Definition of Business Intelligence and Its Uses
Business Intelligence is the set of strategies and the technologies that are used by the different forms of the enterprises for the analysis of the different types of the business information (Fisher, Drucker & Czerwinski, 2014). The most common functions of the business intelligence are the performance of business management, reporting, online processing, complex event processing and many more as such.
Business in the modern days faces a number of competitions and threats from both internal as well as external sources. This threats force the management of the organization to focus on the implementation of different kinds of business intelligence software to counter them. The main use of the Business Intelligence in a business organization is to help the different types of the corporate executives, supervisors of the business, managers and other operational employees who are involved with the organizations to make a controlled and informed business decision (Laursen & Thorlund, 2016). This shows the growing importance of the following tool in a business organization. The main problem that the following report will address is the lack of market response and the disability of the organization to attract new customers to the market.
Business Intelligence is referred to be the tools, applications, technologies, business applications, business decisions and many more as such that are used to determine, collect, integrate, analyze and present the raw data of an organization to create an insightful and actionable business information. Business Intelligence as a discipline and a technology driven process is made up of different related activities that includes the likes of the;
- Data Mining
- Querying
- Analytical Processing of data using online technology
- Reporting
The business Intelligence has a lot many advantages in its fold as because the tools of the business help the management of the particular enterprise to identify and analyze the different data and help in the formation of the business information easily. Some of the main uses of the use of Business Intelligence are as follows;
- Accelerating and Improving the process of decision making-The implementation of different forms of business intelligence tools like that of Microsoft excel, PowerPoint, business packages helps the management of the business to take much more matured decisions by analyzing huge volumes of data that are useful for the successful growth of the business (Laursen & Thorlund, 2016). The use of these different forms of the software is thus helpful for the improvement in the process of decision making.
- Optimizing the process involved in the internal business-The optimization of the different types of the process in the internal business is a management approach that is involved in the construction of the new processes and the development of the new resources to transform the organization to as effective in nature as possible. The4 optimization of the business process is thus made easier to manage by the use of this Business Intelligence software.
- Increasing the operational efficiency-The presence of the business intelligence software helps the organization to shed off its manual tasks and shift to a much more accurate, proper and efficient form of statistical analysis that is great for the business. The use of the automatic based software increases the operational efficiency of the business (Nerkar, 2016). The use of the different forms of software increases the efficiency of the performance of the management of the different types of the companies and helps them to perform in a much better way.
- Driving new forms of revenue- The use of the different forms of the business intelligence tools by the management of the different business enterprises helps the organization to earn additional revenues and provides the opportunity for the creation of new forms of business opportunities. The formation of the different types of business opportunities is a source of extra business opportunity for the enterprise.
- Identification of different business problems that needs to be addressed-The different business problems of an organization can be easily identified by the use of the Business Intelligence tools (Moro, Cortez & Rita, 2015). The manual tasks can sometimes cause different problems and create errors which is almost absent by the use of different technological items of the business.
- Identification of market trends- The identification of the market trends becomes much easier in the presence of the suitable forms of market intelligence tools. The identification of the different kinds of trends is important for the business to help the business maintain its sustainability.
- Gaining competitive advantage over the business rivals- The use of the Business Intelligence tool is preferred more in the modern days due to the capability of the tools to maintain a competitive advantage in the business by means of its ability to determine the different types of the characteristics of the competitors and use them to gain a strategic competitive advantage in the modern business market. The strategic competitive advantage for the business enterprise can ensure the sustainability of the business.
The Business intelligence tools are essentially driven by the data driven Decision Support systems. Business Intelligence is sometimes used in a number of different forms like briefing books, report, query tools and executive information systems (Sharda, Delen & Turban, 2016). The presence of these tools within the management of the different systems can help the managers to analyze the business data themselves without the help of any external or internal source. According to, Moro, Cortez & Rita (2015) the management of the business enterprises who operates these particular tools also does not have to wait for the help of the IT experts to make complex business related decisions. The access of the users to these business decisions helps the organization to back them up with solid and compact numbers rather than any feelings.
Advantages of Business Intelligence
The success of the business intelligence project depends on a number of different factors. Ownership stands out to be the most important amongst them. The managements of the aviation organizations generally adopt a different technique to implement the Business Intelligence factors. It is generally embedded along the lines of the business processes’ of the managers. Another important factor for the success of the business in connection with the BI quotient is the connection of the following solution to the performance management strategy of the following business (Sharda, Delen & Turban, 2016). The management of the different organizations adapts a holistic approach to get a transparent idea of the following;
- Starting from the needs of the users and owners of the information
- Not to start with the possibilities that are offered by the use of technology
- Change the process of the collecting, measuring and reporting of information
- Improvement in the quality of the data rather than focusing on the improvement in the quality of the technology.
The figure in the above page shows the division or the model of Business intelligence and the steps that it passes by. The different stages and the components are as follows;
- Business Strategy Alignment
- The business strategy and alignment is linked to the strategic goals of the Airlines organization
- There is a support presented to the Business Intelligence in the higher ranks like the managers or the supervisors who manages the total works of the organization
- Organization wide vision of business intelligence
- Governance
- The governance of the business intelligence refers to the maintenance of the different policies and procedures of the business
- It also contains the proper formulation of the risk management plans and the change management plans of the organization
- Performance Management Process and Reporting
- The definition of key performance indicators and other measuring points
- The definition of different standard reports and analysis models
- The development of score cards
- The alignment of the business operations
- Integrated Information Management
- MDM process or management of information
- Conceptual Information structure
- Integrity and information of different forms of data
- Platform
- The application and selection of the different tools of Business Intelligence
- Reporting of the different data mining tools
- The authorization and distribution of the different kinds of information
- Infrastructure
- The selection of different forms of the technical tools
- The management of the data warehouse and the source access process
- The security and the access to data
In contrast to the use and advantages of Business Intelligence in most of the business organizations, the aviation industry faces a number of different setbacks that tends to disrupt the smooth functioning of the business. These include;
- Mixing up of professional and personal boundaries- In an industry like that of aviation the basic criterion from the employees are strict sense of professionalism. The use of business intelligence however requires the employees to use different personal devices to access the information. According to, George, Kumar & Kumar (2015)the use of these private and personal data may lead to serious breach of data and lead to serious issues within the organization
- The security of the data is not so guaranteed while using Business intelligence to access data. There are often cases of target hack which makes the data of the aviation industry vulnerable and hampers the growth of the business.
- The implementation of the different cloud based solutions and their maintenance involves huge amount of money and thus is a costly process overall.
The main issues of Business intelligence are as follows;
- Issues through the use of technology
- Issues through the use of organizations and people
The issues that are generally identified by the use of the technology are as follows;
- The data or the information of the aviation organization is not transparent and the time and effort that is needed to amend the following takes a lot of time to complete, which in turn destroys the success of the business project
- The rise in the costs for the Business Intelligence technology is one of the main reasons for the delay in the implementation or the completion of a particular project (Larson & Chang, 2016)
- It is difficult for the management of the aviation companies to provide extra time and allocate extra fund for the completion of the different projects using Business Intelligence tools
- It is difficult for the aviation sector to totally change the mistakes made by the use of the Business Intelligence tools
- The quality of the different information presented is poor and sometimes even limited in nature
The issues that are generally identified by the use of organizations and people are as follows;
- The aviation companies does not provides incentives for the staff to improve the performance of the organization and in turn decreases the business
- The IT experts that build the system do not really understand the business and therefore a lot many changes are required to make the system accepted by the management of the organization which again increases the cost
- The constant stress and the fight to gain the top spot in the highly competitive aviation market provides much less opportunity and time for the management of the aviation companies to focus on their Business Intelligence units
- The absence of proper strategies is one of the main reasons for the absence of business progress
- The IT experts who build the system do not understand the business structure and thus fails to deliver the best possible structure for the business.
The business Intelligence system has a great amount of impact on the different factors of the business. The proper implementation of the Business Intelligence tools helps in the smooth running of the business and also helps to improve the business performance (Fan, Lau & Zhao, 2015). Business intelligence tools perform the tasks automatically without any extra pressure which helps the organization to attract and retain customers. Thus the management of the organizations must make it a point to implement business intelligence tools in the business.
Conclusion
The following report has discussed in detail the definition of Business intelligence and its various uses. The description of the different forms of the uses and its needs and importance for the business organizations is necessary for the success of the business. The thorough analysis of the following report will help the readers to gain a detailed knowledge on Business Intelligence and its use and ways of implementation in the business especially the aviation sector. The report has also described a number of limitations on the use of Business Intelligence which has made the report a compact one.
Some of the main recommendations for the proper and efficient use of Business Intelligence are;
- There has been a recent trend of end users sidestepping IT. Therefore IT users needs to get aligned to the business of the end users
- Though it is almost ok for the users of the Business Intelligence technology to drive technology adoption, it is similarly important for the organizations to address the standardization and governance
- The Business Intelligence must provide technologies that provide great value to the organization. A valueless technology is of no use to the organization
- The best technology will be of no help if the employees are not ready to share the information with others. Therefore a collaborative workplace environment is utmost necessary for the business.
References
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