Business intelligence (BI) combines business analytics, data mining, data visualization, data tools and infrastructure, and best practices to help organizations make more data-driven decisions. In practice, you know you’ve got modern business intelligence when you have a comprehensive view of your organization’s data and use that data to drive change, eliminate inefficiencies, and quickly adapt to market or supply changes. Modern BI solutions prioritize flexible self-service analysis, governed data on trusted platforms, empowered business users, and speed to insight.
Businesses and organizations have questions and goals. To answer these questions and track performance against these goals, they gather the necessary data, analyze it, and determine which actions to take to reach their goals. Raw data is collected from business systems. Data is processed and then stored in data warehouses, the cloud, applications, and files. Once it’s stored, users can access the data, starting the analysis process to answer business questions. Data visualization tools convert data into charts or graphs, as well as presenting to any key stakeholders or decision-makers.
Business intelligence comprises of the processes and methods of collecting, storing, and analyzing data from business operations or activities to optimize performance. All of these things come together to create a comprehensive view of a business to help people make better, actionable decisions. Over the past few years, business intelligence has evolved to include more processes and activities to help improve performance.
Companies can use the BI tools to continually improve follow-up questions and iteration. The BI process is a cycle of data access, discovery, exploration, and information sharing. This is called the cycle of analytics.