Use of Business Intelligence in Knowledge Management, Sales Forecasting or Market Research - Essay Example

? Use of Business Intelligence in ‘Knowledge Management”, “Sales Forecasting” or “Market Research” Submitted to, Submitted By, [Name of the student] Submitted on, [July 18th, 2011] INTRODUCTION: Business Intelligence refers to a very comprehensive terminology, often narrated as a combination of ‘data’, ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’. This key business terminology has more than just one meaning associated with it. The various meanings it holds correspond to the numerous means in which it can be deployed. Each business holds this entity as its integral part without the inclusion of which it may be potentially impossible to run a business at all. In order to demonstrate the variations in its meaning only two of its various meanings are 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) and, “Normally describes the result of in-depth analysis of detailed business data. Includes database and application technologies, as well as analysis practices. Sometimes used synonymously with "decision support," though business intelligence is technically much broader, potentially encompassing knowledge management, enterprise resource planning, and data mining, among other practices. ...” (csumb, 2011) Trying to interpret the actual meanings of the term ‘intelligence’ and how it is evolved would give us a better understanding into the terminology of business intelligence itself. Generally, intelligence refers to the ability to understand, learn and evolve. Intelligence develops with every learning experience and input of every kind of information. Basic intelligence, when deployed in business environment is referred to as business intelligence. THE DISCUSSION: The capacity of human beings to incorporate prior instinctive and experience based knowledge to execute processes in order to achieve a particular objective is termed as intelligence. It’s a virtual entity that encompasses all logical horizons. Business is also one of the natural and logical processes. Logic can be defined as a set of rules that governs executions. To discriminate a process as being logical or illogical one needs to be intelligent. This new perspective about intelligence gives a much understandable definition of Business Intelligence. BI would now be defined as, the capacity that enables businessmen to differentiate logical and illogical executions in a business.. This definition presents Business Intelligence as an umbrella that covers almost all the tasks performed under the tag of ‘businesses’. This paper emphasizes on the same notion with the discussion of multiple top notch business terms namely sales forecasting, market research and knowledge management. The association of business intelligence with sales forecasting, knowledge management and Market Research brings new meanings to this seemingly simple business term. It is attempted to take a general look at the basic definitions of each of the above mentioned terms before looking at their comparative involvements and meanings. SALES FORECASTING: Sales forecasting is a well known business terminology. Integral to its existence this business process involves an insight into the future prospects of a company’s sales. These sales may be spanned over any specific amount of time may it be weekly, monthly or yearly. The importance of this vital business process can be assessed by the fact that the prospective production strategies and those involving inventory are all based upon the feedback given to the business by it sales forecasting process. It is impossible that without having an idea of the sales of a business the designing of its inventory be done. Estimates regarding the cash flow in a business and its growth plan are also based upon knowledge input from the sales forecasting business process. Thus, it can very truly be said that information used to make intelligent business processes is gained from sales forecasting only. The procedural steps for forecasting sales of an existing business are far more convenient and simpler than forecasting the sales patterns of a new or proposed system. This is owing to the fact that for an existing business sales forecasting can be done by using trends of sales that existed in the same time month of the last financial year and combining this information with the current existing economic and business trends. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: This business process refers to a series of steps that involve the creation, spreading out and utilization of knowledge. The term knowledge here refers to the intellectual assets of an organization that are used to enhance its performance and competing power. Two virtual steps constitute the business process of knowledge management. Firstly, the capturing and scripting of knowledge and secondly, its proper distribution into the business fractions concerned so as to gain full advantage of it. MARKET RESEARCH: "Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information - information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the methods for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes, and communicates the findings and their implications." American Marketing Association (AMA) - Official Definition of Marketing Research BI and OLAP: The advent of technological frameworks and the ever expanding World Wide Web have resulted in the input of un-administrable amounts of information into a business. It is essential for every business to adhere to the information that is coming into it as this is vital for its up-to-date process framework and infrastructure. The handling of large amounts of data is done by storing it into large data banks. The systematic storage of data enables its timely retrieval by both business units and workers connected to the organization. This, in turn, enhances the way this information is used to become building blocks of the business itself. This systematic and intelligent storage of data is referred to as data warehousing. Assisting data warehousing is another interactive software based application. Known as OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), this tool has been designed to respond to multiple and complex resolution of queries simultaneously. Being multidimensional in nature, OLAP responds efficiently to complex analytical queries. On a broader scale, OLAP is considered as an integral part of business intelligence as it also gives the provision of relational reporting and data mining. CONCLUSION: Business Intelligence attains strength from evolutions, experiences and observations of the business processes. To get a clear understanding one can think of BI at the top of business triangle governing all business activities. The processes under BI continuously evolve and mature as a result, along with attaining evolutionary significances. The concentration of strength is always directed towards the top of the business triangle. This means that with increasing maturity of the underlying business processes the business intelligence also gets considerably stronger. It actually becomes the main reference to the most significant processes like knowledge management and business forecasting. Despite their individual significances the true meanings can only be delivered through a combined concept like BIKM (Business Intelligence Knowledge Management) and BIBF (Business Intelligence Based Forecasting) etc. The future of BI is like a strong rule base that governs, directs and administers businesses. It is expected to address business issues in a comprehensive and standardized manner. With a flexible rigidity Business Intelligence is foreseen as a comprehensive role model for businesses, in which the exceptions would only be attempted to target its further strengthening. REFERENCES: Sauder. (2011). Business Intelligence. Retrieved From: www.sauder.ubc.ca/cgs/itm/itm_glossary.html Csumb. (2011). Business Intelligence. Retrieved From: it.csumb.edu/departments/data/glossary.html American Marketing Association AMA. (2011). Introduction to Marketing Research.Retrieved From: http://www.marketingteacher.com/lesson-store/lesson-marketing-research.html. Read More