7 Reasons Why Business Intelligence (BI) is Crucial

Business Intelligence, Big Data Management, Data Science

Article | May 2, 2023

What are your physical assets telling you? Are they performing to design capacity? Are they providing the expected return on investment? Are they aging and in need of capital investment or replacement? We live in an increasingly data-rich environment, and successful companies must take full advantage of transforming data to information. Among manufacturers there’s growing awareness of how data and analytics can drive operations and maintenance, predicting breakdowns and reducing downtime. However, it’s possible to go further. A mostly untapped opportunity for manufacturers exists in the use of operational data from the factory floor to inform better capital allocation decisions.

Business Intelligence, Big Data Management, Big Data

Article | July 4, 2023

Data has settled into regular business practices. Executives in every industry are looking for ways to optimize processes through the implementation of data. Doing business without analytics is just shooting yourself in the foot. Yet, global business efforts to embrace data-transformation haven't had resounding success. There are many reasons for the challenging course, however, people and process management has been cited as the common thread. A combination of people touting data as the “new oil” and everyone scrambling to obtain business intelligence has led to information being considered an end in itself. While the idea of becoming a data-driven organization is extremely beneficial, the execution is often lacking. In some areas of business, action over strategy can bring tremendous results. However, in data governance such an approach often results in a hectic period of implementations, new processes, and uncoordinated decision-making. What I propose is to proceed with a good strategy and sound data governance principles in mind. Auditing data for quality Within a data governance framework, information turns into an asset. Proper data governance is essentially informational accounting. There are numerous rules, regulations, and guidelines to make governance ensure quality. While boiling down the process into one concept would be reductionist, by far the most important topic in all information management and governance is data quality. Data quality can be loosely defined as the degree to which data is accurate, complete, timely, consistent, adherent to rules and requirements, and relevant. Generally, knowledge workers (i.e. those who are heavily involved in data) have an intuitive grasp of when data quality is lacking. However, pinpointing the problem should be the goal. Only if the root cause, which is generally behavioral or process-based rather than technical, of the issue is discovered can the problem be resolved. Lack of consistent data quality assurance leads to the same result with varying degrees of terribleness - decision making based on inaccurate information. For example, mismanaging company inventory is most often due to lack of data quality. Absence of data governance is all cost and no benefit. In the coming years, the threat of a lack of quality assurance will only increase as more businesses try to take advantage of data of any kind. Luckily, data governance is becoming a more well-known phenomenon. According to a survey we conducted with Censuswide, nearly 50% of companies in the financial sector have put data quality assurement as part of their overall data strategy for the coming year. Data governance prerequisites Information management used to be thought of as an enterprise-level practice. While that still rings true in many cases today, overall data load within companies has significantly risen in the past few years. With the proliferation of data-as-a-service companies and overall improvement in information acquisition, medium-size enterprises can now derive beneficial results from implementing data governance if they are within a data-heavy field. However, data governance programs will differ according to several factors. Each of these will influence the complexity of the strategy: Business model - the type of organization, its hierarchy, industry, and daily activities. Content - the volume, type (e.g. internal and external data, general information, documents, etc.) and location of content being governed. Federation - the extent and intensity of governance. Smaller businesses will barely have to think about the business model as they will usually have only one. Multinational corporations, on other hand, might have several branches and arms of action, necessitating different data governance strategies for each. However, the hardest prerequisite for data governance is proving its efficacy beforehand. Since the process itself deals with abstract concepts (e.g. data as an asset, procedural efficiency), often only platitudes of “improved performance” and “reduced operating costs” will be available as arguments. Regardless of the distinct data governance strategy implemented, the effects become visible much later down the line. Even then, for people who have an aversion to data, the effects might be nearly invisible. Therefore, while improved business performance and efficiency is a direct result of proper data governance, making the case for implementing such a strategy is easiest through risk reduction. Proper management of data results in easier compliance with laws and regulations, reduced data breach risk, and better decision making due to more streamlined access to information. “Why even bother?” Data governance is difficult, messy, and, sometimes, brutal. After all, most bad data is created out of human behavior, not technical error. That means telling people they’re doing something wrong (through habit or semi-intentional action). Proving someone wrong, at times repeatedly, is bound to ruffle some feathers. Going to a social war for data might seem like overkill. However, proper data governance prevents numerous invisible costs and opens up avenues for growth. Without it, there’s an increased likelihood of: Costs associated with data. Lack of consistent quality control can lead to the derivation of unrealistic conclusions. Noticing these has costs as retracing steps and fixing the root cause takes a considerable amount of time. Not noticing these can cause invisible financial sinks. Costs associated with opportunity. All data can deliver insight. However, messy, inaccurate, or low-quality data has its potential significantly reduced. Some insights may simply be invisible if a business can’t keep up with quality. Conclusion As data governance is associated with an improvement in nearly all aspects of the organization, its importance cannot be overstated. However, getting everyone on board and keeping them there throughout the implementation will be painful. Delivering carefully crafted cost-benefit and risk analyses of such a project will be the initial step in nearly all cases. Luckily, an end goal to all data governance programs is to disappear. As long as the required practices and behaviors remain, data quality can be maintained. Eventually, no one will even notice they’re doing something they may have considered “out of the ordinary” previously.

Business Intelligence, Enterprise Business Intelligence

Article | July 10, 2023

Data is not stored in a single database, file system, data lake, or repository. Data generated in a system of record must meet various business requirements, connect with other data sources, and then be utilized for analytics, customer-facing apps, or internal procedures. A well-established data integration solution provides a unified picture of data received from various places and formats. This can also happen when two organizations merge or when internal applications are consolidated. Data integration can also facilitate the development of a more complete data warehouse, resulting in more accurate and effective analysis. Data integration establishes the foundation for effective Business Intelligence (BI) and decision-making. Data Integration as a Tool for Business Strategy The gathering, analysis, and integration of data is essential to the success of businesses. Let’s have a look at the way in which data integration technology enables business strategy. Set Data-Integration Goals These objectives should be part of the larger company objective. A thorough awareness of your consumers, for example, is corporate goal. To do this, your integration strategy should aim to embed customer data into your service, sales, and marketing platforms. Improved Financial Data Management A robust data integration strategy allows you to monitor and manage vital financial and operational data through simple dashboards that combine all business and financial data into a single platform. Any effective financial management system will include basic accounting capabilities that will enable you to track revenue and spending, assets and liabilities, and amortizations in order to provide accurate financial reports. Enhanced Marketing Analytics Data about competitors, industry trends, consumer behavior, and campaign performance should drive your marketing strategy. Update often as fresh data becomes available. By assessing your marketing tools and channels, you can determine the optimum time, place, and technique to advertise your company. Gather data from social media, email marketing tools, CRMs, CMSs, and other platforms for marketing analytics. This also allows you to evaluate where you should spend additional resources to improve the consistency of your marketing effort. Save Time and Resources Business intelligence experts have a huge workload of sifting through business data. Analysts worry less when teams have direct access to essential data. This frees them to concentrate on difficult, valuable data sets. Without data integration platforms, even the simplest business report requires manual processing of all sources, creating code or automatically uploading data to the database, and exhausting systematization. Not to mention the challenge to monitor and correct any human factor errors. This will be completely eliminated by integration automation. How AI Is Enhancing the Data Integration Process? Data Mapping: Businesses can map data faster using AI for insights generation and decision-making. Autonomous learning: An ML-based data integration process enables autonomous learning to discover patterns and trends in the stored data. Big data processing: Machine learning (ML) makes it possible to quickly and accurately transform unstructured and inconsistent data into desirable formats. Closing Lines Regardless of the size of your company or resources, processing and managing data correctly can expand vision of your business and customers. As organizations rely on data analytics and business intelligence, data integration will become more user-friendly in the coming years. Data integration is an unavoidable aspect of every organization's digital transformation path. Implement the most current data integration techniques to stay ahead of your competition.

Article | June 18, 2021

Data is an important asset. Data leads to innovation and organizations tend to compete for leading these innovations on a global scale. Today, every business requires data and insights to stay relevant in the market. Big Data has a huge impact on the way organizations conduct their businesses. Big Data is used in different enterprises like travel, healthcare, manufacturing, governments, and more. If they need to determine their audience, understand what clients want, forecast the needs of the customers and the clients, AI and big data analysis is vital to every decision-making scenario. When companies process the collected data accurately, they get the desired results, which leads them to their desired goals. The term Big Data has been around since the 1990s. By the time we could fully comprehend it, Big Data had already amassed a huge amount of stored data. If this data is analyzed properly, it would reveal valuable industry insights into the industry to which the data belonged. IT professionals and computer scientists realized that going through all of the data and analyzing it for the purpose was too big of a task for humans to undertake. When artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm came into the picture, it accomplished analyzing the accumulated data and deriving insights. The use of AI in Big Data is fundamental to get desired results for organizations. According to Northeastern University, the amount of data in the world was 4.4 zettabytes in 2013. By of 2020, the data rose to 44 zettabytes. When there is this amount of data produced globally, this information is invaluable to the enterprises and now can leverage AI algorithms to process it. Because of this, the companies can understand and influence customer behavior. By 2018, over 50% of countries had adopted Big Data. Let us understand what Big Data, convergence of big data and AI, and impact of AI on big data analytics. Understanding Big Data In simple words, Big Data is a term that comprises every tool and process that helps people use and manage vast sets of data. According to Gartner, Big Data is a “high-volume and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing to enable enhanced insight, decision-making, and process automation.” The concept of Big Data was created to capture trends, preferences, and user behavior in one place called the data lake. Big Data in enterprises can help them analyze and configure their customers’ motivations and come up with new ideas for the creation of new offerings. Big Data studies different methods of extracting, analyzing, or dealing with data sets that are too complicated for traditional data processing systems. To analyze a large amount of data requires a system designed to stretch its extraction and analysis capability. Data is everywhere. This stockpile of data can give us insights and business analytics to the industry belonging to the data set. Therefore, the AI algorithms are written to benefit from large and complex data. Importance of Big Data Data is an integral part of understanding customer demographics and their motivations. When customers interact with technology in active or passive manner, these actions create a new set of data. What contributes to this data creation is what they carry with them every day - their smartphones. Their cameras, credit cards, purchased products all contribute to their growing data profile. A correctly done analysis can tell a lot about their behavior patterns, personality, and events in the customer’s life. Companies can use this information to rethink their strategies, improve on their product, and create targeted marketing campaigns, which would ultimately lead them to their target customer. Industry experts, for years and years, have discussed Big Data and its impact on businesses. Only in recent years, however, has it become possible to calculate that impact. Algorithms and software can now analyze large datasets quickly and efficiently.The forty-four zettabyte of data will only quadruple in the coming years. This collection and analysis of the data will help companies get the AI insights that will aid them in generating profits and be future-ready. Organizations have been using Big Data for a long time. Here’s how those organizations are using Big Data to drive success: Answering customer questions Using big data and analytics, companies can learn the following things: • What do customers want? • Where are they missing out on? • Who are their best and loyal customers? • Why people choose different products? Every day, as organizations gather more information, they can get more insights into sales and marketing. Once they get this data, they can optimize their campaigns to suit the customer’s needs. Learning from their online habits and with correct analysis, companies can send personalized promotional emails. These emails may prompt this target audience to convert into full-time customers. Making confident decisions As companies grow, they all need to make complex decisions. With in-depth analysis of marketplace knowledge, industry, and customers, Big Data can help you make confident choices. Big Data gives you a complete overview of everything you need to know. With the help of this, you can launch your marketing campaign or launch a new product in the market, or make a focused decision to generate the highest ROI. Once you add machine learning and AI to the mix, your Big Data collections can form a neural network to help your AI suggest useful company changes. Optimizing and Understanding Business Processes Cloud computing and machine learning help you to stay ahead by identifying opportunities in your company’s practices. Big Data analytics can tell you if your email strategy is working even when your social media marketing isn’t gaining you any following. You can also check which parts of your company culture have the right impact and result in the desired turnover. The existing evidence can help you make quick decisions and ensure you spend more of your budget on things that help your business grow. Convergence of Big Data and AI Big Data and Artificial Intelligence have a synergistic relationship. Data powers AI. The constantly evolving data sets or Big Data makes it possible for machine learning applications to learn and acquire new skills. This is what they were built to do. Big Data’s role in AI is supplying algorithms with all the essential information for developing and improving features, pattern recognition capabilities. AI and machine learning use data that has been cleansed of duplicate and unnecessary data. This clean and high-quality big data is then utilized to create and train intelligent AI algorithms, neural networks, and predictive models. AI applications rarely stop working and learning. Once the “initial training” is done (initial training is preparing already collected data), they adjust their work as and when the data changes. This makes it necessary for data to be constantly collected. When it comes to businesses using this technology, AI helps them use Big Data for analytics by making advanced tools accessible and obtainable to help users gain insights that would otherwise have been hidden in the huge amount of data. Once firms and businesses gain a hold on using AI and Big Data, they can provide decision-makers with a clear understanding of factors that affect their businesses. Impact of AI on Big Data Analytics AI supports users in the Big Data cycle, including aggregation, storage, and retrieval of diverse data types from different data sources. This includes data management, context management, decision management, action management, and risk management. Big Data can help alert problems and help find new solutions and get ideas about any new prospects. With the amount of information stream that comes in, it can be difficult to determine what is important and what isn’t. This is where AI and machine learning come in. It can help identify unusual patterns in the processes, help in the analysis, and suggest further steps to be taken. It can also learn how users interact with analytics and learn subtle differences in meanings or context-specific nuances to understand numeric data sources. AI can also caution users about anomalies, unforeseen data patterns, monitoring events, and threats from system logs or social networking data. Application of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence After establishing how AI and Big Data work together, let us look at how some applications are benefitting from their synergy: Banking and financial sectors The banking and financial sectors apply these to monitor financial marketing activities. These institutions also use AI to keep an eye on any illegal trading activities. Trading data analytics are obtained for high-frequency trading, and decision making based on trading, risk analysis, and predictive analysis. It is also used for fraud warning and detection, archival and analysis of audit trails, reporting enterprise credit, customer data transformation, etc. Healthcare AI has simplified health data prescriptions and health analysis, thus benefitting healthcare providers from the large data pool. Hospitals are using millions of collected data that allow doctors to use evidence-based medicine. Chronic diseases can be tracked faster by AI. Manufacturing and supply chain AI and Big Data in manufacturing, production management, supply chain management and analysis, and customer satisfaction techniques are flawless. The quality of products is thus much better with higher energy efficiency, reliable increase in levels, and profit increase. Governments Governments worldwide use AI applications like facial recognition, vehicle recognition for traffic management, population demographics, financial classifications, energy explorations, environmental conservation, criminal investigations, and more. Other sectors that use AI are mainly retail, entertainment, education, and more. Conclusion According to Gartner’s predictions, artificial intelligence will replace one in five workers by 2022. Firms and businesses can no longer afford to avoid using artificial intelligence and Big Data in their day-to-day. Investments in AI and Big Data analysis will be beneficial for everyone. Data sets will increase in the future, and with it, its application and investment will grow over time. Human relevance will continue to decrease as time goes by. AI enables machine learning to be the future of the development of business technologies. It will automate data analysis and find new insights that were previously impossible to imagine by processing data manually. With machine learning, AI, and Big Data, we can redraw the way we approach everything else. Frequently Asked Questions Why does big data affect artificial intelligence? Big Data and AI customize business processes and make better-suited decisions for individual needs and expectations. This improves its efficiency of processes and decisions. Data has the potential to give insights into a variety of predicted behaviors and incidents. Is AI or big data better? AI becomes better as it is fed more and more information. This information is gathered from Big Data which helps companies understand their customers better. On the other hand, Big Data is useless if there is no AI to analyze it. Humans are not capable of analyzing the data on a large scale. Is AI used in big data? When the gathered Big Data is to be analyzed, AI steps in to do the job. Big Data makes use of AI. What is the future of AI in big data? AI’s ability to work so well with data analytics is the primary reason why AI and Big Data now seem inseparable. AI machine learning and deep learning are learning from every data input and using those inputs to generate new rules for future business analytics. { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [{ "@type": "Question", "name": "Why does big data affect artificial intelligence?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Big Data and AI customize business processes and make better-suited decisions for individual needs and expectations. This improves its efficiency of processes and decisions. 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