices used to influence the internal and external information of a company or a business. The information here becomes an asset of the company or business to aid and boost their executive power. Anything has a purpose on why it was produced. For BI, the purpose of it is to enable fact-based decision-making on the part of the owner to support their mission and goals. Simply put, BI was created to help business succeed.

All things are comprised of various elements. These are basic and essential components of things that make it effective. For business intelligence, it has at least 12 primary elements. In this particular write-up, seven out of the 12 elements would be discussed which includes analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), dashboards, data warehouse, data integration, data mining, and on-line analytical processing (OLAP). Understanding what these elements are for can help in understanding business intelligence greatly.

The first element, analytics, functions in discovering and understanding of historical patterns through studying of data with the help of statistical analysis. It also functions as an application of computer technology, operational research, and statistics to solve problems in business and industry. The next element, customer relationship management, operates by managing the interactions between the company and its customers, clients, and sales prospects. CRM also performs in the organizing, automating, and synchronizing of business processes which is being used in marketing, customer service, and technical support. The third element which is the dashboard, functions in the visual presentation of performance measures, identifying and correcting of negative trends, and generating of detailed reports showing new trends. Making the executive information system readable is the primary function of dashboards.

The purpose of data warehouse of aiding reporting and analysis across the company is preserved in three layers: staging, integration, and access. Staging is used for storing raw data for developers. Integration is used for incorporating data and to have perception from its users. Access is used for getting data out for the users. The combining of data from different sources and providing a unified view of data for its users is the primary function of data integration. To discover useful patterns or relationships in a group of data, data mining must be used since it utilizes innovative statistical methods. An example is cluster analysis and artificial intelligence. The last business intelligence element to be discussed is on-line analytical processing. OLAP provides end users an access to large number of data and assists in deductions based in investigative reasoning.

Despite having distinct functions from each other, these business intelligence elements are important in its effectiveness. These elements are very essential not just for the BI system but also to other things.

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Tags: Business

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Posted in Business by Cheryl Powell No Comments Yet