Business Intelligence has become vital to just about every single business whether it be large businesses such as Amazon and Google or whether it is a small local business like Sam Levitz furniture. As described by the textbook, Business intelligence is “the use of information systems to gather and analyze information from both external and internal sources to make better decisions, and the data derived from these processes” (Valacich, Schneider, Jessup, 2015). Data has always been a part of any business, but without the use of information systems and business intelligence, this data had very little impact on day-to-day decisions and other vital issues within a business. Specifically, business intelligence has had a tremendous impact on allowing small businesses to become more profitable through the immensely important data that is provided.
However, in a utopian business the business intelligence tool deployed would provide all the features and meet the needs perfectly. Today's businesses are anything but utopian. When an organization looks at deploying a business intelligence tool there can be many factors that will complicate its deployment. Often times challenges such as whether or not the application is intuitive or not will play the largest role in deployment.
Information is a key component, which is virtual source in all aspects of business. Information helps create a well balance between analytics, business information, customers, vendors, and sales. Without proper use of information, businesses may struggle to understand components of their business, such as monitoring information, validated decision making, performance measuring, and the ability to identify new business opportunities. In this text, there will dialogue on how a Laboratory Corporation of America, also known as LabCorp, uses each one of these functions, to ensure better business practices, and proper regulatory control of the business components, that make this business strive.
Traditional business intelligence tools are being replaced by data discovery software. The data discovery software has numerous capabilities that are dominating purchase requirements for larger distribution. A challenge remaining is the ability to meet the dual demands of enterprise IT and business users.
In today’s organizational structure many of the organizations realize that business intelligence (BI) can provide solutions and important competitive advantages and thus want to evolve their BI strategies beyond spreadsheets.
The business intelligence (BI) marketplace is teaming with new innovations and struggles for market share. With new technologies and more companies entering the business intelligence landscape pricing for BI processes and tools are decreasing. “The relational database market is around 30 years old. It should be mature by now, but every year there seem to be new innovations in the relational database space. I’m always astounded that there continue to be new entrants” (Beckerle, p. 281, 2008).
For TWR, I architected and delivered scalable robust Business Intelligence platform to perform analytics on terabytes of retail data gathered from various resources incorporating convoluted security requirements.The platform was the most extensively used application by TWR executives, sales and marketing professionals
Business intelligence (BI) is the process of gathering enough of the right information in the right manner at the right time, and delivering the right results to the right people for decision-making purposes so that it can continue to yield real business benefits, or have a positive impact on business strategy, tactics, and operations in the enterprises. Business intelligence is a well-established and generally well-known software category that spans a wide range of functional capabilities. Business Intelligence systems are one step above knowledge management systems. Although sspecific definitions will vary from customer to customer and vendor to vendor, but most will agree that business intelligence typically refers to the challenge of providing business users with meaningful information from company data sources to help those users make better, more informed business decisions. BI applications include activities of online analytical processing (OLAP), decision support systems (DSS), data warehousing and data mining. Business Intelligence includes the following functions:
Wixom, B. H., Watson, H. J., & Werner, T. (2011). Developing an enterprise business intelligence capability: The norfolk southern journey. MIS Quarterly Executive, 10(2), 61-71.
Companies have transformed technology from a supporting tool into a strategic weapon.”(Davenport, 2006) In business research, technology has become an essential means that many organizations use in their daily operations. According to the article, Analytics is a major technological tool used. It is described as “the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models, and fact-based management to drive decisions and actions."(Davenport, 2006) Data is compiled to enhance business practices. When samples are taken, they are used to examine research and understand how to solve problems or why situations are as they are. Furthermore, in this article, Thomas Davenport discusses analytics from a business standpoint. He refers to organizations that have been successful in their usage of data and statistical analysis. In addition, he also discusses how data and statistics can be vital in the efforts to improve the operations of businesses.
The world is changing every day with flowing and scattered information. There are about 80% of data existing in unquantifiable content, like images. The challenge today is to put all data together and make the right decisions or gain faster insight about your customers, competitors, new goods and services. Analytics help companies to draw the picture of what the customer’s want, who they are, the buying patterns by analyzing different data such as demographics, product purchase history or internet experience. Analytics help turning data and information into insight and company can develop their own comprehensive strategies to gain the competitive edge.
I have often heard it said that if you want your business to succeed you should hire and surround yourself with people who are smarter than yourself. In the modern business world companies are finding it more and more difficult to compete solely on product, especially as it seems that every company a given industry is producing the (or very similar) products. Even competing on quality is a hard sell in the modern market as quality standards have become intense as consumer expectations have continued to rise. Thomas Davenport, professor of information technology and management at Babson College in Massachusetts is also the forerunning spokesperson for analytics and the use of them in business to achieve a competitive edge.
Decision making refers to the process of finding and selecting options according to the priorities and values of the person making the decision. Since there are many choices involved, it is important to identify as many options as possible so as to pick the option that best fits a company’s target, goals, values and vision. Due to the integral role of decision making in company growth and financial progress, many firms such as Amazon.com and EBay are pumping in huge investments in business intelligence systems, which are made up of certain technological tools and technological applications that are created for the purpose of facilitating improved decision making process in business. In this paper, I take a critical look at Decision Support Systems and how they affect organizational Decision making.
Business intelligence is a series of technologies, processes and tools required to convert data into information that is further converted to knowledge and plans respectively that yield profitable business accomplishments. Business intelligence consists of components such as knowledge management, warehousing, data mining, querying, reporting and business analytics. The definition of business intelligence is knowledge acquired about a business via the use of various software and hardware technologies that enable an organization to transform data into information or plans (MÜLLER et al., 2013). Companies and organizations employ business intelligence to cut costs, improve decision-making and in identifying new business ventures. What makes business management special is that it allows the company team to use data strategically in responding ...
First of all, business intelligence analysis requires the capturing of information and storing in a single location for effective data analysis. Currently, data analysis is supported by transactional systems, business specific data marts, and other ad-hoc processes. Information is distributed making it difficult and time-consuming to access. Business teams have adapted to this environment by creating user maintained databases and manual “work-arounds” to support new types of reporting and analysis. This has resulted in inconsistent data, redundant data storage, significant resource use for maintenance, and inefficient response to changing business needs.
Business intelligence, or BI, is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting. Data mining is the process of sorting through large amounts of data and picking out relevant information. It is usually used by business intelligence organizations, and financial analysts, but is increasingly being used in the sciences to extract information from the enormous data sets generated by modern experimental and observational methods.