Data and information

Data collection is nowadays an indispensable part of business in every industry. Virtually all companies, including the smallest ones, have their own data collection systems. An extensive set of platforms and solutions is used – from the simplest records in spreadsheets up to advanced ERP systems. Progressing globalization, increasing unpredictability of markets as well as numerous and complex relations between enterprises dramatically increased the volume of the data collected. However, its efficient and rapid acquisition also does not ensure a success. Contemporary companies almost drown in a vast ocean of data. At the same time, the same companies, often having giant databases, desperately look for specific information. “Converting” chaotic data into accurate information is becoming the most important task in the entire information policy of modern enterprises.

Why Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence solutions appear to be very helpful in solving the problem of extracting useful information from vast quantities of diverse data. BI is usually defined as applications or application groups aimed at providing information for business management. BI allows extraction of the contents of major importance from often chaotic and distributed data sets. Efficient and effective allocation of resources, building customer loyalty and designing marketing campaigns are fields where BI systems are irreplaceable. They are also successfully used in order to monitor the effectiveness of individual actions and processes, as well as to analyze customer behavior. They also provide automatic generation of periodic reports and summaries. Thus, BI solutions tend to be widely used as a support for controlling and widely understood financial reporting. It can therefore be concluded that the alternative term “management decision-making support systems” is fully deserved.

Actions

The key to fully understand the advantages of BI systems is the insight into their architecture. The basis for this type of solutions is a data warehouse. It can be looked at as a huge database, aggregating the content of many other databases and allowing their use in an efficient manner, therefore improving the process of a complex analysis. The advantage of this system is not only its speed, accuracy and efficiency in analytical terms, but also the possibility to aggregate and standardize the data from different platforms, including those already operating in the company. This means there is no need of complete alteration of the currently used systems and solutions, which could result in costly downtime in operations. Aggregation and unification of the content of the existing databases in CRM or ERP systems can fully capture the image of the market situation of the company. Most of the systems offered on the market and based on data warehouse systems are built using OLAP technology (OnLine Analytical Processing). It allows the implementation of complex analytical queries based on existing multidimensional databases. It also supports creation of interactive iterative analyses and the so-called “data cubes” in order to quickly implement the queries and calculations. The data cubes are organized in a way allowing browsing and comparing them simultaneously in multiple dimensions.

To see is to know

The benefits of the implementation of BI systems are quite obvious. However, there is another important solution included in their composition that is also worth mentioning, namely the components for data visualization. They allow the presentation of any content selected by the users in an easily comprehensible graphical form, which means that the users do not need to have a detailed knowledge of the application to use its capabilities. Lengthy and costly training programs become therefore unnecessary. Modern systems are often equipped with special management dashboards designed for middle and top-level managers. These dashboards allow tracking of the selected key performance indicators (KPIs) as well as creating completely new ones, i.e. required for an individual user. Graphical representation of the level or intensity of certain events allows quick orientation in the situation and speeds up the decision-making process.

Visualization of indicators

An idea that guides the creation of the management dashboards is informational noise reduction. Too much information is in fact more harmful than the lack of it. Information on a particular topic should be delivered to the right person at the

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