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 right time. When considering the topic of management dashboards it is worth to choose an application which will provide remote access e.g. through a web-browser. There are now a number of solutions meeting these requirements on the market. One certainly worth a mention is Verax Systems’ KPI Dashboard which sets new standards in the area of remote access and the quality of data visualization, as the graphical user interface has been entirely designed in Adobe Flex technology.

Choosing a solution

The BI market in Poland offers a wide variety of solutions, from simple systems allowing insight into the data aggregated from various systems to complex sets of analytical tools. Their manufacturers provide the software in many different forms. Answering the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises, the suppliers are increasingly choosing to offer applications in SaaS model (software as a service). As regards the market structure, about 90% of the market in 2008 was shared between three suppliers - they were SAS (48%), Oracle Poland (26%) and SAP Poland (14%) respectively. When choosing the right platform the individual components and their functions should be examined carefully. This will help eliminate systems that are too complex as well as those that do not meet the requirements.

Deployment

Choosing the right system is not an easy task. Statistics show that only about 40% of deployment proceed according to pre-established plan. When deploying a solution, many factors should be taken into account. Prior to the evaluation process of commercially available solutions, several important questions must be answered. The basic question is what is to be achieved with BI. It frequently happens that a person interested in the deployment is unable to clearly define their preferences. Negligence in this area can at best extend the deployment duration, not to mention the fact that unspecified or vague requirements may result in implementation of a system with functionality greatly differing from the actual needs of the enterprise. The software has to answer the real business needs. An opposite situation may lead to a condition in which a costly system will be used only in a few percent.

Staff role

After a detailed analysis of the needs and the initiation of the deployment procedure, the organization should focus on the target users of the system. The system is used by the people – trivial it may sound, many entrepreneurs seem to forget about this. Therefore, an extremely important issue is to familiarize the users with the system continuously, already during the first phases of the deployment. Participation in the tests and reporting their observations may be extremely helpful and save much time. In addition, users simply will not be “afraid” of the system. Research shows that on average only half of the people authorized to operate the system use it to its full potential. A common situation is that the users are afraid to “break” an expensive application. Sometimes they even “boycott” the new system. The full commitment of the managers in this field seems to be crucial.

How about open source?

The very fact that free counterparts of such complex systems exist should please. But can a company in today's rapidly changing world, where the desired reaction time is counted virtually in seconds, afford a “free” solution? Many managers react with trusting optimism to ideas on the deployment of the free tools, while thinking mainly of the short-term benefits. However, it should be noticed that the deployment of a free solution will cost anyway. Independent implementation of such solutions without own IT department and properly trained staff seems to be at least an unreasonable idea.

The future

It is estimated that the market of Business Intelligence systems will grow worldwide by about 7% to 9% per annum. The systems will become increasingly “smart”. Even now there are new ideas, such as abandoning the concept of OLAP or making in-depth analyses directly in the equipment’s Random Access Memory. The demand of enterprises, small and medium-sized including, is dramatically increasing. Nowadays not only large corporations need reliable, accurate information. Any organization, whose purpose is to improve functioning in the long run, must come to grips with a great deal of chaotic, systematically aggregating data. Hence, quick retrieval of current and accurate information means the success of all market operations.