{"id":998,"date":"2015-11-08T13:15:41","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T12:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/melyakub.com\/?p=998"},"modified":"2018-06-21T01:39:21","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T00:39:21","slug":"business-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melyakub.com\/?p=998","title":{"rendered":"Business Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"images-16\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The quality of our decisions, and the results we get therefrom, are dependent on a few factors as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The quality and quantity of information that we have at our disposal,<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Our abilities to intelligently process the information available and make decisions based on that,<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. The environmental response to our the decisions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The third factor is not entirely within our control. However, the first and second factors are to a large extent within our control. How, therefore, does the small and medium business entrepreneur obtain and process the information they need to enable them make effective decisions that will deliver the required business results?<\/span><\/p>\n

    1) What is Business Intelligence?<\/strong> Business Intelligence (\u2018BI\u2019) refers to broad scope of software verticals that enables your business establish trends from disparate sets of data, thereby providing you with key information (read \u2018intelligence\u2019) that you can use to make informed decisions. BI tools enables organisations to collate, monitor and process data, thereby generating business insights necessary for making smarter and better decisions that drive results positively. Large corporations collate and analyse massive amount of business data to enable them understand their operating business environment sufficiently enough to make informed decisions. They also make use of the results to try to understand and make predictions about future trends. Business intelligence is therefore simply the capacity to turn (massive) data into neat and sensible information for business decision making.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Until recently, BI capability was very expensive and even difficult for most small and medium enterprises to consider. In addition to the cost of procurement and implementation of BI systems, small and medium enterprises (‘SMEs’) will also need the expertise to interprete and apply the results. Yet, this capability is, to some extent at least, even more required by the SMEs. This is for the simple reason that a larger corporation can more easily bear the consequences of bad decisions and make corrections to wrong decisions, that can just wipe out an SME.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The emergence of, and developments in \u2018cloud computing\u2019, open source, visualization technologies etc., now make it easier and cheaper for the SME to access BI capability and enjoy their attendant benefits. Over the last few years, the BI market has actually\u00a0pivoted to accommodate the needs of SMEs by lowering the financial investment requirements as well as eliminating the need for in-house data experts.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"BI-Tool-with-Responsive-UI\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

    2) Benefits of BI Systems: <\/strong>As mentioned earlier, the primary benefit of an effective BI system is to enable you make informed decisions on various key aspects of your business. A typical BI system will, without any manual computations, enable you:<\/span><\/p>\n