Business Intelligence Systems - The Old and the New

Since its development and inception, the many versions of business intelligence systems Victoria have been a boon to the many organizations and companies that employ them. In the past, companies deployed expensive BI (business intelligence) solutions just to say that they have them.

However, most of them were not really designed with the business end user in mind. Making the software intuitive to use (and adopted by the business people who need the information in making the best decisions) is the main reason why BI projects usually succeed.

Some history

In the early days of business intelligence, the assembly is more on historical data presented in reports, dashboards, and scorecards to make it analyzable. A special staff, including senior executives, accesses the information they need to do a strategic course of their business.

In time, they were able to apply it to data warehousing, visualization and analytical capabilities to their operational needs. Soon, the technology was used to assist managers make tactical decisions on their business units.

However, the data needs of the new BI software were different from those of the old BI, needing different visualization and analytic tools. The main differences are rooted in the purposes of each system, including the number and types of users of each.

The older system

Old BI looked to the past to understand how the business performed and analyze what to improve in future business performance. The reliance is more on data stored in formatted business records in data warehouses, or from various groups and company departments including those from vendors or partners outside of the organization.

The user group for the old BI was mostly small and high-level (business analysts and financial professionals, including the company executives and senior managers). Their decision had long-term focus on the company’s business plans and was not really time-critical set against the daily operations of the company.

New business needs

The new business intelligence systems Victoria focuses on the day-to-day company operations and is used by a wide group of line management personnel who make the decisions driving the current performances of their units. It implicates the use of several application types and the decisions the users make.

In addition, it implies how the business applies those decisions on the number and types of users the system must serve. Another implication is how the BI system presents and analyzes data.

The new system assembles data as it happen, reports on them and analyzes them. The reliance is more on the current transactional information rather than old historical data. In many ways, the new BI systems also performs reporting and analysis differently than traditional systems.

More differences

Although both systems are collaborative in decision-making, the latency of the old system is now unacceptable in environments where decisions may affect the daily business operations. The new process has to keep moving at a fast, steady pace from an assembly of huge data volumes, and analyze and present them in ways accessible to many types of users.

These users may have lower skills levels but they need to access, absorb and act on the information to make operational decisions immediately. Many organizations are now employing the new business intelligence systems Victoria.