The Use of a Business Intelligence Application - Research Paper Example

What factors can positively and negatively impact the implementation and use of a Business Intelligence (BI) application? Define these factors, and explain how they may impact BI implementation." Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Executive Summary 3 Introduction 4 Business Intelligence 5 Business Intelligence Success Factors 7 Factors affecting Implementation 9 Factors affecting Use 10 Conclusion 12 References 13 Bibliography 15 Executive Summary Business intelligence has gained recognition as a necessary and very useful tool for business related activities. It can help to take decision by using analytical application. Getting data out activity is the central activity of business intelligence process. Data warehousing is a major part of business intelligence. Business intelligence implementation depends on certain critical success factors which can influence the managerial decision making. In recent years business intelligence has been able to acquire its place among one of the most required application in an organization. Several global companies around the world like that of Microsoft and Oracle have recognized the need and the value of using business intelligence. The ease of use and the flexibility have made the application a very useable application both by the employee and the employer. Introduction Communication system effectiveness has made a significant contribution to the progression of human endeavor. Information is presently utilized as well as generated at a rapid rate. The growth of number of organizations and increase in specialization and also divisionalization has fashioned barriers in the process of information flow. There is also an ever increasing need for undertaking more rapid decisions at various level of responsibility far below the amount which was required in the past. Automation has turned out to be an efficient method for disseminating and retrieving information. There has been development of newer techniques which can be used to disseminate data quickly to the appropriate places and also furnish different information on demand. The techniques used for this purpose are ‘auto abstracting of documents’, ‘auto encoding of documents’, automatic creation and also updating of action-point based profiles. These statistical based procedures can be used to present data processing machines. A comprehensive system can be prepared along with suitable communication facilities and input-output equipment. This system can accommodate all the information related problems which may be present in an organization. This multi functional system can be referred as Business Intelligence (BI) System (Luhn 1958). Business Intelligence Business Intelligence (BI) can be stated as the process of turning a data into information and subsequently into knowledge. Business intelligence is a key enabler for the increase of performance as well as value. Knowledge aspect is typically attained about the customer decision making procedures, customer needs, general economic, and conditions in the industry, cultural trends, technology, and the competition. The concept of business intelligence was first coined in the industrial world in the early part of 1990s. The primary aim was to satisfy the request of the managers’ to effectively and also efficiently analyze data which are part of an enterprise. This would aid them to better understand the scenario of their business and also to improve the decision making procedure. Business intelligence since its inception went on to be researched vigorously in the academic world. The result of the research has been able to transform a naive system to a well-substantiated approach for information extraction as well as processing. The system developed in business intelligence aids in designing methodologies, multidimensional modeling, OLAP and indexing techniques. The modern architectures of data warehousing based system also can be defined by using the business intelligence methodologies. In recent years, the significant requirement of managers has changed to measuring the performance by using key performance indicators (KPIs) and also by using score cards. Business intelligence has transformed in recent times to be considered as Business Performance Management (BPM). It is used to optimize organizational business performance by encouraging the effectiveness of a process and efficiency in the use of financial, material and human resources. Business intelligence is used to support decision making process in a business. Therefore, it is a part of decision support system (Golfarelli, Rizzi, and Cella 2004). Business intelligence is broadly used in present business parlance to describe analytical applications. It has become a top most priority for the chief information officers nowadays. The discipline has turned out to be a strategic initiative and is presently recognized by the business leaders for its ability to drive business innovation and effectiveness. Business intelligence procedure includes two main activities such as ‘getting data in’ and ‘getting data out’. ‘Getting data in’ is referred to as data warehousing. It is observed as the most challenging part of business intelligence. It requires time, effort and project cost. The challenge in this aspect derives from poor quality of data in the source system, legacy technology, and politics in and around the data ownership. Metadata is key part of data warehousing. It provides transparency in the process of moving data from sources to warehouse and from there to the end users. Data warehousing or getting data in delivers little value to an enterprise. The full value from data warehouse can be realized only when the users as well as applications access any data and also make use of the data. Getting data out which is termed as business intelligence generally gets more attention from an organization. This activity consists of business users and also applications which are accessing data by using data warehouse for performing OLAP, enterprise reporting, querying, and also predictive analytics. Business intelligence can derive benefits to an organization by reducing the information technology based infrastructure costs (Watson and Wixom 2007). (Emerald n.d.). Business Intelligence Framework Business Intelligence Success Factors The success with business intelligence hasn’t arrived automatically. Companies are expected to be more likely to attain success when certain conditions exists which are facilitating. Senior management of an organization has gained confidence in believing in the application and also drives benefit from using the business intelligence application. In order for business intelligence to be successful and also useful on an enterprise basis, the use of it has to be driven from the top management of an organization. Senior management has to have a vision of utilizing the business intelligence application. They also has to provide necessary resources and must insist on the utilization of information depended decision making (Watson and Wixom, 2007). Business intelligence helps to access and also analyze data. Business intelligence is more about culture, creativity, and whether people observe information as a contributing and also critical asset, and is less about the technology. The BI applications and efforts success factor is more dependent of people (Howson 2007). Business intelligence can be applied to wide range applications in an enterprise such as for knowledge management, electronic data interchange, data sharing, executive information system, analytic purposes, and measurement segment. The business intelligence programs used generally comprise of six characteristics which enable them to achieve the desired success as an application. The factors consist of ‘support all users via integrated business intelligence suites’. The factors relates to the fact that executives of an organization often sought to acquire a single business intelligence tool for using in an enterprise in order to reduce training, administration, and support costs and also to minimize the redundant software and the number of suppliers. Business intelligence vendors are using a support suite which comprises of integrated business intelligence tools. These suites support the requirements of a wide range of users. The executives also are able to acquire volume discounts from a single supplier in process of delivering specialized functions to a wide range of users. The business intelligence users can be identified by analytical need, business role, access and delivery preferences and technical and analytical literacy. The second factor which is significant is ‘conforms to the way users work’. The tools used for business intelligence in earlier days conforms users to work the way they want rather than the way the users prefer them to work. Business intelligence platform uses a dashboard which uses a web based performance system. It monitors the performance and identifies when the performance is not up to the mark. These dashboards support strategic, tactical and operational analysis and is called as scorecards. Performance dashboards aids in aligning user activities along with strategic objectives which optimizes group and individual performance. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to monitor the factors. These dashboards are easy to use for an employee as they generally structure drill paths from the top level summaries to a detailed report. It assists users to efficiently and quickly find their required information. Many of the dashboards provide customized alerts to the users for critical events by using wireless devices, pager, and email. In the graphically summarized view of the performance dashboard key performance based metrics are utilized by dashboard, portal, and scorecard technology. In the multidimensional technique OLAP, interactive reports technology is used to find out information from numerous dimensions. In the transactional view of the business intelligence system data warehouse related queries and operational reports are used as technologies to examine all the details before taking any actions. Performance dashboards also provide quite a few benefits as it is flexible, customizable, personalizable, collaborative as well as guided. Business intelligence applications integrate with operational and desktop applications. Business intelligence platform enables a user to utilize Microsoft Office related applications as a de facto business intelligence client. It eliminates the need to display, access, analyze, or exchange data. Business intelligence can easily be embedded to operational applications by using .Net, Java, and other web services. Business intelligence can be used in the format needed by application program interface (API). Business intelligence (BI) can turn out to be a ubiquitous utility which an application or developer can try and tap into. Business intelligence application can be used to plug in any of the application to generate analysis, insights and reports as and when required. Business intelligence application can be utilized to deliver actionable information, foster rapid level of development, and provide an extensible and robust platform. Business intelligence can be utilized in Windows, Linux, UNIX platforms. The other success factors for business intelligence are runtime metadata, dynamic security, clustering, distributed processing, dynamic resource allocation, multi level processing, and real time management (Eckerson 2005). Factors affecting Implementation The factors which positively affect the business intelligence implementation includes clear vision and also planning, committed management support as well as sponsorship, business driven methodology and also project management, mapping solutions according to the user requirement, data management and along with quality, robust and also expandable framework, and performance considerations related to a business intelligence system (Vodapalli 2009). The factors affecting the implementation of business intelligence system can be further elaborated. Business organization in the implementation process often gets tied up in the technical factors, which can impact negatively in business intelligence implementation. The main factor is to understand how an organization wants to operate their business operations and what the key requirements of the business are. A proper understanding of this factors impact positively on business intelligence implementation. Therefore an organization has to properly recognize their requirements. A healthy return on investment (ROI) is one of the main aims of a business organization. This aim requires developing key performance based measures, high level of business related case, setting baselines and also targets for living up to the performance measures, and tracking the performance after it has been implemented. Project management and also resource commitment also plays a vital role in successful implementation. The main commitment has to be there from top management of an organization. Project management has to be utilized to properly plan the implementation which would enable the entire implementation process to run smoothly with very less problem which needs to be fixed. Training and the change management is needed at an adequate amount to understand and also effectively utilize the business intelligence system (Euthenicsbi 2010). The factors which can impact negatively for a business intelligence application include providing the necessary access to an extensive set of resources from the devices with limited amount of capacity. Enforcing resources as well as role defined access to the process of data warehousing is a significant challenge. Performance targets and benchmarks, legacy systems, along with connecting with different networks also play a vital role (Gangadharan and Swami 2004). Business intelligence can be utilized and employed in an organization with successful outcome. It meets the analytical and information needs of all the users existing in an organization. The modern business intelligence application match with the way users like them to work rather than forcing the users to adapt to the use requirements of the application. These applications provide benefit as they can integrate with Microsoft Office and also embed other operational applications and packages. The new age business intelligence platform represents an established collection of technologies which can go a long way in helping employees and employers with timely and also relevant information. It would benefit an organization in there endeavor to compete effectively in a market place. Factors affecting Use Business intelligence utilization can provide competitive advantage to an organization. They help to turn operational level data into an asset for business which derives strategic decision and also helps to improve the performance of a company and their clients. The application has been used by many industries to share the insights off the platform to the customers and vendors. Business intelligence has to be used in an enterprise to make an enterprise an ideal one (Gangadharan and Swami 2004). Managers generally can use business intelligence application to analyze current as well as historical data which would enable them to get support for their business decisions. Organization can utilize business intelligence to examine the employee performance, and organization based performance metrics (Power n.d.). Business intelligence is mainly used to improve the quality and timeliness of the input into the management’s decision procedure. Also, it can aid an organization to recognize the trends and future direction of the market and the present capabilities of an organization. The factors involved in business intelligence use are data mining, data visualization and real time data warehousing. Business intelligence mainly converts data into functional information and by using human analysis it is transformed into knowledge. The products can be chosen because it is easy for end users to use the application as it can integrate along with other products and applications already being used. The performance and price of the application also can provide benefit to a user. These factors can positively benefit the business intelligence application user (Negash and Gray 2003). Business intelligence application generally faces three types of factors which can create problems in its utilization. These factors are technical problems, communication problems and organization changes related problems. In the technical problems, resources allocation is a crucial factor which can make an impact on the analysis and reporting aspects. Communication problems can also create difficulties in usage of business intelligence as organizational personnel have to coherently perform the business intelligence applications to gather complete benefit. The use of business intelligence brings in change to an organization, therefore the use of the application has to be revised and organized from time to time to eliminate any problem (Lupu et al. 2007). Business intelligence use can be improved drastically by doing proper homework, sharing as well as collecting ideas, and evaluating alternatives (Nadeem and Jaffri n.d.). Conclusion Business intelligence has transformed over the years to be considered as a very important application for an organization. It can drastically improve the decision making process of an organization. Furthermore, it can be used as a strong decision support system. Business intelligence can be dominant enabler of business related strategies. It can support the organizational need for providing real time data which enable decision makers to alter and substantiate their decisions accordingly. Business intelligence can suffer failure from lack of quality data. Data warehouses can help to solve this problem. The importance of business intelligence application has been recognized by Microsoft as they have embedded business intelligence application into their Microsoft Office 2007 package. Moreover, the future of the discipline looks very bright as it has been able to change the way an organization is managed and also the decisions are being made and also people perform their work (Watson and Wixom 2007). References Emerald. n.d. BI and ERP integration. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/content_images/fig/0460130501001.png (accessed August 27, 2010). Eckerson, W. W. 2005. The Keys to Enterprise Business Intelligence: Critical Success Factors. http://download.101com.com/pub/TDWI/Files/TDWIMonograph2-BO.pdf (accessed August 27, 2010). Euthenicsbi. 2010. Success Factors of Business Intelligence Implementation. http://www.a1articles.com/article_1367744_15.html (accessed August 27, 2010). Golfarelli, M., S. Rizzi, and I. Cella. 2004. Beyond Data Warehousing: What’s Next in Business Intelligence? Bologna: University of Bologna. Gangadharan, G. R. and S. N. Swami. 2004. Business Intelligence Systems: Design and Implementation Strategies. Cavtat: Information Technology Interfaces IT1. Howson, C. 2007. Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App. UK: McGraw-Hill Professional. Luhn, H. P. 1958. A Business Intelligence System. E-learning STMIK AMIKOM Yogyakarta. http://elearning.amikom.ac.id (accessed August 27, 2010). Lupu, A. R., R. Bologna, G. Sabau, and M. Muntean. 2007. Influence Factors of Business Intelligence in the Context of ERP Projects. International Journal of Education and Information Technologies 1(2): 1-5. http://www.naun.org/journals/educationinformation/eit-15.pdf (accessed August 27, 2010). Negash, S. and P. Gray. 2003. Business Intelligence. Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS). http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1889&context=amcis2003 (accessed August 27, 2010). Nadeem, M and S. A. H. Jaffri. n.d. Application of Business Intelligence In Banks (Pakistan). http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0406/0406004.pdf (accessed August 27, 2010). Power, D. J. n.d. Understanding Data-Driven Decision Support Systems. London: Taylor & Francis. Vodapalli, T. K. 2009. Critical Success Factors of BI Implementation. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen. Watson, H. J. and B. H. Wixom. 2007. The Current State of Business Intelligence. http://www.teradata.com/library/pdf/IEEEComputerWatsonWixom.pdf (accessed August 27, 2010). Bibliography Bernus, P., J. Blazewicz, G. Schmidt, M. Shaw. 2008. International Handbook on Information Systems. Berlin: Springer. Keith, M., Demirkan, H. and Goul, M. 2007. Coordination Network Analysis: A Research Framework for Studying the Organizational Impacts of Service-Orientation in Business Intelligence. Hawai: IEEE. Read More

 

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