What is Business Intelligence (BI)? What are the Methods and Tools?

Business intelligence (BI) is the whole process and methods of processing data in a way that contributes to the determination of a company’s strategic and tactical decisions. Business intelligence tools access and analyze data sets and present analytical findings with tools such as reports, summaries, and graphics so that companies can base their decisions on more and more meaningful data. With business intelligence, it is aimed to quickly and comprehensively interpret big data of companies, identify strategic risk or opportunity elements, and improve internal services and processes.

Business Intelligence Methods

By combining business intelligence, technology and advanced statistics, it provides fast and effective meaningful results from data analysis for the service and performance of the company. The methods used by business intelligence in this process are as follows:

  • Data Mining: Database, statistics, and machine learning are used to uncover trends and build relationships in large data sets.
  • Reporting: Data analysis is shared with the relevant people in order to reach a conclusion or make a decision.
  • Inquiry: Asking questions about a specific data, the answers or the data itself are requested from the database.
  • Benchmarking: Past data are compared with current business processes and performance measurements.
  • Descriptive Analytics: Preliminary data are interpreted to explain business process and performance differences.
  • Statistical Analysis: Results are collected from descriptive analytics and the conditions and reasons for the realization of the trend are interpreted with statistical data.
  • Data Visualization: Data are presented with visual representations such as charts and graphs to make the analyzed data easier to understand.

Business Intelligence Tools

Business intelligence tools are diversified according to the specific business intelligence methods they provide and their features such as mobile business intelligence, cloud-based business intelligence, and open-source business intelligence. Although almost all business intelligence tools today provide all business intelligence methods, business intelligence tools that offer advanced options and features in certain business intelligence methods manage to stand out. The 8 most prominent business intelligence tools with their features and options are:

  • Microsoft Power BI: This business intelligence tool creates end-to-end and powerful business solutions by connecting to Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365 and other applications on the Microsoft platform.
  • MicroStrategy: MicroStrategy offers users customized data visualization and real-time dashboard creation in a simple interface.
  • Oracle Analytics Cloud: The Oracle Analytics Cloud tool, which includes machine learning and artificial intelligence in the analytical process, also supports natural language queries and provides fast and clear answers.
  • Qlik: With its associative engine, which has artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, Qlik, which stands out with its cognitive engine, automatically correlates data with each other and offers context-sensitive insight suggestions.
  • SAS: SAS offers features such as sensitivity analysis, automatic chart creation, self-service data preparation, which enables data extraction from social media and other text sources.
  • Sisense: Using modern database technologies, Sisense offers all its business intelligence methods, including data preparation as web based.
  • Tableau: Offering special versions for departments and industries, Tableau stands out with its easy analysis and matching features of temporal data.
  • Tibco: Tibco, an AI-powered data visualization platform, offers machine learning-based data preparation to enable complex data models.

Advantages of Business Intelligence Tools

Business intelligence tools enable you to make your company’s strategy and tactical decisions more effectively and easily by presenting meaningful and detailed results from big data in a visualized way in a short time. In addition, these tools enable you to complete certain evaluation processes such as business and performance in a simpler and shorter time by performing business intelligence methods at the same time and increase operational efficiency.

Business intelligence tools bring many more advantages. With the business intelligence tool services and solutions, we offer as the expert Omreon team with 15 years of experience, you can immediately start taking advantage of the business intelligence tools your company needs. You can contact us to have more detailed information about business intelligence tools.

Secure Your Data with GDPR

Say goodbye to major security and privacy threats as stricter policies on data collection take effect. To ensure security for the data you collate, GDPR has introduced a set of must-follow stringent guidelines. And if you don’t follow them, you can count on receiving a huge fine.

For instance, did you know that the UK’s information commissioner’s office (ICO) received the second-highest total value of the fine for data protection violation? As a result, businesses have to pay more than €43,901,000 for breaching. At the same time, Italy’s data watchdog accrued an incredible fine of €58,161,601 (approximately £52.6 million) as a financial penalty.

These are two of the many companies that suffered huge fines. It is mainly because companies fail to keep up with the latest data privacy and data collection guidelines. Here, we take a closer look at GDPR’s new data collection guidelines:

How Remote Working is Restructuring the Data Privacy World

To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, remote working has become the new norm. This has hindered operations in various industries.

In the same way, remote working has had a substantial impact on privacy and security methods. For this reason, companies must learn to secure and safeguard their data whenever they utilize public storage and networks.

Present-day businesses have to provide GDPR with a proper reason regarding their data collection policies. Moreover, employees boast the power to control how much data can be collected and whether they want to share any data or not.

If businesses and firms violate customers’ and employees’ right to data sharing, GDPR may charge a considerable fine for collating data without legitimate reasons and permission. British Airways and Marriott are two prime examples of leading businesses that received nearly £20 million fines due to data breaches.

Customer’s Sensitive Data is at Risk

As a direct result of work-from-home models, employees access data from personal devices. These devices may be susceptible to malicious viruses, have security loopholes, or lack adequate firewalls to protect confidential data relevant to their customers.

It often leads to loss, theft, or compromises in customer’s data. For safeguarding this volatile information, businesses must figure out better and more efficient ways of protecting their customer’s data when customers are using personal devices to access the company database.

Ways to Protect Your Data

Data encryption encodes your customer’s data in a way that can be accessed when users enter the correct encryption key.

The encrypted data appears in unreadable text to the person accessing your data without permission. Business owners should encrypt sensitive data to prevent cybersecurity breaches.

The GDPR Recital 83 and Article 32 mention ‘encryption’ as the basic feature for adequate technical and organizational security measures. With the help of encryption, your data will be illegible and, ultimately, safe from all malicious breaches.  

Tips to Keep Your Company GDPR Compliant while Following a Remote Work Model

Here’s how you can incorporate GDPR guidelines in your work system when adopting a work-from-home model:

  • Update your cybersecurity policy to enhance the security within your business. Identify and detect security loopholes and learn to respond to them effectively.
  • Safeguard data storage and sharing via encryption and controlled access.
  • Encrypting your data is requisitory, as stated by GDPR in article 32. Controlled access, secured connections, and ensuring no exceptions are the only ways to secure confidential data.

Consult with an Advisor

All in all, businesses should integrate system designs and security protocols in their day-to-day tasks. This way, they can protect customer’s confidential data regardless of whether they’re working from home or in-office.

If a business tries to justify a security breach by saying that employees work remotely on personal devices, they may end up with heavy penalties and fines. Avoid facing these legal repercussions and violating the GDPR by learning the ins and outs of GDPR.

Complying with the GDPR is a great way to ensure you don’t have to face such severe consequences. However, the legal repercussions of a breach are often too complicated to understand.

Consider talking to a GDPR expert like Omreon and educating your employees on how to protect sensitive data. At the same time, increase their awareness about the ramifications of failing to do so. Venture onto their website to get access to get excellent solutions and revolutionary products based on GDPR!