for over 10 years now, but I still find it hard to carry on small talk with the average

Joe about what exactly I do for work. So for all the Joe’s out there that really want

to know what Business Intelligence is, you’ve found the right video.

First I want you to imagine that you went to your favorite store to buy some stinky

cheese. When you pay for your cheese and walk out, you may or may not know that your favorite

store has gathered some new data about the stinky cheese you bought, at what time you

bought it, and how much you bought it for. Now I want you to put yourself in the shoes

of the Director of Stinky Cheese Supply for your favorite Store. Day in and day out He

has to figure out how many blocks of stinky cheese He should be ordering. The only possible

way for him to make an educated guess about this, is if He knows how many are being purchased

by customers. Now, as the data sits today, the Director of Stinky Cheese would have to

look at every single transaction made throughout each day to see how much stinky cheese was

purchased. But this takes up way too much time, and since this is a decision the Director

of Stinky Cheese has to make every week, He decides to use a Business Intelligence tool

to provide that information. The use of a Business Intelligence tool allows for information

to be regularly rolled up and formatted just right so the Director can make a much more

educated decision about how much stinky cheese to purchase. Additionally, now that the Director

has more time on his hands He can analyze in much further detail.

So basically you can think of Business Intelligence as the process of going from raw data to legible

information. Now consider how broad the Business Intelligence space is. For Example, Have you

ever received a receipt from an ATM machine that provides you a current balance in your

bank account? Or perhaps have you ever received a detailed bill in the mail? These are all

forms of Business Intelligence (or BI). Let’s take some time and go over some common forms

of BI: First, let’s talk about Operational Reporting.

This form of reporting is a kin to the detailed bill in the mail or your ATM receipt. It provides

a very structured template of how the data is to be delivered to the end user. The end

users experience needs to be considered in a lot more detail as the path of analysis

and how the person will consume the data are typically nested in the report templates.

Second, we have Ad Hoc reporting. This type of reporting is intended to empower a business

person to play the report authoring role. By doing this, the look, feel, and content

of the report can be controlled by its consumer. Most Ad Hoc tools have built in assumptions

regarding design and navigation, to keep the business person from getting overwhelmed with

complexity. The queries and their structures are maintained by IT and are developed jointly

with business user inputs. Third, we have OLAP Analysis. This type of

analysis delivers pre calculated and pre structured data sets for business people to explore.

Many tools that connect to OLAP feel more like data navigation tools than pure report

authoring tools. I’ve released a much more comprehensive video about OLAP, on the Intricity101

channel, which is titled “What is OLAP”. Fourth, we have Data Visualization. This is

a category that has recently emerged in popularity, and covers a realm in BI which I like to call

microdecisions. In Data Visualization the roll up of data is commonly conducted algorithmically

and stored in memory. This makes the experience of BI far more plug and play in nature. And,

it also allows the business to answer one off questions in a much simpler way. Because

the roll up of the data commonly occurs automatically, it also tends to be very processor and query

intensive. Fifth, we have Dashboards. As you’d expect,

Dashboards typically represent a high level view of an organization. This keeps the executive

from having to thumb through hundreds of reports and data elements. If a troubled area arises

in the dashboard, the executive can drill into the alert to see a more detailed report.

Often dashboards are simply compositions of the various data delivery methods we just

discussed. Each of the delivery methods I’ve described

above typically come as part of a suite or platform for managing the various forms of

content. This means everything from scheduling automated report delivery to keeping the data

secure are all conducted in a single platform. Now I’m sure there are another dozen or

so forms of Business Intelligence, this video isn’t meant to cover every way you could

consume data. But hopefully you can get a sense of some common ways businesses are turning

raw data into comprehensible information. However, the Business Intelligence front end

is really only the tip of the iceberg. The real work in delivering consistent information

happens behind the scenes in Data Marts, and Data Warehouses. Commonly if a business is

unhappy with their Business Intelligence tool, something is usually wrong in the back end

Data Warehouse. Now that you’ve watched this video I recommend

you take a look at my video on Data Warehousing, just so you have a good understanding of how

important that data foundation is. Intricity has lead the way in Business Intelligence

since before the industry had a common name. We have a long list of very enthusiastic customer

references about our Business Intelligence capabilities, and we have been the pioneers

in designing the backbones to some of the most popular Business Intelligence platforms.

I recommend you visit the Intricity website and speak with one of our specialists. We

will bring value from day one.