The Past, Present, and Future of Business Intelligence - Essay Example

The Future of Business Intelligence Affiliation: The Future of Business Intelligence Business intelligence is a systematic and innovative process of data analysis aimed at boosting the performance of the business through assisting the corporate executives and other stakeholders to make informed decisions (Liautaud & Hammond, 2000). Business intelligence technology seeks to process and analyze data in pursuit of presenting actionable information that will help corporate executives and other relevant managers to make informed and sound decisions. It has a variety of tools, methodologies and applications that enables the organization to collect relevant data from the external and internal sources preparing for articulate analysis. The analysis involves developing and running the relevant queries against hence creating dashboards, reports and data visualizations that will make analytical results available in the corporate operational workers and decision makers (Negash, 2004). Business intelligence (BI) normally relates to the intelligence as the information valued its relevance and currency. The expert information, technologies, and knowledge are efficient in facilitating management of individual and organizations (Watson & Wixom, 2007). In this sense, Business Intelligence refers to a broad category of technologies and applications used for gathering and providing appropriate access and analyzing data for the sake of helping the enterprise users to make appropriate business decisions. Business intelligence has comprehensive knowledge of all factors that affecting business (Watson, 2009). Therefore, it is paramount to have concrete information of some factors such as competitors, customers, economic, business partners, external and internal environment hence making quality and effective business decisions. Business intelligence is paramount in facilitating decisions related to above factors. There is a specialized field of business intelligence known as competitive intelligence, and it generally focuses on the external environment that is competitive. The vital information-relating competitors help the organization in making relevant decisions concerning competition (Jourdan, Rainer & Marshall, 2008). The development of business intelligence has been massive over the last ten years due its efficiency and productivity. The many benefits surrounding the usage of business intelligence such as dashboards has made it possible for companies and organization to embrace the technology warmly. For instance, if one asks companies the benefits of business intelligence, the possible answer is one (Hannula & Pirttimäki, 2003). Moreover, if you inquire from BI expert, the answer will be different. Under normal circumstances, most companies only grasp the benefits in various tiny pieces, and it is not possible to express articulately the benefits they get from using business intelligence. However, some organizations are aware of the massive benefits, and they will employ every possible skill to ensure the technology has more impact on the organization. For instance, some organizations affirm that business intelligence has been pivotal in reducing costs in the operations and labor errands (Azvine et al, 2006). According to (Ranjan, 2009), the most tangible evidence of business intelligence is the saved time and energy while producing the standard reports for the organization manually. However, it is not the only benefit because they are others that form the part of the equation during decision-making (Turban et al, 2007). The reduction of labor costs involves automation of activities of data collection and aggregation. Under normal circumstances, the process of collecting primary and secondary data is expensive, and it would not be possible to carry out the extensive research without business intelligence components. For instance, the dashboard will give most of the data required for sound and informative decision-making. Utilization of the tools makes it possible to reduce costs and finally come up with articulate results. Reporting is an expensive process especially when carried out manually. Manual reports take the time to materialize and the entire process becomes tedious and expensive. However, with the invention of business intelligence, it becomes easy to produce reports automatically hence cutting the costs down (Chen, 2012). Designing and programming of new products that an organization can produce is considerably expensive and requires high levels of creativity. For example, when designing a product it requires hefty information and research to ensure it will meet the standards and expectations of the customer. However, with business intelligence programming and designing new products becomes easy and less expensive hence expressing the essence of using business intelligence. Moreover, training required for maintaining and developing reports is capital intensive hence making the entire exercise expensive. Applying business intelligence makes it possible to reduce such costs because the automated programs require little time to learn (Negash, 2008). Business intelligence development in companies and society has increased due to the ability to reduce information bottlenecks within an organization.( Azvine, Cui & Nauck,2005) Asserts that a business intelligent system makes it possible for users to extract vital information such as reports and managerial documents whenever they need instead of waiting on the IT department to carry out the tasks. Moreover, some business intelligence devices have an interface that allows users to design new reports that match the requirements of the user. This customization has made it possible for organizations and companies to reduce hurdles that have affected the operation of business long time (Nelson, 2010). Through the approach, it is possible to carry out many tasks with minimum hindrances hence increasing the possibility of the business enterprise to excel. The personalized and role-based dashboards are paramount in facilitating the collection of crucial data from the daily operations. The information is crucial when making decisions related to that fieldwork and therefore, the entire exercise will be pivotal in facilitating efficiency in that unit. The users can open the program and run the reports independently hence reducing the cases of pending tasks (Moss & Atre, 2003). There will be a free flow of work from the simple tasks to complex tasks because the BI facilitates such tasks. Key performance indicators are crucial items in determining the efficiency of employees. Business intelligence provides relevant documentation hence providing a guideline to management. The key performance indicator information is paramount in ensuring that people are always on their toes hence producing better results for the company. Business intelligence has made it possible to document the key performance indicators hence facilitating effective monitoring of the employees. The easy interface allows the employees to work independently without involving the IT team, and this creates facilitating working environment (Chen, Chiang, & Storey, 2012). Business intelligence makes it possible to auction data. Under normal circumstances, organizations use extensive resources in compiling data and standard reports that eventually get to the employees. The employees get all brands of reports so that they can know the expectations that organizations expect them to carry out. These reports have specific details that employees must carry out (Negash & Gray, 2008). Consequently, the employees feel overwhelmed by the information that fails to give clear picture of the entire situation. Moreover, there is a lot of efforts required to ensure that the reports arrive at the desktop of the employee days later after losing relevance. This means that the intended function of the data dies and eventually becoming difficult realize the objectives and goals set by the company. Therefore, failure of the company emanates from tool late submission of data to an extent that the employee cannot apply it, and it would have been productive if delivered prior. As a result, when employees embark on analyzing the data, they end up making wrong assumptions and conclusions hence affecting the functionality of the business. Moreover, many employees lack skills and knowledge of interpreting data and they will not identity threats and opportunities effectively (Jourdan, Rainer& Marshall, 2008). Business Intelligence team chips in to provide information through unified data viewing. It makes it possible to assemble data using central repositories of definitions and models of data in an attempt to prevent the conflicting definitions. It also facilitates the users to work independently instead of depending on the IT specialists. The independent work environment ensures that the productivity of the organization increases. The ability to show data in context facilitates various activities such as bench marking the comparable values such as averages, targets and averages with the KPI values. This creates an opportunity for the user to interpret when the key indexes are favorable hence making it possible for the employee to rectify the possible challenges (Hannula & Pirttimäki, 2003). KPI (Key Performance Indicators) are crucial in the establishment of a healthy business Culture. Business intelligent devices and more especially the dashboards are good at indicating the key performance indicators hence making it possible to improve the productivity of employees. For instance, when the KPI are minimal, the employee get know the measures to instill to ensure that he uplifts the standards (Ranjan, 2009). This will ultimately promote efficiency in the organization. Moreover, the employees can share crucial data to other employees, and this will facilitate evaluation hence increasing productivity eventually (Turban, et al,2007). The advantages of business intelligent remain evident in many organizations, and this will eventually lead to massive adoption by other organizations that have not yet adopted the policies. According to big data at the renowned Gartner business intelligent Summit 2014, the focus of CIO on business intelligence affirms that it will continue doing well both in small and large-scale business because of the efficiency it brings along in the business. Gartner asserted that the benefits were factual whereby the managers can make decision clearly with minimal consultation (Negash, 2004). This is because the devices provide evident information and profound data that are valuable in the process of decision-making. For example, the managers in the disciplines of marketing, manufacturing, risk management and finance are the great beneficiaries of these projects (Jourdan, Rainer, & Marshall, 2008). There are major prominent changes in the world of business intelligent especially the imminent method and techniques of data discovery. The wider application of real-time application of data in the business environment has made the field more popular and effective especially in the managerial levels. Moreover, with the application of BI, the cost of management has significantly gone down, and this makes BI an excellent opportunity for many organizations (Nelson, 2010). Research is one of the areas that affect most businesses today and, therefore, the existence of an opportunity that will solve these problems, the managers, and senior executives must welcome it with hullabaloos. Moreover, the research indicates that the majority of B1 vendors will significantly make data discoveries, and their prime platform will be shifting from resulted-oriented devices to the analysis-oriented devices (Nelson, 2010). This step will subtly promote the data management and interpretation furthering efficiency in the field of management. Over the past few years, the Business intelligent market platform has expanded significantly because companies continue to invest in the IT industry hence standardizing products related to BI. Gartner continues to postulate that the act of going forward, it will help companies to shift the future investments away from the I-T reporting solutions towards the business analysis solutions. However, the IT authored system of record reporting will not disappear, and it will end up becoming small proportion of the overall analytical uses (Watson, & Wixom, 2007). At least 30% of the people in business have occasionally interacted with business intelligence, and this will continue growing because of the shifting data discovery taking place day in day out. However, the BI leaders must keep on scrutinizing roadmaps of IT-centric and data discovery in determining the suitability hence meeting the growing business and the requirements of the enterprise(Watson, & Wixom,2007). Further predications indicate that more than 50% of the analytics implementations will continue making data streams generated from the instrumented machines or individuals. Enterprises continue to discern the value of information economically and therefore seeing the opportunity to capture and apply greater volumes of data (Azvine et al, 2006). Therefore, businesses will seek ways and means that will facilitate the effective collection of data hence improving the valuable skills necessary for productivity in an enterprise. It is worth noting that the traditional vendors of the analytic platforms will recognize that for them to expand beyond the traditional power users they must ready to deliver packaged domain application and expertise in an attempt to facilitate self-service by various users. The service providers normally seek to custom project work and the domain expertise into various reputable solutions adoptable by other organizations (Watson & Wixom, 2007). Affirmatively, the future of BI (Business Intelligence) is secure because it has revolutionized the data in many corporations and organizations today. Managers have made decisions easily because there is sufficient and reliable data from the dashboards and other varieties of business intelligence. Key performance indicators (KPI) monitoring has been easy because the employees and managers can easily monitor through desktop icons. Consequently, business has improved while sound and informed decisions has facilitated productivity. Reference Azvine, B., Cui, Z., & Nauck, D. D. (2005). Towards real-time business intelligence. BT Technology Journal, 23(3), 214-225. Azvine, B., Cui, Z., Nauck, D. D., & Majeed, B. (2006, June). Real time business intelligence for the adaptive enterprise. In E-Commerce Technology, 2006. The 8th IEEE International Conference on and Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce, and E- Services, The 3rd IEEE International Conference on (pp. 29-29). IEEE. 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