What does business intelligence look like?
You may think that you have business intelligence but what are the characteristics of a true business intelligence solution.
Business intelligence is one point
With business intelligence systems, businesses can unlock information held within their databases by giving authorized users a single point of access to data—a Business intelligence portal—in both intranet or extranet environments. Wherever your data resides, whether it is stored in your operational systems, data warehouses, data marts and/or packaged applications, users can prepare reports and drill deep down into the information to understand what drives their business, without technical knowledge of the underlying data structures. The most successful Business intelligence applications allow users to do this with an easy-to-understand, non-technical, graphical user interface.
Business intelligence includes everyone
There are many different uses for business intelligence systems. Everyone thinks of sales as the first use of business intelligence. However Business intelligence systems can be used at every step in the value chain of your company. We have clients that are using Business intelligence to track, understand, and manage data in every department—from finance, production, and development, to research, sales and marketing, and purchasing.
Business intelligence answers questions
The key to unlocking information is to give users the tools to quickly and easily find answers to their questions. Some users will be satisfied with standard reports that are updated on a regular basis, like current inventory reports, sales per channel, or customer status reports. However, the answers these reports yield, can lead to new questions. Some users will want dynamic access to information. The information that a user finds in a report will trigger more questions, and these questions will not be answered in a prepackaged report. While users may spend 80% of their time accessing standard or personalized reports, you will find that for 20% of their tasks, they need to go elsewhere to obtain additional information not available in the original report. To address this need and to avoid end user frustration a business intelligence system is required that lets users autonomously make ad hoc requests for information from corporate data sources.
So there you have the key to business intelligence. If you are looking for further insight on business forecasting download our free whitepaper on Fundamental Issues in Business Forecasting. This white paper identifies several fundamental issues that should be of concern to organizations creating a new forecasting function and to those struggling to improve the one they already have.
