What is Business Intelligence?

Any organization running for years will have a huge volume of raw data used in day-to-day transactions, this data needs to be processed into meaningful information so that it helps in business decision making. 

Business Intelligence involves a set of concepts and tools which help in gathering data from various sources, processing then and providing meaningful reports which help in making business decisions, in today’s competitive world access to the right information at the right time is a priceless assert, Business Intelligence helps us in obtaining this meaningful information from the raw data.

Business Intelligence involves the following.

ETL (Extraction Transformation Loading)
Querying data from Transactional Systems (OLTP) and loading them into Analytical Processing (OLAP) Systems (Data Warehouse).
ETL Tools:  SSIS, Informatica, AB Initio, Cognos  etc    

Data Mining
Analyzing data in various dimensions and identifying relationships and trends which will help in predicting the pattern for the future.
Ex: Manual vs. Automation cost comparison. ROI analysis for a new system/process.

Statistical Analysis
A Set of concepts and methods used to process heterogeneous data and report tends and relationships between different variables in a system.
Ex: Effort vs. Cost, Sales vs. Revenue etc.

Reporting
Reporting is presenting the data in a graphical pattern, based on the needs of the target audience.
Helps in making future decisions based on past data patterns.
Helps in determining the variations in a particular variable over a period of time.
Helps in performing segmentation analysis and campaign.
Ex: Sales trend for the past 5 years, Region wise split up of sales figures.

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