Business Intelligence

1. What is Business Intelligence?

BI (Business Intelligence) is a set of processes, architectures, and technologies

that convert raw data into meaningful information that drives profitable business
actions. It is a suite of software and services to transform data into actionable
intelligence and knowledge.

BI has a direct impact on an organization’s strategic, tactical and operational

business decisions. BI supports fact-based decision-making using historical data rather
than assumptions and gut feelings.

BI tools perform data analysis and create reports, summaries, dashboards, maps,
graphs, and charts to provide users with detailed intelligence about the nature of the
business.

How Business Intelligence systems are implemented?

Step 1: Raw Data from corporate databases is extracted. The data could be
spread across multiple systems heterogeneous systems.

Step 2: The data is cleaned and transformed into the data warehouse. The table
can be linked, and data cubes are formed.

Step 3: Using the BI system the user can ask quires, request ad-hoc reports, or
conduct any other analysis.

Example:

A hotel owner uses BI analytical applications to gather statistical information

regarding average occupancy and room rate. It helps to find aggregate revenue
generated per room.

It also collects statistics on market share and data from customer surveys from
each hotel to decide its competitive position in various markets.

Analyzing these trends year by year, month by month, and day by day helps
management to offer discounts on room rentals.

❖ Creation:

1. What is Business Intelligence? BI Definition, Meaning & Example. Guru99.

(2022). Retrieved 1 March 2022, from https://www.guru99.com/business-
intelligence-definition-
example.html?fbclid=IwAR26jP1uZiB_1fB_K6yrfO6q3vOe1sCzJRyaGEXecqR
iF6wx5ViJxJGieLk.
 2. Examples of using Business Intelligence successfully

1. Grab

Data is vital to Grab. The business model requires the company to constantly
match the supply and demand of millions of passengers and drivers. Therefore, data
analysis is especially important.

Grab currently holds one of the largest databases in the region. Every few
seconds, millions of GPS coordinates are collected from users of apps like GrabBike,
GrabTaxi, or GrabHitch. Thereby allowing the company to analyze the behavior and
movement patterns of customers in each region.

This huge amount of data used to be stored and reported through Excel files.
Exporting data for reporting can take days.

Once Tableau Server business intelligence software is deployed, data from

multiple sources is aggregated into a single source of truth.

As a result, anyone in the company can analyze this aggregated data source and
have a more holistic view. Analysis can be done in real-time.

Turning every employee into a data analyst is what makes Tableau special.
Extracting data from a data warehouse and presenting it as visualization is easier than
ever, without the need for specialized technical skills.

This capability also helps promote closer collaboration across departments.

Thanks to its user-friendliness, the number of Grab employees using Tableau

increased by 60% in the 6 months after adoption

2. Tesla

April 2017 marked a historic event for the auto industry when Tesla became the
most valuable automaker in the United States, even if only for a short time. Its market
value on April 10 reached 51 billion USD, surpassing the two giants General Motors
(50 billion USD) and Ford (45 billion USD).

In 2013, Tesla shipped only about 20,000 Model S, the large sedan and the
company's first mass-produced vehicle. Three years later, its annual production has
reached 100,000 units. And Elon Musk's goal is 500,000 units by 2018 and 1 million
by 2020.

This massive expansion is needed as Tesla's product mix continues to evolve.

Before 2015, the Fremont factory only produced the Model S. Then came the Model X
SUV. The Model 3 assembly lines, the entry-level model with a much cheaper price
tag, are expected to come into operation. action by the end of this year. To date, Tesla
has received more than 370,000 orders for the Model
 With the rapid development and these ambitious goals, errors and challenges in
production are inevitable. According to the Wall Street Journal, in the past 5 years,
Tesla has more than 20 missed the goals set by itself.

Tesla, therefore, implemented the data analytics solution as part of its efforts to
limit errors and improve manufacturing efficiency.

Tesla's manufacturing data is fed into several different key systems. The first
system is the MES (Manufacturing Execution System). This can be seen as the "air
traffic control center" of the entire production process. It can track the location of each
part in the line, specify where the part should go, track orders and quality issues, and
collect measurements. basic. MES uses Oracle/SQL databases.

More detailed and in-depth quality test data is stored in a separate MySQL
database and is self-developed by Tesla.

In addition, thanks to its flexibility and ease of use, QuickBase is also used to
track process changes and unresolved quality issues. And finally, the Excel spreadsheet
application for manual reports is indispensable.

Data is not only stored in many separate systems, but it also has to serve many
different user objects with different requirements. While the employees in Production
Management are interested in production and reprocessing reports, the staff in
Equipment Management are interested in preventive maintenance reports, and the staff
in Management Department are interested in reporting on production and reprocessing.
Process management is concerned with the root cause analysis report.

3. CheapCaribbean

Director of Data Analytics at CheapCaribbean, which collects and holds a great

deal of valuable business data, and has a dedicated team of data analysts who are fully
capable of performing these actions. complex analysis.

However, CheapCaribbean relies too heavily on Excel to analyze that data.

Therefore, the value of the data has not been fully exploited. To solve data problems,
they need to focus on modernizing their analytics solutions.

CheapCaribbean chose Birst - a Cloud BI provider because it is a solution that

can meet all the core analytics needs of the business.

Birst's solution helps to aggregate and manage data from all sources, with a
variety of tools to help businesses process and make decisions based on available
information. Cheap Caribbean management wishes to further promote expansion and
encourage more innovative businesses.

Besides, Birst possesses the flexibility to apply data analysis to many other
potential future business opportunities that CheapCaribbean is targeting.
 The great thing is that Birst's growth path is closely linked to the vision and
strategy that CheapCaribbean leadership developed. For them, this is the perfect piece,
taking their business to the next level.

4. Expedia

Expedia is the parent company of some top-tier travel companies, including

Expedia, Hotwire, and TripAdvisor.

Challenge: Customer satisfaction is essential to the company's mission, strategy

and success. The online experience should mirror a good trip experience, but the
company had no visibility into the voice of the customer.

Solution: The company had mountains of data they were manually aggregating,
leaving little time for analysis. Using business intelligence, the customer satisfaction
group was able to analyze customer data from across the company and link results with
10 objectives related directly to corporate initiatives. Owners of those KPIs build,
manage and analyze data to discover trends or patterns.

Results: The customer service team can see how well it is doing against KPIs in
real-time and take corrective steps if necessary. Plus, other departments can use the
data. For example, a travel manager can use BI to discover high volumes of unused
tickets or offline bookings and create strategies to adjust behavior and increase overall
savings.

5. SKF

SKF is a Sweden-based global manufacturer and supplier of bearings, seals,

mechatronics, and lubrication systems with 17,000 distributor locations.

Challenge: SKF's broad geographic coverage and product diversity required

consistent market size and product demand forecasting to adjust its manufacturing. The
company needed to simplify the complex Excel files used to produce a demand forecast.

Solution: Management realized it needed to implement a business intelligence to

serve as a single source of reliable information. Maintaining the system is easier than
trying to manage everything with Excel, and now employees don’t have to rely on
outdated spreadsheets and can access simple-to-understand reports and dashboards.

Results: By centralizing data assets into a single system, SFK was quickly able
to share data and analyses between several departments — including sales,
manufacturing planning, application engineering, business development, and
management. SKF now combines demand forecasts between departments and has
improved the planning process.

6. Stitch Fix
 Stitch Fix provides online personal clothing and accessory styling services. The
company uses recommendation algorithms and data science to personalize clothing
items based on size, budget, and style.

Challenge: The company wants to reduce returns, keep repeat customers and
generate word-of-mouth business with recommendations from customers to their
friends and family.

Solution: Stitch Fix collects data within BI throughout the buying process,
meaning the more a customer shops with Stitch Fix, the better the styling team
comprehends their taste in clothing. The company hired astrophysicists to decode the
different personal style components—intricate work that would be impossible without
the powerful analytics of BI.

Results: Using business intelligence to profile buyers and their preferences, the
company, which started in 2011, reported a customer base of 3.4 million in 2020 and
revenues of $1.7 billion in the fiscal year 2020.

❖ Creation:

1. Nguyen, H. (2022). Grab ứng dụng Business Intelligence trong “siêu bản địa
hóa” ứng dụng đặt xe như thế nào? Retrieved 1 March 2022, from
https://blog.trginternational.com/vi/grab-ung-dung-business-intelligence-
tableau.

2. Pham, T. (2022). Ứng dụng BI & phân tích dữ liệu cho ngành Sản Xuất tại
Tesla (P.1). Retrieved 1 March 2022, from
https://blog.trginternational.com/vi/bi-phan-tich-du-lieu-cho-nganh-san-
xuat-tai-tesla-1

3. Nguyen, H. (2022). CheapCaribbean cải tiến phân tích dữ liệu với Birst
Cloud BI. Retrieved 1 March 2022, from
https://blog.trginternational.com/vi/cheapcaribbean-cai-cach-phan-tich-du-
lieu-voi-birst-cloud-bi

4. 23 Examples of Business Intelligence. Oracle NetSuite. (2022). Retrieved 1

March 2022, from
 3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Business Intelligence

Advantages of Business Intelligence :

1. Fact-Based Decisions

Once a company-wide business intelligence system is in place, management can

see detailed, current data on all aspects of the business – financial data, production data,
customer data. They can read reports that synthesize this information in predetermined
ways, such as current return on investment reports for individual products or product
lines.

This information helps management make fact-based decisions, such as which

products to concentrate on and which ones to discontinue. An over-reliance on data can
put a damper on creative thinking. This means businesses must carefully weigh the
advantages and disadvantages of business intelligence.

2. Faster Analysis and Reporting

Nowadays, companies are facing issues in comprising the strategies to combine

lots of data, and not only is it difficult, but it is also very time-consuming. But Business
Intelligence has become a medium through which clients can use templates or
customized reports using several data resources to create reports and insights much
faster. Business Intelligence helps to present the collected data in many different forms
like dashboards, graphs, scorecards, and summaries, so the choice is up to you regarding
the medium.

3. Improves Sales and Negotiations

A business intelligence system can be a valuable asset to a company's sales force

because it provides access to up-to-the-minute reports that identify sales trends, product
improvements or additions, current customer preferences, and unexplored markets.

Detailed and current data is also a valuable backup to negotiations with suppliers
or other vendors. Sales data for business intelligence is more in-depth than the weekly
or monthly figures used by sales reps to make simple analyses of recent sales.

4. Eliminates Internal Waste

A business intelligence system can point out areas of waste or loss that may have
previously gone unnoticed in a large organization. Since a company-wide business
intelligence system works as a single, unified whole, it can analyze transactions between
subsidiaries and departments to identify areas of overlap or inefficiency.

For example, if two different divisions at one company that work on the same
product are both paying one vendor, the business is double-paying that vendor without
knowing it. That can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars if not found soon.

5. Identifies New Opportunities

 Business intelligence can help a company assess its capabilities; compare its
relative strengths and weaknesses against its competitors; identify trends and market
conditions, and respond quickly to change – all to gain a competitive advantage,
according to the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology.

It helps decision-makers act swiftly and correctly in response to opportunities;

helps the company identify its most profitable customers, as well as potentially
profitable customers; and assesses the reasons for customer dissatisfaction before it
begins to cost them sales.

6. Reduced Training Requirements :

Various information required by the employees can be facilitated by business

intelligence. The training cost of an organization can be reduced significantly by
implementing business tools that are easily accessible, common, and extensively
backed.

Disadvantages of Business Intelligence:

1. Piling of Historical Data

The major objective of the Business intelligence system is to stockpile past data
about a firm's deals and reveal it in such a way that it permits professionals in decision
making. On the flip side, this information generally amounts to a small portion of what
the firms require to function, besides its restrained worth. While in other situations, the
user may not have an interest in historical data as many markets that the company
regulates are infrequent alterations.

2. High Prices

Business intelligence software can be expensive. While the potential for a high
ROI can justify this, the initial price can be a barrier to smaller companies. You also
have to consider the costs of the hardware and IT staff needed to implement the software
effectively.

You can avoid paying too much by opting for self-service BI tools over a more
traditional model. These systems will allow you to avoid costly IT support and cut down
the time it takes to implement or adjust your BI.

3. Muddling of commercial settings

Business Intelligence can cause commercial settings to turn out to be much more
muddled.

4. Limited use

Like all improved technologies, business intelligence was first established

keeping into consideration the buying competence of affluent firms. Even today BI
systems cannot be afforded by most companies. Although traders in the past few years
have started modifying their services towards medium and small-sized industries, the
fact is that many of such firms do not consider them to be highly essential, for their
complexity.

5. Time-Consuming Implementation

Many firms in today's fast-paced industrial scenario are not patient enough to
wait for the execution of Business intelligence in their organization. It takes around 18
months for the data warehousing system to be completely implemented the system.

6. Data Breaches

One of the most pressing concerns with any data analysis system is the risk of
leaks. If you use BI applications to handle sensitive information, an error in the process
could expose it, harming your business, customers, or employees.

More than 30% of surveyed businesses cited security issues as the biggest
challenge facing BI. However, the prevalence of this issue means many BI providers
take it seriously and will provide robust safety measures. When looking at different apps
and providers, always consider their security options. It may also help to be careful
about what kinds of data you allow your BI to access.

Difficulty Analyzing Different Data Sources

The more encompassing your BI, the more data sources you’ll use. A variety of
different sources can be beneficial in giving you well-rounded analytics, but systems
may have trouble working across varied platforms.

The good news is this problem is gradually disappearing. More advanced BI

systems can incorporate a range of different data sets. You can look for an all-in-one BI
software that offers these services or use independent tools like data connectors to
consolidate all your varied information.

7. Poor Data Quality

In this digital age, you have more information at your disposal than ever, but this
can prove to be problematic. A surplus of data can mean that a lot of what your BI tools
analyze is irrelevant or unhelpful, muddying results and slowing down processes.

To avoid this, you can implement a data quality management initiative. It also
helps to use key performance indicators that are relevant to your particular needs and
goals.

8. Resistance to Adoption

Not all disadvantages of BI deal with the software itself. One of the most
substantial obstacles facing BI is employees or departments not wanting to integrate it
into their operations. If your company doesn’t adopt these systems across all areas, they
won’t be as effective.
 You can help your staff accept BI by making it easier to integrate. If your
software is user-friendly and everyone understands its benefits, they’ll be more likely
to adopt it.

→ Hence, it becomes vital for the firms to give due thought to the business
intelligence aspect. Due to the intricacy of these systems, the BI system can create an
existence of its own in the firm. It must be understood by the firm that storing data in
the business intelligence system just for the sake of it does not increase its worth but
results in vice versa effect.