how bi can be useful
to be useful bi must seek to increase the accuracy timeliness and amount of data these requirements mean finding more ways to capture information that is not already being recorded checking the information for errors and structuring the information in a way that makes broad analysis possible in practice however companies have data that is unstructured or in diverse formats that do not make for easy collection and analysis software firms thus provide business intelligence solutions to optimize the information gleaned from data these are enterprise level software applications designed to unify a company s data and analytics although software solutions continue to evolve and are becoming increasingly sophisticated data scientists still need to manage the trade offs between speed and the depth of reporting some of the insights emerging from big data have companies scrambling to capture everything but data analysts can usually filter out sources to find a selection of data points that can represent the health of a process or business area as a whole this can reduce the need to capture and reformat everything for analysis saving analytical time and increasing the reporting speed types of bi tools and softwarebi tools and software come in a wide variety of forms let s take a quick look at some common types of bi solutions benefits of business intelligencethere are many reasons why companies adopt bi many use it to support functions as diverse as hiring compliance production and marketing bi is a core business value it is difficult to find a business area that does not benefit from better information to work with some of the many benefits companies can experience after adopting bi into their business models include faster more accurate reporting and analysis improved data quality better employee satisfaction reduced costs increased revenues and the ability to make better business decisions bi was derived to help businesses avoid the problem of garbage in and garbage out resulting from inaccurate or insufficient data analysis if for example you are in charge of production schedules for several beverage factories and sales are showing strong month over month growth in a particular region you can approve extra shifts in near real time to ensure your factories can meet demand similarly you can quickly idle down that same production if a cooler than normal summer starts impacting sales this manipulation of production is a limited example of how bi can increase profits and reduce costs when used properly examples of bicoca cola bottling had a problem with its daily manual reporting processes they restricted access to real time sales and operations data however by replacing the manual process with an automated bi system the company completely streamlined the process and saved 260 hours a year or more than six 40 hour work weeks now the company s team can quickly analyze metrics like delivery operations budget and profitability with just a few clicks 1