Business Intelligence Technology Issues - Assignment Example

The key business terminology of business intelligence, however, has more than just one meaning associated with it. The various meanings that it may relate to are in correspondence with the numerous ways in which business intelligence can be deployed. Each business holds this entity as its integral part. Without the introduction and implementation of business intelligence into present-day organizational structures it may potentially be impossible to run a business at all. To demonstrate the variations in its meaning two sample practical meanings of Business Intelligence 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. ...” (crumb, 2011)

TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Present-day technological advancements have evolved the meaning of business even further. The technology that is used to deploy business intelligent practices is ever-changing. The ever-growing technological advancements are improving business intelligence methodologies. However, every subsequent technological advancement accompanies 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, some objects or entities may be quoted within different systems of redundancy, and clearing out the definition in which these things are used are tasks that hinder the 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 implementation 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 are done in a 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 business intelligence systems may not be resource able. This may be because no resources may be available to source the data required by the business intelligence system.
• 7) Many changes may be required for the business intelligence system to become acceptable to the business organization. This may be because IT experts constructing the system may not understand it well.
  
  BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE-RELATED ISSUES IN HEALTHCARE

  Business Intelligence has benefitted the field of healthcare a lot with its involvement. The organization of data and the knowledge building that is offered by business intelligent systems is of key importance not only to the healthcare sector but also to the entire society as a whole.

  Computer-based business intelligent systems represent an ever-growing component within healthcare organizations. There is now more than ever a high demand to develop effective systems that will manage healthcare information. Parallel to that, there is an even greater need to develop more reliable and efficient ways to use the information to assist in making viable decisions. The adoption of business information systems is quite often termed as being part of health information systems. It offers many healthcare organizations the potential abilities to cope with the overwhelming demand for healthcare services and deals with several strategic and tactical issues. Health informatics combined with business intelligence is progressively more employed in a wide variety of forms, such as supporting managerial and medical decision-making, monitoring patients’ progress through the intelligent system, monitoring and assisting the manufacture of renovated drugs, and enhancing clinical practice.

   

  The unique business intelligence applications that are needed by healthcare can be characterized by the Convenience in usability, the ability to connectivity to data resources present at both intra and extranets, ability to analyze massive amounts of data that may belong to the healthcare sector pertaining to various resources, graphical representation and imaging for better analytical understanding and quality reporting. Along with these characteristics of business intelligent healthcare systems include flexibility of performing analysis without any restrictions and an infrastructure that is modernized with the very latest needs of the commercial and industry health sector.

  Anand Gaddum of iLink systems Inc. quotes the role of Business intelligence in healthcare in the following words:

  “The data in any healthcare organization is spread across a number of systems (e.g., encounters, labs, pharmacy, membership, fi­nance, claims, billing, etc.). BI extracts data from these systems and brings it into a centralized, secure, historical repository, which is organized for business users to slice, dice, sort, and sum it efficiently for use in making business decisions.” (Gaddum, n.d.)