What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence is a timely delivery of exact and useful information to the decision maker, so that he can make the correct decisions to achieve his goals.

Additionally, in more recent times, there has been a convergence with another area, that of Performance Management, which is a process of defining the mission and establishing objectives, of creating a plan linked to these objectives and of controlling the execution of this plan.

It is the convergence of these two concepts that is now-a-days usually called Business Intelligence.

Why is Business Intelligence necessary?

The traditional information systems of management (ERPs) are called OLTP systems (Online Transaction Processing), and are specially geared to process thousands of transactions as quickly as possible. They try to answer the operational needs and legal demands of the day to day of a company.

As they are conceived and optimized to execute this job, they end up by giving little importance to other aspects, namely the ability of analysis, the strategy of the company, operational optimization. They are quick systems to execute the day to day tasks, but slow or incapacitated to carry out tasks of analysis or strategic or even tactical strategy.

This is the reason for the appearance of the OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) systems, which are at the root of most Business Intelligence solutions. These are systems which, based upon the information produced by the traditional OLTP systems, reorganize it into a format by which it is possible to analyze the information, aggregated in a much quicker way and with many different perspectives. This capacity enables the manager to have a knowledge of facts which were before hidden under a mountain of transactions. Additionally, it enables to evaluate, in an easy way, the execution of the plans, comparing them with the previously defined objectives.

General concepts

The information gathered by the ERP (a company´s information system) is reorganized and concentrated in a new database called Datamart. This Datamart will be regularly updated with new information from the ERP.

Here, the information is separated into:

Dimensions: are characteristics that make it possible to analyze information. Products, Distribution Channels, Prices, Departments, Time are examples of Dimensions;

Figures: are variables that can be measured, such as Sales, Costs, Margins, Stocks ...

Once the information is reorganized in this way, it is possible for the user to cross any Dimension, and know, almost instantaneously, how to aggregate the Figures according to this crossing. He comes to know, for example, the Sales per Product during a certain Time. Or the Stocks by Distribution Channel. Or the Sales by Product by Distribution Channel, or any other combination that makes sense.

The Business Intelligence Proposal

Once a Business Intelligence solution is implemented, the company should be able to:

Define Strategic and Tactical Objectives;

Establish ways to evaluate the implementation of these Objectives (via KPIs – Key Performance Indicators);

Have a fast Reporting of the Strategic and Tactical situation, versatile and able to present the situation according to any perspective supported by Dimensiona and Figures defined in the project;

Compound an Operational and Commercial improvement through the use of the knowledge within its transactional data;

Carry out a Forecasting of important variables (Sales, Costs, etc.);

Possibly, implement Datamining processes which enable the discovery of insights on the activity of the company itself.

To get to know Arquiconsult Business Intelligence Solutions better, set a meeting, without any commitment, with Arquiconsult through e-mail or the contacts available on the site. We promise a presentation focused on your business.