Business Intelligence (BI) is the term used to describe a mix of methods, technologies and best practices that are used to analyse business data to provide meaningful insight and help businesses to make more informed business decisions.

BI cannot, therefore, be classed as just one thing; it is a range of concepts that are utilised in combination to get the most out of an organisation’s data.

There is a wide array of BI technologies in the marketplace that help put together some pieces of the puzzle. These technologies offer businesses the ability to perform historical, current and even predictive analytics on the data they hold and transform this data into rich visuals. All of these capabilities empower organisations to streamline their analytical and reporting processes through the collection, integration and final analysis of their data, whatever form this may take.

Why is BI important?

It is all about making better evidence-based decisions for your organisation. Business Intelligence gives your people access to back up their business decisions with solid numbers and facts rather than gut feelings or opinion. BI, therefore, empowers businesses as it allows them to move forward on a course of action with the confidence that the data supports that decision.

Not only does BI empower and support decision making, but it also allows businesses to get to these decisions quicker. The operational efficiency benefits gained from BI are endless with BI tools providing the ability to streamline decision making, serve up data quicker, automate processes and visually present users with easily digestible reports.

BI allows organisations to work with not only their existing structured data, such as databases but to also benefit from their unstructured data, for example, data that can be obtained from social media. BI empowers businesses to wrangle data of all types and structures and feed it all into meaningful insights to better inform business users.

Every aspect of business benefits from analytical insight, whether it is tracking projects, or applying predictive analytics to sales figures.

The sheer volume of data businesses generated year on year is increasing exponentially, and for companies to successfully ride this data wave, it is important to put in place relevant processes and technologies to help them not only stay afloat but harness the full power of this data.

Why choose Power BI?

Power BI is Microsoft’s Business Intelligence reporting and dashboard platform. Of all the tools on the market that promise to make analysis easier, why choose Power BI over other solutions?

Released in 2011, Power BI has very quickly established itself as a market-leading Business Intelligence platform outpacing numerous legacy vendors in a very short space of time.

The reason for its success is the versatility and usability of the platform. Microsoft has put users of all levels at the heart of the tool’s design. It is a truly accessible and intuitive platform that any user within a business can pick up and start generating meaningful analysis.

Power BI’s straightforward drag and drop visualisations and its robust data querying and modelling functions make it a powerful one-stop-shop for all your analysis and reporting needs. So much so that Microsoft is once again way out in front in the leaders’ quadrant of Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligent Platforms.

Is your organisation getting the most out of its data, or does it require more advanced BI? If you are interested in learning how Power BI can drive your organisation forward, discover our Power BI resources and services here.