Business Intelligence: What Is It? Functions And More
Business management requires a very important step, decision making. Since through it the most outstanding changes in a company are generated. That is why, over time, tools have been involved that facilitate said action, due to their weight in the future of the company. For this reason, business intelligence appears to help managers, take advantage of all the information and improve decision making.
Table of Contents
What Is Business Intelligence About?
It refers to the methods that a company uses to analyze and manage its information. Which is mainly used to contribute to decision making. Well, it uses subsequent data, which contributes to projecting and visualizing projects to be carried out. In this way, have a projection and scope of the objectives in a more efficient way, based on real data and useful for the entity. It is also known as business intelligence in English.
It should be noted that these methods involve digital platforms, software and tools that the company can acquire to enjoy the benefit. One of the main ones is big data, which seeks and manages to improve its data processing and therefore increase its performance. This is not only about a technological process, but about the use of its benefits to give the company a greater advantage in reaching its objectives.
What Are The Characteristics Of Business Intelligence?
Now, to better understand how this method and information processing works, we will mention its main characteristics:
- Great access to information.
- Contribution to decision making.
- Support users.
- Related to Big Data.
What Are The Main Business Intelligence Tools, Software And Apps?
Currently, due to the great utility of this method, it has different alternatives and options depending on the purpose or need to cover. Here we present its two types :
2. Specialized Software:
It refers to those that focus on information processing. Such as :
- SAP.
- Orange.
- kmine.
- Weka.
2. Methodological Tools:
They include those tools and applications that serve or facilitate the work of people, through solutions or tools to encourage creativity. They are also used to visualize content and create diagrams. For example :
- MindMap.
- Coggle.
- bubbl.us.
- Mind42.
How is this intelligence used? What are its phases?
In order to carry out a correct use and exploitation of the information and tools, it is necessary to define a work process, which can be executed as follows:
1. Planning:
It is about defining the objectives of the project. In it, not only the final goal must be projected, but also the resources to achieve it. Including the budget and the period and times to achieve the objectives .
2. Delegation Of Tasks:
In this case, great attention must be paid to the people who must be involved in the work, and make sure that they know their role, tasks and goals to meet.
3. Performance:
Together with the selected team, the information begins to be examined and processed. In this way it is possible to guarantee optimal data processing. What is essential for decision-making, since it uses said information to have a better basis.
4. Measurement:
It refers to the monitoring and evaluation of the results and changes made from the decisions made. That is, once the data processing has been completed and its assessments have been put into practice, then it is time to check the effectiveness of said step.
It is also necessary to assess any change or consequence from said decision taken. Even if it could not be executed to the end, in order to study the factors that intervened, and use this information for future projects.