In the recent past, technology has increasingly been adopted in organizations. It assists in developing efficiency and thus customer satisfaction. The competitiveness of a business is vested on the quality of its management decisions. A number of systems that aim at meeting a certain objective in the business arena have been developed. They are either home-made or all user systems (commercial systems).
Business intelligence is the name used to refer to the total collection of such system; it was first coined in September 1996, in Gartner Group report. This paper focuses on how Business Intelligence (BI) tools and the nature of its operations with a business enterprise.
Business intelligence is a term used to refer to a collection of applications that aim at keeping and making available a data bank in a certain industry or organization; the bank is referred to when decisions are made. When developing the database, the initial stage is information gathering, then sorting the information, analyzing it, and finally making is accessible for use. Business intelligence can be used in the general strategy of a business or a certain area/department in an organization.
The major benefit that a company derives from using business intelligence tools in the right way is competitive advantage. This is because a firm has access to information that assist in making informed, current and futuristic decisions (Electrosmart Limited, 2011).
Business intelligence tools take two angles; custom-built tools and commercial reporting tools. Whichever the category they are meant to keep custody and give access to certain information from data warehouse maintained in a company for better decision making.
Custom-built soft wares are developed in a company and aims to keep and avail certain information, to limited people working in a certain area or organization; commercial reporting tools are developed for sale to help in a specific line of business; they are made kin such a way that they can be integrated in the system operating in a business.
An example of a commercial reporting tool is Oracle, Reporting and querying software, and ORAP. Word access (spreadsheets) fall in the category of business tool; it has the widest use. Different industry require different information, thus different system with varying levels of data rights are used.
Despite the numerous advantages that come along with an effective business intelligence tools, making a decision to implement one is a complex decision.
It requires information technology experts as well as huge capital investments. If the process is not well implemented, it can have a negative effect to a business. The initial stage when implementing one is recognition of a need situation in a business. After the problem has been analyzed, a computer expert is involved for advice/to develop a suitable package.
Advancement in technology has enabled more users’ friendly and result-oriented soft-wares. Companies are increasingly adopting the systems. Most big companies have gone a step ahead whereby they have an officer, in the management level who is the custodian of data and information. He is mandated with not only with the electronic data but also human data.
As employees interact with customers they are supposed to record and forward more data to the officer. The department works hand-in-hand with research and development department to ensure that the data in the system is updated (Bikson & Eveland, 1996).
Other than relying on the database alone, a tread is taking course whereby after a certain issue has been raised by employees or the research team, data is looked for. Experiences are mostly mounted together and develop a pool of wisdom that helps in decision making.
In future business intelligence will take a different approach but the baseline remains the same, providing data to be utilized when making decisions. Their continued use will lead to better ways of doing business, efficiency and customer satisfaction.
References
Bikson, T., & Eveland, J. (1996). Groupware Implementation: Reinvention in the Sociotechnical Frame. Proceedings of the 1996 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. Web.
Electrosmart Limited (2011). The Business Intelligence Guide. Web.