Key advantages of improvement of processes of a business intelligence

According to the manager on management of programs for a business intelligence of IDC European Software and Services Alice Vudvard, according to data of one of the last polls of the European managers, key advantages of improvement of processes of a business intelligence are called higher accuracy of the made decisions (33% of respondents) and the increased effectiveness of joint work of divisions (34%) and also standardization of procedures of the business analysis and reporting (28%) and company competitiveness growth (39%). And the share of answers with a low estimate of importance of a business intelligence by one criterion does not exceed 5%.^[1]

Alice Vudvard also selected six areas where application of BI solutions can be the most perspective today. First of all, using solutions which provide search of new market opportunities or expansion of these opportunities at the expense of the available customer bases it is possible to achieve increase in revenues of the company. Besides, allowing to study more in details financial receipts and to manage debt, the business intelligence helps to dispose more reasonablly of company funds and by that promotes increase in cash flows. The third field of use of a business intelligence is directed to decrease in operating costs of business that in the conditions of unstable economy is one of the most effective management tools the company. One more direction belongs to performance improvement of work of employees — using a business intelligence it is possible to teach them to use of the correct means for achievement of effective objectives. In addition BI solutions help to hold the customer base, providing monitoring of customer needs (that they prefer to buy and why) and monitoring changes which can promote increase in business. And at last, the last area is connected with increase in flexibility and adaptivity of business, expansion of its capability to react to changes.

Pervasive (i.e. reaching the most deep processes) business analysts other research IDC which was also provided during the forum is devoted to studying of the concept. The research covered 1141 companies worldwide, and its results show interrelations of different indicators of organization activity (see fig. 1). In an upper number of the table there are factors most of which are associated with the successful pervasive business analysis — in particular, the number of "advanced" users, number of data domains, etc. Factors which can influence horizontal factors are in vertical direction located and if the rectangle which is on their intersection is colored in yellow color, it means that between these two variables there is statistically significant correlation. And therefore, say, if the company wants to increase the number of experienced users, then it can achieve at the expense of two factors: increases in their qualification by training and quality improvement of design. And here improvement of management in this case has no value.

The most interesting illustration of influence of independent factors on a pervasive business intelligence is the quality of design (see fig. 2). On this scheme potential "reefs" and possible methods of their overcoming for the main cases of failure of the BI project are visually provided. In this regard there can be interesting an advice given by Alice Vudvard and which is that the project needs to appropriate some big name like Magellana Strait or Pole star, but not to call it just the project on creation of the data warehouse. In that case, if it also fails, it can be begun easily again, but under other name. It will allow to avoid excess questions from the management.

As for perspectives of development of a business intelligence on the near-term outlook, according to the director of business development of SAP EMEA Timo Elliott, it is possible to observe some of very interesting trends in this area today. The first direction is connected with distribution of calculations in RAM that is caused by rapid growth of information volumes. An opportunity for this purpose is as modern technologies provide access rate to information in RAM in 1 million times quicker, than access rate to this information which is stored on a disk. It is promoted also by the fact that for the last ten years the cost of RAM fell by 100 times (in 2000 1 MB of memory cost 1 dollars, and today — 1 cent, and this digit continues to fall).

Other trend — reliability augmentation of information, need to provide panoramic data view from different sources. Now problems with quality of data are shown everywhere, and as Timo Elliott noted, many companies do not even represent where there can be these problems. Moreover, everything more is required to the companies access not only to structured data, but also to the text. So demand for possibilities of processing of text unstructured data grows, and in it the following trend consists in development of a business intelligence.

One more direction — expansion of opportunities of use of the most different mobile devices. Therefore modern BI solutions should be developed taking into account the following main principles: ensuring support of bigger number of users, a possibility of frequent use and providing access in any place. Use of mobile devices with the touch screen allows to make information of more "notable" for end users, and heads of the companies, being in business trips or on a holiday, can instantly get access to business information interesting them and key performance indicators.

Besides, Timo Elliott emphasized, in a business intelligence there are two parties: technical and business. For the last 50 years business need for better information did not change, and here that significantly changed during this time — so it is technologies using which the business intelligence is implemented. These technologies, on the one hand, simplify an information access, but at the same time often complicate all process. For example, today supply chains became more difficult in comparison with what was 50 years ago. And it became possible exactly thanks to development of technologies which allow to maintain such complexity now.

In addition to these trends Alice Vudvort noted that she gains the importance the social information appearing when using such popular social networks today as Twitter and Facebook. And it is important as information which people exchange in these networks is available to all. So the companies which are engaged in any business can always see responses about the goods created by them or the provided services. In such conditions of the business analyst should arrange approach to the analysis of this information, provide a uniform look that now is not reached in many industries where separate approach to the analysis of similar information is used.

And at last, according to Alice Vudvort, it is possible to expect emergence of BI solutions for the companies of small and medium business in the nearest future. "Often the companies resort to tools for information analysis only when they have any difficulties. Problems which SMB companies, inherently just the same, as well as at large business face. However unlike them they do not locate sufficient means to keep necessary staff of the qualified IT specialists. And therefore BI solutions for SMB should be such with which it would be simple to work and which would not require passing of additional training of employees" — she told.