Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools. The best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performances. It’s a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help make informed business decisions. In her 2016 work, Margaret describes BI encompasses a wide variety of tools, applications and methodologies that enable organizations to collect data from internal systems and external sources. And further prepare it for analysis, develop and run queries against that data. Also whilst creating reports, dashboards and data visualizations to make the analytical results available to everyone.
The potential benefits of business intelligence tools include accelerating and improving decision-making and optimizing internal business processes. As well as increasing operational efficiency, driving new revenues and gaining competitive advantage over business rivals. BI systems will also help companies identify market trends and spot business problems that need to be addressed.
It was born out of the 1960s decision support systems and then expanded upon and developed in the 1980s. Business intelligence emerged alongside computer models for decision making and planning to turn data into conclusions. In the 2015 International Journal of Business Intelligence Research, Neil McBride tells us how BI has already been widely adopted across different industries. Such as education, banking, and healthcare. Even though business intelligence solutions differ between organizations. The main practices are often shared such as in getting a better understanding of stake-holders, allowing for a better handle over adaptability.
History of Business Intelligence (BI)
Source: Slideserve
Technology did not advance to the point where it could be considered an agent of business intelligence until well into the 20th century.
From this article, you can see IBM’s invention of the hard disk in 1956 revolutionized data storage. Floppy discs, laser discs, and other storage technologies meant that just as more and more data was being created, so too were there more and more places to store it.
The 2015 Lago’s article showed us that this spawned the creation of the first database management systems, collectively referred to as decision support systems (DSS). By the 1970’s a few BI vendors popped up with tools that made accessing and organizing this data possible.
But it was a new and clumsy technology. Most importantly, it was very difficult to use.
In 1989 Gartner analyst Howard Dresner again brought the phrase “business intelligence” into the common vernacular (D.Foote, 2017). He employed it as a general term to cover the cumbersome-sounding names for data storage and data analysis, names like DSS and executive information system (EIS). Data warehousing drastically cut the time it took to access data. Data that traditionally had been stored in multiple places was now all in a single location.
Business Intelligence 1.0
As business intelligence became a commonly known phrase in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, dozens of new vendors hit the market.
During this period, there were two basic functions of BI: producing data and reports and organizing it and visualizing it in a presentable way.
Yet there remained two significant issues holding back this developing phase of the technology: complexity, and time. The IT owned too many departments, meaning that most users were still not capable of executing BI tasks on their own. Existing BI tools had not been developed with anyone but experts in mind, and extensive analytics training was required to gain insights.
Formulating took more time and deliver reports to decision makers since the data was siloed. Only expert technical experts were able to utilize advanced data analysis software. Tools began to evolve to cater to non-technical users, but it happened slowly.
Business Intelligence 2.0
The dawn of the 21st century marked a distinct turning point, as technologies developed to address issues of both complexity and speed. They were also bolstered by the onset of Cloud-based programs that expanded and simplified the reach of BI platforms.
BI 2.0 included a host of different technologies such as real-time processing, which incorporated information from events as they happened into data warehouses, allowing companies to make decisions based on the most recent information available.
Other technologies that came into play included self-service access for non-expert users, meaning that employees could now complete projects without interference from the IT department.
The exponential growth of the Internet supported and advanced these developments, in part through the genesis of social networking tools. Facebook, Twitter, and blogs gave users very simple and very quick ways of sharing ideas and opinions.
It also provided a way for users to review methods and software, and more broadly disseminate a basic understanding of the different uses of business intelligence. The more that people communicated, the more that they understood.
By 2005, the increasing interconnectivity of the business world meant that companies needed real-time information, for a host of reasons. Some you can find here on Paulo’s article.
Some Final Thoughts
Companies need Business Intelligence systems in order to bring the right information to the right person. At the right time and in the right format. With the increasing usage of BI in the current world, there are numerous available application software enabling BI system implementation. For example, Power BI for data visualization, SQL Data Analytics tool for data implementation and more. With the advancement in technologies mentioned, current BI System has become better. As compared to the previous BI system introduced for more than 50 years ago by IBM. Current BI System incorporates not just access to data. But also interactive visualization based on real-time data, alert system and performance management. In this article, we discussed how crucial it is for all Businesses to adapt BI ASAP!
While being the heart of BI, it is an oversimplification of the process required to make it effective. Hence doing immense damage to the image of BI. This type of publicity creates overinflated expectations. And is probably one of the main reasons why so much BI software remains, unused, of the shelf. It’s not a button or technology that you can just press for better results. It’s a process, possibly even a set of beliefs.
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