Business intelligence tools are systems and processes that facilitate easy business operations for any company. If you are a business owner, you should bear in mind that without good business intelligence software, there is no way that you can possibly be at par with your toughest competitors. If you have the best business intelligence software working for you, then you can be pretty sure that you can equal your rivals not only in terms of efficiency but especially in terms of profit or revenue.
Purchasing the best business intelligence tools requires great skill but there is a need to find out which are the most important BI tools specifically. The solution is to find reviews of business intelligence software but they usually just list down the names of famous brands of BI tools without even telling you what type of business intelligence software each one is. The key is therefore to familiarize yourself first of all with the basic types of business intelligence software that your business most probably needs.
Adhoc Reporting
One essential type of business intelligence software is adhoc reporting, which generates reports that facilitate the meeting of individual information requirements. The result is powerful information analysis that can be extracted by allowing end users dynamic drilling through report data. With adhoc reporting, you will be immediately empowered to interact with business data in order to make better informed decisions.
Adhoc reporting also allows rapid creation of new reports for the purpose of answering an urgent question and make immediate business decisions or address a pending issue. Many business intelligence tools nowadays allow even non-technical users to conduct adhoc reporting quickly and easily. Through these they are able to generate custom reports of their own very easily.
Some types of adhoc reporting business intelligence software are equipped with a highly intuitive wizard that helps guide the user through a multi-step process in order to build the report. The wizard allows end users to just input the data and choose a layout to present and analyze data.
OLAP Analysis
OLAP, or online analytical processing, systems are a type of business intelligence software that can allow users instant manipulation of business data in an unlimited number of ways in order that it can be reviewed and interpreted from multiple perspectives. As an example of a good business intelligence tool for your business, OLAP systems are actually the latest type of software in the business intelligence world.
OLAP systems are a real-time combination of the benefits of both multidimensional business data modelling and relational tables. OLAP systems actually maintain a constant connection with current back-end systems. At the same time, it delivers at a fast pace many responsive reports and analytics in the form of Excel, query tools, dashboards and other front-end BI tools. Good reviews of business intelligence software for your business will help you choose the best OLAP systems for your business.
Executive Scorecards and Dashboards
If you want to have top business intelligence software for your business needs, then you should go for executive dashboards that save time for top-level managers who cannot generate adhoc reports because of their busyness. Dashboards allow senior business executives to monitor critical metrics and key performance indicators of the business in real time, thus giving them a bird’s eye view of the overall current state of the business.
Executive dashboards and scorecards are two types of business intelligence tools that your business can benefit from. A dashboard basically monitors and measures various business processes and outputs. Dashboards use PI measures that efficiently reflect the company’s traction and torque. Moreover, PI’s monitor trends of results compared against upper- or lower-threshold boundary limits. Moreover, dashboard information is real-time in nature, similar to an automobile dashboard that a driver can check anytime if he is currently low on gas or at what speed he is running. Furthermore, dashboards use alerts and notifications that warn users in case current business performance somehow exceeds or deviates from a standard or expected norm.
Scorecards, on the other hand, monitor the progress of a business based on how far it has accomplished strategic objectives. A scorecard is a useful business intelligence software type that basically displays periodic snapshots of the company’s performance which is directly associated with strategic plans and objectives. Scorecards display the cumulative build-up of potential in order to realize economic value. First, there must be a predefined target measure, then there must be milestones as well as a progress percentage of what has been completed so far.
Forecasting
Every business intelligence tool that is suits your business must include forecasting features. Forecasting refers to the company’s ability to anticipate future trends that are actually critical to the company’s overall agility and flexibility. Good business intelligence tools that function for forecasting seek to leverage historical data in order to predict future events and make sure that strategic planning is effective. In fact, several BI software types include predictive analytics in order to facilitate rapid forecasting with high accuracy.
Overall, forecasting BI tools must possess accuracy in terms of data and forecasts in order to provide the right product to the right customer at the right time and price. Effective BI tools for your business must also be comprehensive, which means that BI software can store data from many sources in just one location. This facilitates effective forecasts. In addition, forecasting BI tools must also be timely using a single data repository. They must also have clarity and readability even for the non-technical reader. The simpler the interpretation of an originally complex report is, the easier it is to execute what needs to be done.
Data Mining
The fact that companies nowadays have to hold and maintain massive volumes of data makes it difficult for these companies to sort out information that is most relevant to their tasks. Data mining features of BI tools will therefore help locate and extract only the most relevant information from large volumes of data sets. Thus, this makes it much easier for users to gain access to the information and thereby leverage it. Moreover, this task eliminates unnecessary browsing.
A good online business intelligence data service is essential for helping a company determine the possibility of growth. This is in fact the first step in securing the position of the company. Data mining tools will help you gain knowledge about your company’s market trends as well as help you determine how you are faring with competition. Moreover, online business intelligence software for data mining can help you gather data in a faster way and in a more valuable manner.
Operational Reporting
In large-scale businesses and even in small companies, hundreds or even thousands of operational tasks are being executed. These tasks are extremely important because businesses run on these activities. Thus, any small error or efficiency in these tasks can significantly cause a negative impact on the overall performance of the business. Business intelligence tools should therefore have operational reporting functions in order to enable real-time monitoring of daily events. In this way, problems can be instantly identified and remedied.
With operational business intelligence, or real-time business intelligence, one can formulate business decisions based on the real-time data generated by companies on a daily basis. The data is queried from the enterprise applications of a company. More importantly, operational reporting is targeted specifically at workers who need timely data for their jobs, like call center operators.
Operational business intelligence goes hand in hand with business processing. The purpose is to spot and deal with after-the-fact business intelligence in order to enable the creation of a performance and feedback loop. The loop is essential for effective business decision making because it will provide information regarding what is exactly happening within the business. Thus, the people concerned can immediately act upon these findings.
Furthermore, a key function of operational business intelligence tools is to determine which business users will require up-to-the-minute data for business intelligence purposes and ultimately for greater profit.
Customer Intelligence
Nowadays, the most successful companies are the most customer-centric, and these companies have actually turned to business intelligence software that has the customer intelligence function. These BI tools gather and consolidate various data from clients stored in different systems like accounting, CRM and helpdesk applications. The customer intelligence function of BI tools provides a complete view of all customer interactions within the company, so that the business can better understand customer needs and behaviors. In this way, loyalty and other programs directed towards sales can be more successfully implemented.
Customer intelligence, or CI, refers to the information derived from customer data that a business or company extracts from both internal and external sources. The purpose of CI is basically to understand the underlying motivations for each specific customer, and eventually to use as a guide for future business growth. BI tools apply business analytics to client data and so CI is also known as customer data mining.
Internal customer data refers to those coming from call center and sales systems as well as in management systems within the company. On the other hand, external customer data comes from personal, geographic and attitudinal sources and demographics. Even the social media can be used to assess customer attitudinal records for better CI evaluation.
Without the right business intelligence software whose aspects and features your business specifically needs, then you will simply get into trouble and you will not become at par with your competitors. Choosing the right business intelligence software is crucial to the financial success of the business as well as to the efficiency of its performance. Check out CrowdReviews.com for the latest information on all your business intelligence software needs.
Keith Moore
Latest posts by Keith Moore (see all)
- What Is the Best PoS Software and How to Choose It? - January 12, 2017
- What Does Database Management Software Do for Small Businesses? - January 9, 2017
- What Are the Distinct Features of the Top App Development Software? - January 8, 2017