To succeed in the fast-moving world of business, today’s organizations must be data-driven and promote a data-driven culture. To do so, leaders need a modern business intelligence platform that helps everyone see and understand their data. This article will help you see and understand your data. So firstly, what is a business intelligence platform?
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What is a business intelligence platform?
A business intelligence platform is a piece of software that enables organizations to collect, comprehend, and analyze data from databases, emails, videos, survey results, and other sources, including:
- Gather Data: In order to comprehend and display what is happening, BI platforms need to compile data from all of these sources in one location. It integrates several data sources first, then cleans data and combines data. It is necessary to combine many data sets into a single usable and understandable data collection. BI tools should therefore assist you in managing your data in a safe and legal manner.
- Understand Data: A business intelligence platform will enable you to model and organize data, query data, and carry out exploratory data analysis. This will allow you to browse, organize, and query your data (EDA)
- Visualize Data: Once your data has been modeled, cleaned, and queried, BI solutions should make it simple to construct unique, dynamic dashboards so you can see what’s happening with it in real time.
- Democratized Data: A business intelligence platform’s primary output for your company should be the emergence of a culture of data democracy in which every employee has access to the information they require at the precise moment they require it in order to take better decisions more quickly. The flow of data has traditionally been managed by overworked data and IT teams, from gathering to comprehending to visualizing. These teams can concentrate on more crucial duties, including analysis and acting on insights, because BI technologies make these jobs simple (and even automatic, in some situations).
These data analyses offer real-time business intelligence on mobile, desktop, and other devices so that decision-makers may act on information to advance their organization. Users can customize dashboards, produce amazing data visualizations, generate scorecards, and assess them against key performance indicators using BI tools (KPIs).
Why does your company need business intelligence platforms?
Despite having a lot of data, modern businesses struggle to effectively use it. Business intelligence platforms let your business manage and comprehend what is happening with those gigabytes of data, which solves this challenge. Data then has new significance by assisting you.
Software for business analytics is just one component of business intelligence systems. They aid in the BI strategy of your company by making data access and analysis simpler. Data may be imported, cleaned, analyzed, and forecast using simple analytics platforms, but business intelligence systems are more flexible and dynamic and can develop with your BI plan.
Modern business intelligence tools, when properly integrated, enable the use of data within your organization. Business intelligence has always been primarily focused on finding better methods to use data, but business intelligence platforms significantly increase the effectiveness of this effort, creating a completely new relationship with data.
Best practices of BI platforms
Here are just a few examples of what BI software can actually do in the real world for your business:
- Show how the supply has changed over time.
- Sales and profit projections
- Examine the outcomes of marketing initiatives.
- Streamline reporting
- Distribute reports to stakeholders automatically.
- Utilize near-real-time functionality to visualize sales and inventory.
- Connect to cloud-based platforms from outside sources like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Create unique solutions with dashboards for internal or external use.
Key features of business intelligence platforms
There are a variety of open-source and commercial business intelligence platforms on the market with various user interfaces and functions. Each platform will, however, normally include some variation of the functions listed below.
1. Intelligent dashboards
One of the most often utilized components of a business intelligence platform is creating and modifying dashboards. Individuals can create and update modules, graphs, and charts very quickly. Dashboards may also be provided on separate, internal websites. You should pick a platform with self-service features to make it possible for everyone to access data, create their own analyses, and support the growth of an analytics culture within your business.
2. Visually intuitive analytics
Select visual analytics and business intelligence platforms that are simple to use, enable visual data exploration, and provide visual insights as you work. Your platform should also make it easy for you to present your findings visually, all from the same user-friendly interface and without having to switch between several tools for various sorts of analysis. Don’t merely observe a demo. Take the platform for a test drive by registering for a free trial. Test the tool’s processing speed and effectiveness by attempting to respond to several questions.
3. Strength to advance your BI strategy
Even the most potent BI reporting tool is meaningless if your data is difficult to connect to. No matter where your data is stored, the correct analytics platform delivers optimized native connectivity to it so you can perform your analysis more quickly. You should be able to access and analyze your data live on your platform without having to download it first. With little to no coding work on your part, you ought to be able to swiftly query your databases. Additionally, your BI platform should let you choose where to deploy your analytics: locally, in the cloud, or off-site. Instead of requiring you to make changes or purchase new products and upsetting your current data infrastructure, the platform should interact smoothly with your current data strategy. Additionally, it should be simple to integrate with enterprise applications and company portals so you can reach users wherever they are. This adaptability is essential when thinking about BI programs and selecting a BI platform. The total cost of ownership will increase if the tools are not adaptable.
4. Total cost of ownership is predictable
Open-source BI solutions can frequently be highly customized. Many businesses, particularly smaller ones, use open-source software to meet their demands for data mining and ad-hoc reporting. However, take into account the entire cost of ownership while comparing platforms. Don’t make a choice based just on the price. Make a thorough comparison. Include all the various extra parts you’d require for that “free” platform to function in your company setting in the now and the future. Free tools are anything but, and their combined costs can be quite high. To satisfy your enterprise-grade standards, they frequently require more equipment, personnel, and infrastructure. Although there are online tools to help you understand how to use open-source software, they won’t explain how to use the platform for the unique needs of your organization. To put it another way, an open-source solution might not be as adaptable as you need it to be as your company grows. On the other hand, expensive commercial BI products include resources, support, and built-in enterprise scalability.
5. Empowers users while maintaining data security
The ideal platform for your company should make it possible for everyone, regardless of skill level, to communicate with their data and take advantage of insights. By placing data at the center of everyone’s business choices, it aids organizations in developing a data culture. You must scale up the deployment of governed self-service analytics if you want to maximize the value of your data. You also need an analytics tool that the business adores and that IT can rely on if you want to empower the entire organization. The appropriate business intelligence software enables organizations to approach analytics in a business-led, IT-enabled manner. It makes it possible for IT to create a controlled and secure environment that safeguards data and guarantees its integrity without limiting business flexibility and innovation.
How to choose the right best business intelligence platforms for your company?
Pick a dependable partner for BI success.
Make sure to select a business whose primary goal is to enable people to be data-driven as you compare business intelligence tools. Try to respond to these inquiries:
- Has the business spent a lot of time developing its analytics platform?
- Does the business’s past suggest it will stay innovative?
- Does it place a high priority on the user experience to encourage consumer adoption?
In addition, remember to count on your peers’ expertise. Their fervor and enthusiasm are clear signs of how well the product has worked for them. Learn how they motivated their employees to use the platform, and then use that information to create your own successful path.
Select a cutting-edge platform that can accommodate your needs
Business intelligence solutions should evolve to keep up with new developments in technology and user creativity. In order to easily scale your platform as your business expands, you should do so. The best business intelligence platforms for your company should be adaptable, simple to use, and supportive of your company’s objectives.
As a result, with the proper BI platform, your business can gain a competitive advantage since your judgments are quick, accurate, and most crucially based on your company’s data – not anybody else’s.
