Overview of Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence and ReportingBy Parthiv Dixit

What is Business Intelligence?

• Corporate Performance Management (CPM)

• Data warehousing• Data mining• Predictive Analytics• Dashboards• Big Data• Reporting• Online Analytics

Processing (OLAP)• Visualisation

Business intelligence (BI) is a set of theories, methodologies, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes.◦ Wikipedia

Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance.

◦ Gartner (IT Glossary)

Relevance of BIGain business insights using dataMake better fact based decisionsAnticipate future demandTypical Applications

◦Analyse what happened and why Sales figures by region, product line,

distribution channel

◦What if Analysis Change series of parameters to see the

outcome

BI Process1

Identify business

issue2

Formulate business question

3What

information do I need

4Where do I find the

information

5Retrieve

information

6Analyse

Information

7Report

answers

8Take

actions

OLTP vs OLAP

CharacteristicsOLTP System 

Online Transaction Processing (Operational System)

OLAP System Online Analytical Processing 

(Data Warehouse)

Source of dataOperational data; OLTPs are the original

source of the data.Consolidation data; OLAP data comes from the

various OLTP Databases

Purpose of data To control and run fundamental business tasksTo help with planning, problem solving, and

decision support

What the dataReveals a snapshot of ongoing business

processesMulti-dimensional views of various kinds of

business activities

Inserts and UpdatesShort and fast inserts and updates initiated by

end usersPeriodic long-running batch jobs refresh the

data

QueriesRelatively standardized and simple queries

Returning relatively few recordsOften complex queries involving aggregations

Processing Speed Typically very fast

Depends on the amount of data involved; batch data refreshes and complex queries may take many hours; query speed can be improved by

creating indexes

Space RequirementsCan be relatively small if historical data is

archived

Larger due to the existence of aggregation structures and history data; requires more

indexes than OLTP

Database Design Highly normalized with many tablesTypically de-normalized with fewer tables; use

of star and/or snowflake schemas

Backup and RecoveryBackup religiously; operational data is critical to run the business, data loss is likely to entail

significant monetary loss and legal liability

Instead of regular backups, some environments may consider simply reloading the OLTP data as

a recovery method

source: www.rainmakerworks.com

Business Intelligence Landscape

Challenges in BIIdentify business

requirementsAgile BIData

rationalisationStructured vs

Unstructured data◦ ERP vs Email,

facebook, twitter)Data volumes

◦ Big data

How companies are using data

Customer Relationship Management

Adsense – stalker AdsGoogle Search- personalised search

based on 57 parameters ◦ Eli Pariser, “Filter bubbles”, TED2011

Meta data applications◦Red Ride

How is Big Data being used?Gold Coast Health using admission

records to predict ER admissions with 93% accuracy

WikiLeaks – go through 200,000 classified documents leaked by Snowden

Predicting the US election outcome in all 50 states – Nate Silver

IPL – KKR leveraged SAP Analytics tools to buy players, derive post game analytics and drive fan engagement

Emerging Trends IoT (Internet of Things)

◦ Explosion of data through device to device communication

◦ Analysis of data to drive intelligent systems Smart homes and cars

◦ Augmented Reality Google Glass

In memory databases – enable real time analytics◦ Reporting at the speed of thought◦ SAP HANA vs Oracle 12c In Memory

NoSQL (Not Only SQL)◦ Highly scalable data stores for big data applications◦ Ad hoc query and self service tools yet to reach

maturity

Reporting“If a report does not drive an

action it has no use”- Paul Hawking

Static ReportsInteractive Reports

◦Drill down, Adhoc Reports, Self Service

Dashboards ◦Graphic visualisations◦SAP Lumira, Internet-map.net

Key Innovations used by successful BI companies

Gartner 2013

Final thoughtsOld concepts in new wordsNew technologies open new

opportunitiesTake a course on Data science

◦ https://www.coursera.org/course/datasci