Utilization of Business Intelligence in Royal Flying Doctor Service
This paper deals with the process and utilization of Business Intelligence in the organization of Royal Flying Doctor Service. The business Intelligence is the method of intelligence which is used in businesses by beginning with the raw materials that have been produced by the business as an indication of the internal activities of the business. The Business Intelligence (BI) has a focus that is quantitative in nature. Competitive Intelligence may be confused with the Business Intelligence, but the difference is that the Competitive Intelligence mainly focuses on the analyses of information gotten from data from external sources (Cody, 2010, p. 126).
The Qualitative Intelligence focus on succeeds by means of the utilization of notions. The process of quantitative Intelligence is implemented in business intelligence by the use of precise techniques and software which help in the management of huge databases which include data warehouse, OLAP, Statistics Data Analysis, Data Mining Techniques, and Big Data. The main reason of Business Intelligence is to notice the difference of patterns of behavior which are used in anticipating the future behavior. (Lonnqvist, n.d., p. 146) The anticipation allows the development of new opportunities and also the facilitation of decision-making process within the organization of Royal Flying Doctor Service.
The analysis of the behavior of customers on the website of the Flying Doctor Service may inform the patients of any new information that need to be passed across. This company can acquire the Business Intelligence on the transaction carried out, the product offered which is in form of health services, the route is taken to acquire the service, and also the time taken by the patients during the acquisition of the services. The Business Intelligence (BI) may also be defined as a collection of models that are mathematical in nature and methods of analytics that are used for the generation of valuable knowledge for the process of decision making by the use of data that is available (Marjanovic, 2010, p. 149).
The following are some of the utilizations of the Business Intelligence in the organization of the Royal Flying Doctor Service:
Directing the organization towards the main objectives: The BI helps the organization of the Fly Doctor Service to focus on their main objectives of saving lives of many patients in any part of the country by the use of aircraft and helicopters. The airplanes are sent to regions that can be accessible by road. This means of transport is also effective due to the short duration that it takes in case of emergency in an area such as a cholera outbreak. The BI gives priority to saving lives which are the main objective of the Fly Doctor Service (Melchert, 2006, p. 179).
Promotes good decision- making through analysis and management: The organization of the Fly Doctor Service is able to make proper decisions making through the collection of data from the patients and deciding on which areas to give priorities by the use of BI. In the case of an outbreak of a disease in many areas, the organization will be forced to choose on which areas are more venerable and send medical assistances to those areas due to insufficient doctors and transportation (Melchert, 2006, p. 215).
Architecture of the BI technology
Helps in meeting the expectations of the customer: The Business Intelligence enables data collection such as complaints and suggestions from the patients who have had experience in the organization of the Royal Fly Doctor Service. The information gotten are used in improving the health services so as to meet the expectations of the patients hence reducing complaints and meeting the satisfactions of the patients (Parker, 2004, p. 179).
Enables efficient distribution and acquisition of important statistics and data: The Business Intelligence enables the acquisition of data and then storage through software such as:
- Statistics Data Analysis: Enables the analysis of data gotten from the patients such as health records so as to help in predicting any disease outbreak in an area. The analysis can be done by the use of graphical methods which may indicate the chances of disease outbreak in an area. The statistics also help in keeping health records of the patients who are under medication and need attention (Pipino, 2007, p. 219).
- Data Mining Techniques: Data mining techniques include gathering information that will help the Royal Flying Doctor Service in keeping the health records of the patients. The acquisition of data can be done through bookkeeping, use of software, research, and databases. The data may include the venerable areas, patients under medication, health workers, salary records, and transport facilities (Sons, 2013, p. 169).
Identification of competitive advantages: The databases which is the main source of data for the organization of Royal Flying Doctor Service, provides information concerning competitions towards the provision of heath service in the country. This information is crucial for the organization because it enables the provisions of improvements within the organization so as to compete with other organization fairly. Fair competition is healthy in all sectors because it enables the organization to improve tremendously so as to defeat its competitors (Zairi, 2006, p. 174).
Provision of immediate answers to the questions which may arise during the study of data: The main source of data for the organization of Flying Doctor Service is the databases from the Business Intelligence. In case the management want to access the database when it urgently needed, the technology will provide an immediate answer because it is easy to analyze the information from the data base. They may need to access the health records of a patient urgently so as to know the type of medication to give to the patient. This data is likely to be gotten without wastage of time due to the perfect arrangement of data in the technology of Business Intelligence (Wu, 2004, p. 163).
The technology of Business Intelligence is referred to as practices, system methodologies, applications, and techniques which enhance the analyses of data of the organization to assist in better understanding of the data of the organization, market targeted which are the patients, and enable the proper making of decisions. The following are the processes that are involved in the technology of Business Intelligence together with the architecture of the BI technology:
The diagram above shows the processes that are involved in the technology of Business Intelligence.
The main parts of the BI technology include:
Data Sources: This stage enables the collection and integration of all data that are available from the primary sources to secondary sources. The organization of Royal Fly Doctor Service acquired its data from primary sources such as the previous handwritten records, archives, visiting patients, and government sources (Sons, 2013, p. 179).
The data warehouse and data stores: The next stage is to use transformation and extraction with different data storage gotten from different sources into the supportive databases of the BI technology. The databases of the BI technology are known as data marts and multiple sources. A data warehouse can be defined as the collection of integrated and subject-oriented databases which are designed to enable decision-making process by management. The data marts provide a representation of important parts and then forms a subnet of the whole organization warehouses of data. The from the data marts is chosen to as to satisfy the explicit requirements of any section of the organization (Sons, 2013, p. 175).
Data Sources
Methodologies of the Business Intelligence: The data that have been extracted is used to serve as the inputs of the analytical methods and models of mathematics. There are many applications which can be implemented so as to support the decision-making process within the technology of Business Intelligence; these applications include:
- Analysis of multidimensional cube
- Analysis of exploratory data
- Analysis if time series
- Models optimization
- Data mining by the use of inductive learning models (Zairi, 2006, p. 219).
The detailed explanation of the processes that are involved in the decision making process by the use of Business Intelligence can be described in pyramid model as shown in the diagram below:
Data Exploration: This is the 3rd layer of the model of the pyramid which helps in the provision of passive analysis of the BI. The methodologies in this stage include statistics, query, and reporting system which are all considered to be passive due to their requirement of preceding determination of the original hypotheses and the description of criteria for extraction of data from people making the decisions. The response gotten from the analytical method are used in verification of the correctness of the initial view of people making the decision (Pipino, 2007, p. 217).
Data Mining: The mining of data within the model is known as the Knowledge Discovery in Databases which abbreviated as KDD. This process is represented in the 4th layer of the model of the pyramid and helps in the provision of the tools for active analysis of the Business Intelligence technology. The role of this stage is stage is to assist in the extraction of knowledge and information from the data. Methodologies that are active does not require an earlier explanation of hypotheses to be confirmed; the method serves in expanding the knowledge of the people making the decision.
Optimization: This is the last layer of the model of the pyramid. The function of this stage is to make it easy for the technology to select the finest and optimal solution from an enormous number of alternatives present (Pipino, 2007, p. 164).
Decisions: The peak of the model of the pyramid is represented by the acceptance and selection of precise decisions; this selection marks the end of the process of decision making. The ultimate decision depends on the people making the decision who will dispose of the information that is either informal as well as unstructured despite the organization having effective methodologies of Business Intelligence. The decision makers should have the ability to modify the outcome and recommendations gotten suitable by the use of models that are mathematical in nature (Rajiv Sabherwal, 2011, p. 178).
The life cycle of analysis within the system of Business Intelligence reflects the processes in the BI system which are explained above. A successful procedure of the BI system requires the specific processes which are joined in a ring as shown in the figure below:
The processes involved in the BI system in the above ring include:
- Acquisition of enormous data from the warehouse of data and databases the by the technology of Business Intelligence.
- The analysis of the data obtained is then done by the use of methodologies of the BI. The elements that are complex are partitioned into segments that are small to enable discovery of new ideas and also better understanding (Raisinghani, 2002, p. 213).
- Identification of trends by the use of threats in the organization, business problems, predictive analysis, and identification of opportunities.
- Simulation and acquisition of new ideas about the threats, opportunities, and problems, and application of the knowledge obtained through the process of decision making (Brijs, 2012, p. 174).
Conclusion
This illustrates the process and utilization of Business Intelligence in the organization of Royal Flying Doctor Service. Some of the processes that have been discussed in this paper include data sources, data warehouse, data exploration, data mining, optimization, and decision; these stages are explained in the above research.
Briggs, B., 2012. Business Analysis for Business Intelligence. Japan: CRC Press, 2012.
Cody, W. K. J. K. V. a. S. W., 2010. The integration of business intelligence. Michigan: IBM Systems Journal.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3803/10409dd7822c6007d5c76808b8c28698e2cd.pdf
Howson, C., 2013. Successful Business Intelligence, Second Edition: Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data. London: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2013.
https://www.slideshare.net/dachsund12/healthcare-business-intelligencensullivan
Larissa Terpeluk Moss, S. A., 2013. Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision-support Applications. Michigan: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2003.
Lonnqvist, A. a. P. V., n.d. The Measurement of Business Intelligence. S.l.:Information Systems Management Journal.
Loshin, D., 2012. Business Intelligence: The Savvy Manager’s Guide. Paris: Newnes, 2012.
Marjanovic, O., 2010. The next stage of operational business intelligence – creating new. Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society.
https://www.healthcatalyst.com/healthcare-dashboards-3-keys-creating-effective-insightful-executive-dashboards
Melchert, F. W. R. a. K. M., 2006. Aligning process automation and business. New York: Proceedings of the 10th Americas Conference on Information System.
Parker, M. S. C. D. l. H. R. W. G. I., 2004. The role of intelligence in Formulating Strategy. London: The Journal of Business Strategy.
Pipino, L. Y. W. W. L. a. W. R., 2007. Data quality assessment. China: The Communications of the ACM.
Raisinghani, M. S., 2002. Business Intelligence in the Digital Economy: Opportunities, Limitations, and Risks. New York: Idea Group Inc (IGI).
https://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Business_Analysis_for_Business_Intelligence.pdf
Rajiv Sabherwal, I. B.-F., 2011. Business Intelligence: Practices, Technologies, and Management. California: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
Sons, C. J. W. a., 2013. Business intelligence: data mining and optimization for decision. New York: ISBN 978.
Wu, L. B. G. a. B. C., 2004. A service-oriented architecture for business Intelligence. Michigan: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Service-Oriented.
https://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/34626/1/420.pdf
Zairi, M., 2006. Business process management. Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 64-80 ed. California: A boundaryless approach to modern.