Business Intelligence - Assignment Example

of the of the of the Business Intelligence. INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: Business Intelligence refers to a very comprehensive terminology. It is often narrated to be at the same levels as military intelligence and competitive intelligence. ‘Data’, ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’ combine together to form ‘Business Intelligence’. In the perspective of BI data, information and knowledge pertain to the meanings that are narrated below: Data: Is a mere collection of raw figures and facts. For example, a company’s daily inventory records etc. Information: The data is made meaningful by the performance of organization and analysis on it. Knowledge: Experience, Analysis, Context and reflections combines together with information produce a resultant that is termed as knowledge. This resultant form of information, termed as knowledge now, can be utilized at large by decision makers. The key business terminology of business intelligence, however, has more than just one meaning associated with it. Without the introduction and implementation of business intelligence into present day organizational structures it may potentially be impossible to run a business at all. In order to demonstrate the variations in its meaning the practical meaning of Business Intelligence is demonstrated as under. “Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of application programs and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help enterprise users make better business decisions. BI applications include the activities of decision support, query and reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data mining.” (Sauder, 2011) HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE. The history of business intelligence can noticeably be traced back to Howard Drestner of the Harvard Group. Back in the year 1989 Gartner introduced the term Business Intelligence for the first. The term was then denoted to, “describe a set of concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems.”, as in the words of Power Dan (2005). Early years of the last decade of the twentieth century the terminology was also used to interpret briefing books and executive information systems. Another school of thoughts relates the history of Business Intelligence to a 1958 journal article. In the mentioned article the words of H. P Luhn quote the role of a Business Intelligence based System as a system that would, "... utilize data-processing machines for auto-abstracting and auto-encoding of documents and for creating interest profiles for each of the ‘action points’ in an organization. Both incoming and internally generated documents are automatically abstracted, characterized by a word pattern, and sent automatically to appropriate action points." (Luhn, 1958) The era from this time onwards to the 1980s was that of evolution for Business Intelligence. The decision support systems that were introduced in the initial years, business travelled through the years manipulating from data warehousing to executive information systems, OLAP systems and so on. The usage of Business intelligence became widespread by the end of the last decades of the century. PURPOSE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE The purpose of business intelligence is to support the decision making mechanism within an organization. It highlights factors that may affect decision making patterns and suggest successful decision making strategies. Deployment of business intelligent systems results in the consideration of factors affecting decision making that may be hidden and may be overlooked during manual analysis. These factors are often referred to as the Key Performance indicators. Management is assisted greatly by business analysis trends that are highlighted via business intelligence. Evaluation of data at each managerial level helps thorough evaluation of enterprise data. The decision making, thus evaluated at each respective managerial level, enables managers to remain responsive to the ongoing latest market trends. TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Present day technological advancements have evolved the meaning of business even further. The technology that is used to deploy the business intelligent practices is ever changing. The ever-growing technological advancements are improving the business intelligence methodologies. However, these subsequent technological advancements accompany challenging issues as well. Following is an account of these issues: Data and Technology 1) The data of an organization is complex and not properly formulated. The organization of data results in timely implementation of Business Intelligent protocols often resulting in their implementation delay and eventually failure. For example, same objects or entities may be quoted within different systems of a the redundancy and clearing out the definition in which these things are used are tasks that hinder timely implementation of business intelligence issues. 2) At times the chosen business intelligence technology does not suit the existing environment of an organization. The technology of business intelligence proves to be so rigid and cumbersome to change that efficient and timely implement of the project becomes impossible. 3) The Business Intelligence technology used may hinder the existing usage of a current system because: The revealing and imaging of the existing information is done in poor or limited manner. The responsiveness of the data within the system is slow. This cannot be acceptable as proficiency in time is the key issue in business intelligent systems. The process of asking new questions related to the business intelligence technology by the end users or the business intelligence experts may be limited due to their complexity or excessive time consumption. The data required for the business intelligent systems may not be resource-able. This may be due to the fact that no resource may be available to source the data required by the business intelligent system. 7) Many changes may be required for the business intelligent system to become acceptable to the business organization. This may be because of the fact that IT experts constructing the system may not understand it well. MAJOR TOOLS Complete Data Analysis can very well be conducted with the help of business analysis tools. These tools are of three types: The Extraction of Data Architecture of Data Development of Query Most Software of Business Intelligence includes these tools as part of their standard features. The effective use and implementation of these tools is possible only when beforehand statistical training, adequate computer tools and proper data management is implemented. Wisegeek quotes the purpose of business intelligence tools as: “The purpose of business intelligence tools is to enable a range of forms of analysis that would not otherwise be possible. Options include creation of ad hoc, scheduled and standard reports across a range of disciplines. The functionality required to create these reports is an essential part of the application. Query development requires a combination of technical skills and a solid understanding of business process.” (WiseGeek, 2011) The presence of skilled staff is essential for the usefulness of the tools of business intelligence. The requirements that need to be fulfilled in order to become part of a business intelligence enabled system are a beforehand knowledge of basic statistical concepts, computer systems and advanced levels of mathematical concepts. The Business Intelligence tools are ideally understood by personnel who possess a graduate degree in mathematical concepts. CASE STUDY The case study under perusal is related to the implementation of business intelligence in the healthcare domain. The title of the case study: Antibiotic Costs Reduced and Care Improved With Analytics (mckesson1, 2010) This case study is related to the California’s Eisenhower Medical Center (EMC). The revenue of the hospital was hit by extended deficits in budget and the weakening of the economy. They attempted to evaluate their selection of drugs for use in the hospital. Without making any compromises on healthcare they wanted to assess the possibility of adopting any drug alternatives that were equally good but were cheaper in cost. For this reason they deployed business intelligence software. The business intelligence strategy sifted through the data of the hospital facility to find out the cost of drugs being incurred at each bed that was occupied. Along with this data of the antibiotics that were being prescribed was also analyzed. The resultant of the business intelligence application proved to be very fruitful. The analysis produced in the end proved that two of the expensive drugs were being over prescribed. This was resulting in unwanted extension in expenses and was also affecting patient outcome. The data changed the practice of many physicians who were over prescribing the certain drugs. They agreed to adhere to a new protocol that was built anew encompassing new standards and preventive measures for future strategies. The outcome of the implementation of the business intelligent system can very well be summarized as follows: The outcome of the patients was improved. Physicians became more conscious and thus engaged in the process. The hospital saved about one million dollars’ worth expenditure within a year. The cost that was being incurred at each occupied bed for the two over prescribed drugs reduced considerably. CONCLUSION Business Intelligence is an indispensible part of the technology oriented world of today. The case study highlighted above is a proof of the fact that Business Intelligence implementation evaluates and highlights affecting factors that are otherwise left unnoticed. WORKS CITED: Mckesson1. Healthcare Business Intelligence Case Study: Antibiotic Costs Reduced and Care Improved With Analytics. Article Alley. December 13, 2010. Web. October 2, 2011. WiseGeek. What are Business Intelligence Tools? 2011. Web. October 2, 2011. Power Dan, What is business intelligence? DSS Resources. August 6, 2005. Web. October 1, 2011. Luhn, P. H. “A Business Intelligence System.” IBM Journal of Research and Development Non-Topicl. 2.4 (1958): 314. Web. 1st October, 2011. Sauder. Business Intelligence. 2001. Web. August 19, 2011. Read More