Question

Discuss how BI could be viewed as a “product” or as a “process.”

Answer 1

· Business intelligence or BI can be viewed as a set of processes carried out, inorder to analyse, integrate and present the information about a business.

· They can be used as a tool to provide the past, present and future views of a business.

· They are mainly used for better decision making

· They provide success in many areas of business like, finance, marketing, sales etc.

· Now a days, BPM or business process management is combined with BI or business intelligence for providing smart business services called, iBPM or intelligent business process management .

· BI tools helps to increase the transparency of the business processes.

· The main process in BI are:

1. Obtaining the data from different sources about the business.

2. Then organizing the obtained data .

3. Analysing the organized data into meaningful information mainly done through analysis.

4. Making the optimum decisions inorder to achieve the predefined goal.

· Some of the main BI techniques are:

1. Data mining

2. Data preparation

3. Reporting

4. Analysis – descriptive and statistical etc.

The advantages of BI processes are:

1. Faster planning and decision making can be done through this steps.

2. Best decision can be made by better analysis

3. The quality of the data is improved.

4. The quality of the business in also improved

5. Increase the revenue