Business Intelligence helps organize life and work

By Jacek Krawczak, Partner, Firmvalue Gathering information is no longer a problem in a business organization nowadays. IT transactional systems supporting virtually all business functions generate gigabytes of data every day. Moreover, there are hundreds of spreadsheets and other local files distributed across a company. As we feel overwhelmed by the flood of information in our private lives, the same - or even worse - happens at our workplaces. The challenge is not to collect information. The challenge is to make a good use of it. Business Intelligence (BI) is any technology used to connect information coming from various sources, to process it, analyze it and finally report it in such a way that supports managerial decision making. Although BI systems have been known in the business world for a number of years, the importance of BI systems in a company is increasing as the amount and the complexity of the available business information rises. Fortunately, the vendors of some BI software have done a good job in recent years. Improvements are visible in terms of reporting capabilities, something that is most visible to the end users. What has been changed in BI software during the last 5 years? First, the most innovative BI software has become really user-friendly. There is no need for highly trained specialists with IT background to produce reports. The design of a new report is done using an intuitive “drag-and-drop” technique instead of writing SQL queries. As a result, the processing, analyzing and presenting of the information has been moved from a few experts in IT departments to front-line business analysts. So business executives and managers do not need to wait days or even weeks for their reports. The insight into their company’s performance is available within hours. Business decisions can be made really fast. Second, the output of BI systems are not tabular reports or simple charts anymore. BI systems visualize information and present it in the form of interactive dashboards (multi-view displays) with ample filtering and “drill-down” capabilities. Our brain processes data much more efficiently when it is presented in a graphical form. The most innovative BI software applies the results of scientific research on visual perception and suggests the most efficient usage of chart type, color, brightness, size, or shape of displayed objects, creating optimal data visualization has never been this easy. Third, visualization of real-time data (“live” connection with the data source) can be easily shared across the organization. It can be displayed online on any mobile device, encouraging people in the organization to share information by sharing both their visualizations and the conclusions that can be driven out of them, in a way similar to what is happening in the social media world. Interestingly, the most innovative BI tools are not those delivered by the biggest software vendors but by their smaller competitors, who specialize in “data discovery.” The latest edition of the annual report on Business Intelligence published in February 2015 by Gartner Inc., especially praises Tableau for “intuitive, visual-based data discovery capabilities that have transformed business users’ expectations about what they can discover in data and can share without extensive skills.” Gartner’s analysts indicate that “it is currently the perceived market leader with most vendors viewing Tableau as the competitor they most want to be like and to beat.”