Business Intelligence Articles

SAP has released their newest version of business intelligence management products in Pakistan so that it can allow organizations to assess and act on larger amounts of data more efficiently. This is a huge breakthrough for SAP and a giant step in the right direction for Pakistan. Because Pakistani businesses should see that until they invest in technology the will not be successful in our market, they need to realize that business intelligence management will help them accomplish more than they have ever been able to accomplish before. 

The Numbers Grow with Business Intelligence Management

Up until last year, business intelligence vendors received approximately ten inquiries each week regarding their packages. Now, one year later that number has more than doubled due to the popularity of business intelligence management.  Some of this is due to the fact that mobile devices are now supporting business intelligence management. This allows users to work in real time and have real time results. If your company is one with a large warehouse this is especially important so that you will always know, in the moment, what is available in your warehouse. After all; you will not be able to produce your products or goods without the proper resources available. The business intelligence management programs that are designed for mobile devices allow you to stay on top of those numbers so that this scenario never happens to you.

Many Industries Benefit from Business Intelligence Management

Pharmaceutical companies are among some of the top industries who gain great benefits from business intelligence management programs. Ensuring that their pharmaceutical drugs and supplies are in stock is vital to what they do. Sometimes there is no substitute for what is needed and if they run out it could possibly mean life and death to a patient. Business intelligence management was designed to ensure that this does not happen. The pharmaceutical companies can apply their business intelligence management software to their mobile devices and check on their stock whenever they wish to. There is no need to be tied down to the office because the freedom to move is always there.

Reaping the Benefits of Business Intelligence Management

No matter what industry your company serves, business intelligence management is a great choice. There are so many different things that can be accomplished it is almost absurd to not check into the different business intelligence management vendors that are available today. Saving your company time and money are obviously the two big factors when looking at business intelligence management but increased customer service scores as well as increased revenue are also very important. As long as you can find a way to keep your customers satisfied then your company will probably succeed in whatever you do. Using business intelligence management to help accomplish these goals is a step in the right direction. Your customers will love how much more efficient your company will become and the fact that they get their answers/goods in a timely manner.

Analyzing data without heavy IT support is the goal of business intelligence reporting. This helps business owners like yourself get in a routine of doing business without having to have a middle man to read and understand your data. MicroStrategy recently released a new version of business intelligence reporting software called Visual Insight that seems to be hitting the scene hard among business owners. At fist they were targeted more towards the larger companies but have now made an appeal to companies of all sizes and industries.  Their reporting software simplifies the process for you and your company.

How Visual Insight Business Intelligence Reporting Works

Visual Insight translates the data from the business intelligence reporting into visualizations which makes it easier to read and understand. Because being able to read and understand your data is so important, Visual Insight came up with the strategy to visualize everything from your business intelligence reporting so that anyone could understand what they were looking at. This has worked well for a multitude of different companies and has saved a lot of time consuming work by IT departments.  This not only benefits your employees but your company as a whole.

The Numbers of Visual Insight in Regards to Business Intelligence Reporting

The add-ons for business intelligence reporting tools are approximately $240.00 per year per user. The free version however does come with two user licenses that have the full feature set including the Visual Insight tools but you will probably still need some of the add-ons to handle all of the things you want done. This is a small amount of money compared to what you will be able to save with your business intelligence reporting tools. Once you have made the initial purchase you will more than likely get your return back within the first year or so; depending on the number of licenses you will need. Either way you look at it though, it is a small price to pay if you are able to better your company and make more money.  It all comes down to the bottom line.

Letting Business Intelligence Reporting Into Your Company

Even though the initial fees of business intelligence reporting may seem like a large set back you need to stop and think about the benefits that it will have for your company. If you were to pay a firm to come in and do the same thing that the business intelligence reporting software systems can do you would probably spend anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 for about two weeks worth of consulting. This is a lot of money for a short period of time. If you purchase your own business intelligence reporting tools and software you will have it for life so that you will not have to spend that money again. Business intelligence reporting plays a major role in companies, and  having accurate and current information to base your business decisions on will make a large difference in your company and the outcome of it each year. Allowing yourself the freedom to make good choices for the company you have worked so hard to maintain only makes sense.

What exactly is a business intelligence data warehouse? It is: “A subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant and non-volatile collection of data in support of management’s decision making process,” according to Bill Inmon. 

The reason that business intelligence data warehouses are so important is because they store on the good data and get rid of the old data. This is especially important for you when it comes to making sound business decisions with accurate information. The accuracy of the information in a business intelligence data warehouse is very important. It is structured so that only certain data can be in certain areas so that things stay efficient and correct all of the time.

Some Great Benefits of a Business Intelligence Data Warehouse

A business intelligence data warehouse has many great features that are sure to help your company in many ways.

• Reducing your overall operating costs is the first and possibly the most important way that a business intelligence data warehouse will help your company. As a business owner you are always looking for ways to save a dollar and by implementing the business intelligence data warehouse you will do exactly that.
• Allowing you the ability to see your data in real time is another way that a business intelligence data warehouse will help your profits rise. Knowing exactly where your company stands on a daily basis is very important in making great business decisions.
• The ability to reduce the time it takes to gather and produce reports is another great benefit of a business intelligence data warehouse. Because the system is so user friendly and flexible, it is easy to get reports within minutes instead of days using the old fashioned hands on methods.
• The potential to streamline procedures is also a great factor of a business intelligence data warehouse. Because it will no longer take a team of people to gather information for a specific report you will save time and money when it comes to labor and labor hours.

These are just a few of the great benefits of a business intelligence data warehouse; once you have your own system in place you will see exactly what it can do for your specific company. Knowing the needs of what your company has and what you want to see done will help guide you in the right direction.

Business intelligence data warehouse programs were designed to make your life easier and the lives of your employees easier. Knowing first hand exactly where your company is at is the first step into making sure your company profits. A business intelligence data warehouse will not only give you real time and accurate information but it will give it to you quickly. With traditional reporting methods it could take days to get the answers you may need for a business decision. With the business intelligence data warehouse system you will be able to see the information within minutes and base your decisions on what you know is right.

Let’s face it, no aspect of business has remained the same since the takeoff of social media. Business intelligence, too, is impacted by social media. How?

BI Tools Learn to “Crawl” So You Can Run

As you work to merge your business intelligence tools within a social media analysis framework, you may feel bombarded with one key fact:  data gathered from social media formats is largely unstructured. Yet, wading into this jungle of data can give you tremendous customer insights you wouldn’t have had before. Called “mining,” you can use BI tools to go after the information customers are dropping into places like Twitter or Facebook – or, discover that you’re not even on their minds or making information posted on their “walls.” BI tools should include access to information dug up by high-tech marketing processes that essentially crawl customer interactions for data about your products and services.

BI Tools Can Help Capture Your Social Media Data

For starters, BI tools must reflect a more collaborative nature, and must be strong in their ability to make users feel at ease and to promote sharing of information across divisions. Additionally, your organization may be the focus of several types of data-gathering opportunities as your social media presence grows, and BI tools should be designed to help you make the most of that data – along with gather information about your competition.

Grabbing up data that occurs in the social media arena may seem somewhat out of your comfort zone. This type of data is typically lacking in structure and can demonstrate erratic fluctuations in content levels. Still, it’s a very valuable portal into your customers. Let BI tools help you harness its power, in terms of serving your customers better, outshining your competition and getting an edge on your customer research.

Social Filtering? BI Tools Are Starting To Do That, Too

Have you heard phrases like “social filtering” and social media analytics? You will, at an ever-increasing pace. These phrases should fall into your efforts to analyze and understand the ways human interactions – be they related to your product, or subjects related to your product – impact your growth. As BI tools become more advanced to keep up, look for them to help you translate your social media-based information into your foundation’s for future expansions. This capacity should extend even beyond social media sites and into the data you can analyze from Internet communities themselves.

Who’s On Board So Far?

BI vendors such as IBM Cognos, Microsoft, and TIBCO Spotfire, for example, have already incorporated social media analysis tools into their BI tool sets. The big “c” that’s essential for merging BI tools with social media analysis is collaboration. If you’re using more old-school forms of BI tools, you may be focusing your decision-making on information from your data warehouse, your dashboards or your reports. Enter social media intelligence, and now you’ll be incorporating BI tools with information grabbed right from collaborative users.

BI Tools Evolving To Resemble Social Media Settings, Appearances

What’s in the works? The users you have for your BI tools will be able to ask focused, direct questions between teams and then connect these answers into focused reports, including the data you can glean from social media analytics. BI tools themselves will soon also have a closer family resemblance to common social media interfaces.

Forward-Thinking Impacts For Your Data Warehouse

Once you have that precious data from your customers, via social media intelligence, what do you do with it? Ideally you can use BI tools to plug that knowledge into your data warehouse and then make more-informed and insightful decisions. From there, you might decide to extend the capabilities of BI tools to also merge with product data from your past to see what the trends really mean.

While you’ll gain amazing customer insights by incorporating social media analysis into your BI tools, be aware that in this scenario, your decisions are based on multiple areas of knowledge and data – rather than just one overriding source, i.e. your data warehouse. You’ll have to combine future-based considerations with the historical data provided by your warehouse, and this can seem a bit daunting. Some BI tools already perform this function; some are getting there; and some do not.

Baby Steps Into Maximizing Social Media Knowledge

You don’t have to leap fully into integrating social media analysis into your BI tools and data warehouse. You can add this functionality gradually, and gradually you can learn to pull data from multiple sources, both past and present. As you consider how BI tools can help you capture social media insights, also realize you’ll need to know in what arena(s) your data will have the strongest impact – is it marketing? Is it how you set your prices? Or some other area? Also, make a decision about how much data warehouse real estate you can afford to set aside for the potential giant influx of social media-based knowledge.

Once you get your business intelligence software up and running is it over? Definitely not. Maintaining a successful business intelligence system is a matter of creating an ongoing relationship across your divisions, and maintaining an attitude of cooperation and collaboration. What you’ll see on the other side of that effort are greater returns and benefits from your business intelligence system, and these rewards will keep the collaboration alive and well.

See You Later, Silo Data

What does it take to get a successful business intelligence system going? To start, it takes a commitment across your leadership and your team that you’ll say goodbye to fragmented, pieced-out systems for collecting and analyzing data – even if these are the reporting, querying and forecasting tools you’ve used for several years. You’ll also have to make a commitment to business intelligence everyone can access in order to help make the best team-based decisions. (Can you hear the phrase “the end of silos?”) This change to your infrastructure starts, like many processes, with a plan.

Business Intelligence Systems are More than Their Price Tags

As you prepare your plan for deploying a business intelligence system, realize that you’ll have to consider your strategy from your IT perspective – and also from the business side. This can naturally turn your head toward the price of implementation. In the mainframe environment, you’ll find that many are supporting more advanced software offerings than ever before and are becoming more cost-efficient. You’ll also find that in the distributed environment, many systems are operating like a mainframe, including functions like data partitioning and data workload management. The decision you make on a platform must also reflect changing needs for server size, if you’ll add or take away staff, and if there will be losses to production while you transfer data or learn to use your business intelligence system’s tools.

Collaboration Equals Culture Shifts

While cost is certainly important, the big picture of business intelligence systems is how they fundamentally change the way your data is used to make strategic, effective decisions. Conveying this sense of worth to your management peers, your staff and your stakeholders means you get closer to an attitude of collaboration and cooperation that is the right setting for moving forward with your business intelligence solution.
Within the new attitude of collaboration, your IT team, for example, may have to make some core shifts. Many organizations are seeking real-time tools from their business intelligence system, even transferring key customer data to the screens of customer service agents. In order to create this kind of quality, intuitive customer response, your IT team may need to make significant process changes.

Details, Details – Integral In Your Business Intelligence System

Ideally, the tools your business intelligence system delivers will be manipulated and maximized at the closest place possible to where the data originates. You’re talking details – rather than mass data dumping into a warehouse. You may need an intermediate data store tool to deliver information in real-time while simultaneously allowing warehouse capture. This can heighten the task for your management and IT team, as well as bring on significant operational shifting.

Don’t Rush Into Your Business Intelligence Plan

What can you do? Take enough time to map out what your expectations are for your business intelligence system, and how far you’re willing to go to set up an atmosphere where those expectations are realized. Allow your IT team to fully know the ins-and-outs of the changes to data processing that may come their way, but how these changes will make a serious and positive impact on your future. Start with a well-developed and well-thought business plan, focusing on the value the business intelligence system can provide, rather than getting deterred by focusing only on skills needs and infrastructure changes.

Star Command Center 3.0 which is now available to users, allows IT departments to coordinate user access to other types of software applications by using business intelligence systems through a single mobile phone dashboard as well as through other methods. The business intelligence systems help companies like yours streamline work processes across a wide range of other systems. Bridging the gap and allowing all of the systems to work together hand in hand were the goal of business intelligence systems and the success of these goal has been great.

How Business Intelligence Systems Help Your Company

Business intelligence systems offer excellent data validation capabilities to help you interchange information with other systems. Large communities are supported through a single business intelligence system to make things easier than ever to manage and track. The ability to access software via cloud computing makes the business intelligence systems very flexible and makes the integration process a breeze. Many users including Boeing, Dow, Levi Strauss, Mattel and Pfizer have all found that using business intelligence systems have helped to boost their profits and streamline their processes, all while increasing their revenue. If business intelligence systems worked for them they will work for you too.

Using Business Intelligence Systems to Manage Your Company

Managing your company can sometimes be a difficult task. Using business intelligence systems to help you with this only makes sense. If you were handling a system that could not only save your company money but increase your profits and you knew it was guaranteed to work, wouldn’t you take a look at it? Of course you would, any business owner would. Business intelligence systems are the system that you have been working for. Business intelligence systems were designed to not only help the company itself but also to help make managing your company easier. By offering timely information and current information, business decisions will be easier which will lead to greater productivity by you and your employees.

Who Can Use Business Intelligence Systems

Any company can benefit from business intelligence systems. No matter what industry your company falls under and no matter how many employees you have, your company will benefit from business intelligence systems. The ability to help you improve your company is there if you will take advantage of it. Allowing business intelligence systems to work for your company is a great idea as long as you are willing to take the time to find the right vendor for your business intelligence system. There is no cookie-cutter answer as to what is right and wrong because it all depends on the company you run and the needs you have. Your company and needs will probably be different than those of your competitor so you need to find business intelligence systems that are flexible enough to conform to your specific company. Once you have found your perfect fit and you have started using your business intelligence systems you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.

Business intelligence cognos is a program that is owned by IBM but used to exist on its own for BI purposes. The business intelligence cognos has broken the barriers of reporting restrictions and allowed users to conduct analytical searches through specific inquiries. With business intelligence cognos, you will be able to reduce the time it takes to do your month end reporting by approximately eighty percent. This is a huge number that will benefit you in more ways than one. Also, over one million dollars have been saved by making things more efficient with business intelligence cognos.  That is a figure that speaks for itself.

Benefits of Business Intelligence Cognos

With business intelligence cognos, managers will have immediate access to reports that are needed to run the company efficiently. Accurate financial and operational information will be available electronically and will cause the speed of the reporting to rise significantly. More time than ever will be saved once business intelligence cognos is in place. Not only will things be more accurate and efficient your employees will have more time to focus on other tasks at hand.

Who Uses Business Intelligence Cognos

More than a dozen companies are currently using the business intelligence cognos to analyze their reports and business performance on a regular basis. Over half of them are financial companies who need accurate numbers on a daily basis. The system is so easy the company states  if you can use Microsoft Excel you can use the business intelligence cognos. This is great to know so that you will see you do not need extra IT personnel to handle the integration process or help you learn to use the system.  These companies, on average, received their entire amount of money back that they spent on the business intelligence cognos within six months of starting the software in their company. This just goes to show how profitable it really is.

Cubewise and Business Intelligence Cognos

Cubewise is a consulting form that specializes in design and implementation of custom business plans. They have implemented some of the largest organizations with business intelligence cognos in terms of users and data size. They have seen first hand how business intelligence cognos helps companies of all different sizes and industries. They deliver successful and valuable intelligence solutions through business intelligence cognos quickly and affordably for their customers.  Their success rate with business intelligence cognos is something to consider as you look at implementation in your company.

Letting Business Intelligence Cognos Work for Your Company

No matter what industry your company is in, business intelligence cognos works for everyone. With the specialized vendors ready and willing to help implement the system for you it is easy to sit back and watch your company grow. The possibilities are endless once you have your business intelligence cognos in place because the opportunities are there for unlimited growth. The increased efficiency and revenue your company will see will surprise you and your employees. The ability to streamline projects, read real time data and see quick results are only a few reasons why business intelligence cognos are a great fit for anyone.

If you know anything about Disney at all, you have probably heard of Simba; the cute lion cub that took over the kingdom and reigned with glory and power. SIMBA now also stands for Single Integrated merchandise Business Applications. SIMBA is now taking over the world of software and ruling with power. SIMBA was able to centralize the management of Disney into a single enterprise resource planning system to handle business intelligence. 

Controlling all of the Business Intelligence Data will Help with Better Business Decisions

Because Disney takes in over a billion dollars in merchandise revenue every year, they saw the need to handle their business intelligence data to help keep better track of their numbers. Disney started “small” with just their theme and water parks but will eventually go “big” and incorporate their parks in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris and Shanghai. Even though there is nothing “small” about Disney, it is easy to see how they can classify their version of small and ours. If the handling of business intelligence data worked for a company as large as Disney, there is no doubt that it will work for your company as well.

Build it and They Will Come

Disney built a new data warehouse to handle their business intelligence data. Of course, Disney is known around the world so their business intelligence data will probably be of a larger scale than yours but you get the idea. They saw that the need was so important they focused an entire data warehouse on their business intelligence data. Their goal was to support analytical reporting to capture their business intelligence data and ensure that it was accurate and real time information. Their new business intelligence data warehouse has allowed them to take better care of managing their inventory, analyzing their sales numbers and predicting their demand for future merchandise in specific areas of the company.

How to Start Your Own Business Intelligence Data Warehouse

Take some tips from Disney to ensure that you follow the proper procedures in implementing your own business intelligence system.

1. Look at the business intelligence data warehouse from the business side of things.
2. Only focus on the most important data or your facts will be lost in a sea of numbers.
3. Make sure you use checks and balances.
4. Keep the business intelligence data simple and easy to decipher.

As long as you follow these four simple steps, you will see results just as Disney did. The steps are simple and the thoughts are big but as long as you follow these guidelines you will be on the track for success with your own company and your own business intelligence data warehouse.

If Disney saw the dream and made it happen, you can too. There is no right or wrong answers when it comes to business intelligence data because what works for one may not work for another. Figuring out what you want to keep track of and what numbers you want to watch more closely will be the key to setting up your business intelligence data warehouse to fit your company.

Gaining intelligence in your business can be the one thing that separates you from the rest of the competition. The more you know about your market, your customers, your competitors and other factors that influence your ability to drive revenue, the more equipped you are to dominate in your particular field. Microsoft business intelligence is a great place to start for those companies already operating in a Microsoft Office environment. When you implement Microsoft business intelligence, you simply extend the capabilities you already have to gain more value from a more powerful platform. 

Common Interface Drives Adoption with Microsoft Business Intelligence

There is no set-in-stone rule that says you can only drive success in a Microsoft environment if you only leverage Microsoft tools. In fact, Microsoft has designed its platforms to easily integrate with other technologies so you can take advantage of capabilities of NetSuite, SAP and Oracle if you so desire. One of the powerful attributes that Microsoft business intelligence does have in its favor is the common interface. When you implement Microsoft business intelligence, you are asking your team to simply extend a platform they already use daily. This eliminates the need for lengthy training sessions and your overall costs can be more easily maintained.

Microsoft Business Intelligence Collaboration

One of the best ways to build your knowledge with Microsoft business intelligence is through collaboration tools. The platform offers the SharePoint Server, which delivers all of the tools your teams needs at their disposal to work together effectively. Each team member using Microsoft business intelligence tools through SharePoint are able to collaborate on and publish documents, share critical information and implement workflows that can drive effective results for your entire organization.

The Data in Microsoft Business Intelligence 

If you have spent any time focusing on Microsoft business intelligence at all, you know that you need powerful platforms to manage your data and turn it into something that is not only valuable, but also actionable. With Microsoft’s SQL Server, you gain access to a powerful, enterprise-ready and scalable engine that can bring all of your business intelligence data together onto one platform where massive amounts of data can be stored, ready to support high query loads and clustering.

The Freedom of Choice with Microsoft Business Intelligence

One of the advantages of Microsoft Business Intelligence is the variety of document platforms you can use to drive your information gathering and data collaboration. You can ensure everyone is on the same page by dictating what they should use in different situations, or allowing everyone to select what works well for them. This type of flexibility makes the Microsoft business intelligence platform more attractive to other users. In addition, the Microsoft business intelligence background package also gives you access to a number of different templates and platforms to make the job that much easier.

Microsoft business intelligence can provide you with the tools you need to gather data and make it useful for your business. When this data is turned into actionable information, you and your team members can more quickly make decisions and find a more aggressive market position.