Why do we need Business Intelligence ?

It’s a classic question that has a classic answer – companies need to translate data into information in order to make strategic business decisions.
Companies continuously create data whether they store it in flat files, spreadsheets or databases.  This data is extremely valuable to your company.  It’s more than just a record of what was sold yesterday, last week or last month.  It should be used to look at sales trends in order to plan marketing campaigns or to decide what resources to allocate to specific sales teams.  It should be used to analyse market trends to ensure that your products are viable in today’s marketplace.  It should be used to plan for future expansion of your business.  It should be used to analyse customer behaviour.  The bottom line is that your data should be used to maximize revenue and increase profit.
All companies produce reports from the data they collect from their business activities.  Every manager has a manager who needs reports unless you’re the CEO in which case you just need reports.
Some important questions you need to ask are:
1. How much resources (i.e. people, time, dollars) does it take to produce these reports?
2. Am I sure that the data in these reports is accurate?
3. Am I concerned with the security of these reports?
4. Am I receiving these reports in a timely manner?
If the answers to these questions are too much, no, yes, and no then you need a Business Intelligence solution.
IT are the first people to begin the process of creating a report.  They need to extract the required data and pass it to the person creating the report.  That person then has to spend time manipulating the data to create the required report.  This process can take many hours, even days, of effort.  And this process needs to be carried out for each and every report that the company requires.
Business Intelligence solutions automate the process of extracting data and producing reports thereby eliminating all of the manual effort of IT and the people creating the reports from raw data.
A number of studies have been conducted on spreadsheet errors.  An often cited report, What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors by Raymond R.Panko of the University of Hawaii, concludes that “every study that has attempted to measure errors [in spreadsheets] has found them and has found them in abundance”.  If decisions are made based on inaccurate reports then these decisions are more than likely the wrong decisions.  This could lead to disastrous results for the company involved.
A Business Intelligence solution produces reports using data that has been automatically extracted from a cleansed data source (typically a database or data mart) to produce accurate reports.  In order to make important business decisions, for example, as to what new products to carry or what products to drop, it is vital that managers have accurate data in the reports on which they base these decisions.
Data security is a very real problem.  As soon as data is extracted to spreadsheets the potential for abuse is greatly increased.  Spreadsheets can be “lost”, private corporate and sensitive data can be copied onto a number of portable devices, and laptops can be stolen or misplaced.  Cases where private data is made public through negligence occur daily. Think Wiki.
Business Intelligence solutions take advantage of existing security infrastructures to keep private data secure and within the company.  Data within reports is typically presented to employees via the company’s intranet and employees are given access to only the data they require to carry out their specific job functions.
Without a Business Intelligence solution companies may have to resort to dumping vast amounts of data into spreadsheets from their databases.  This in itself is a manual and, in most cases, an extremely time- consuming task.  The spreadsheets then have to be delivered to the person creating the report.  Spreadsheets then have to be consolidated and the data manipulated manually to produce the desired reports.  All this takes time and the data within the reports may be days or weeks old by the time the reports are complete and delivered to the manager.
A Business Intelligence solution provides real-time reports directly to the manager on-demand from any location.  The data in these reports is typically as recent as the data in the data-source it is being extracted from which allows the manager to monitor the business in real-time.  The manager can then base decisions on what is happening now and not last week or even yesterday.
There is a reason that Business Intelligence continues to show up on CIOs’ priority list.  The amount of data being stored by companies is growing exponentially and it needs to be managed.  It needs to be secured and distributed efficiently to enable employees to make important up-to-date business decisions. CIO’s are beginning to understand the realities of this problem and are working to implement Business Intelligence solutions that fit their particular company’s requirements

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