The previous post Transactional/operational … enlisted the differences between a transactional databases and data warehouses. This posting will explore the benefits of Business Intelligence (BI) systems.
Although, commonly used business applications such as MAS 90, salesforce.com, SAP, QuickBook do provide access to data and could produce large sets of reports, but they are designed to access a single record at a time. These applications are optimized for record maintenance tasks such as adding, deleting or updating a record. Not only these systems do not have the necessary functionalities for data analysis, bu also the available data in each of these systems is a fraction of the data available across all applications within the organization.
For the purpose of reporting on large amounts of data in business applications, there is a need for a process to collect and integrate this data into a single repository. This requires a software tool that is capable of providing secure, quick, flexible, and scalable access to this data. That repository is the Data Warehouse (DW) and Business Intelligence (BI) is the software tool.
Industrial strength Business Intelligence (BI) tools such as MicroStrategy , Business Objects , etc. enable accessing data in the following five styles in order to maximize return on data assets without the need to reinvent the wheel:
- 1: Scorecards & Dashboards, to visually convey facts at-a-glance
- 2: Enterprise Reporting, for pixel-perfect report formats
- 3: Cube Analysis, to slice-and-dice the data
- 4: Predictive Analysis, to perform predictive and statistical analysis
- 5: Alerts and Proactive Notification, for timely delivery of reports based on business events
Greater Than the Sum of All Parts
Virtually all business applications today have reporting capabilities with various degrees of effectiveness. However interpreting these reports in the context of the larger picture requires linking and incorporating them together. Have you ever tried this integration before? if so, then you know it is not as simple as it sounds. Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence tools and processes integrate data from disparate systems and provide a single view view of the business. Also by standardizing business metrics, BI tools provide a single version of the truth across the organization.
Having witnessed Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence systems in action for the past decade has convinced me that a single integrated view of the business along with single version of the truth represent far more value than obtaining reports from disparate systems.
If you are not taking advantage of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence benefits, this is a great time to contact your trusted technology partner to find out how your business could benefit from these new power tools.
Specializing in predictive analysis, AnalyticsPoint constructs executive dashboard software and other business intelligence tools to gather and organize business objects so that executives can maximize benefits from performance management software. Tools such as a data warehouse and balanced scorecard are used to enhance enterprise business intelligence so that companies can understand and react to circumstances and opportunity with lightning speed and precision.
Tooraj Kazeminy
CHIEF KNOWLEDGE OFFICER
AnalyticsPoint
