A Business Intelligence Application is an interactive tool for making business decisions with documented justifications. Real data assembled in a clear and understandable way can tell a very different story from your gut feeling. The story your gut is telling you could be making you much too comfortable in your job and causing you to make bad decisions. When the environment around you is changing, you might not even know it.
Using a well-designed Business Intelligence Application with correctly displayed data can move the process from the gut to the brain, which copes with change quicker—especially when accompanied by digestible, relevant data.
So, the problem is, how do you build a Business Intelligence Application to help you make the best decisions? The solution lies in the architecture and development process of a Business Intelligence Application.
In this post, we will approach the problem by addressing the following key points:
1. What a BI application is, and what it does
2. The advantages of making decisions using BI applications
3. How business intelligence improves business performance
4. How analytical tools improve the effectiveness of decision-making in business process
5. The five steps to building smart BI systems
A Business Intelligence Application is a collection of analytics capabilities and dashboards constructed for the audience you are trying to reach. It includes navigation, selectable interactions, and workflow. Therefore, the definition, design, and construction of the BI Application will vary by audience and need.
An effective decision using business intelligence is a decision that:
Note: A data-driven organization consistently uses data in decision-making processes at every level of the organization. A well-designed BI application that gets to the heart of what the business does and needs to do can quickly tear down cultural and organizational barriers to adopting a data-driven business environment.
The main advantages of BI are having a documented justification for decisions and basing decisions on real data that can tell a very different story from gut feeling. Gut feelings often rely on a comfort level that is resistant to positive change.
Information is power, and the power of BI is how it focuses attention on what needs to be measured and acted upon. Specifically:
Looking at past performance and future performance predictions with the goal of using present decisions to shape a better future is analogous to boating:
Both outlooks involve a continuum of vision, collaboration, the experience of the past, and even a model for the future to help you make effective decisions. That is precisely how analytical tools work.
The requirements are based on the "what":
You need to have a collaborative design process that involves the user community. This helps you to determine how the information is to be displayed and interacted with. For example, defining KPIs is essential, but how they will be laid out on the dashboard is a whole different process.
The Kash Tech approach to user-centric design--the "Art of the Possible"
Based on the requirements definition and some initial data, Kash Tech begins by sketching wireframes through Q&A sessions with the client's project Champion and 1-3 other users.
That collaboration results in faster adoption because users are involved from the beginning, and there is less development time, hence, fewer iterations. With Kash Tech's "Art of the Possible" approach, teams go through homework at the beginning.
Also, developers are shown how to effectively implement the methodology of producing dashboard designs based on the answers to the following basic questions:
The component layout and nature of a dashboard are determined by the above inquiries. The user-interface design is based on three approaches: (1) can the user interact with the dashboard? (2) can the user click on it to display something else? (3) or is the dashboard just static?
The goal is also to train the user.
Dashboard visualizations & calculations tell the story in the right order to the appropriate user. More information is shown as the user scrolls down the screen. This also educates the user to see data in a consistent way.
The agile delivery model elicits feedback from the client during every step along the way. This is typically every two weeks in a process known as sprints, where the client sees and gives feedback on the evolving end product. When one sprint is completed, updates and changes can be completed in subsequent iterations. So, the agile delivery model saves time and keeps the client invested in the end product.
User interface and experience standards must be agreed upon in advance. Those standards include client branding, preferred theme colors, and text fonts. Also, factors in the dashboard navigation, layout, and menu presentations need to be decided before serious design begins.
The Technopedia definition of DataOps is as follows:
"The DataOps approach seeks to apply the principles of agile software development and DevOps (combining development and operations) to data analytics, to break down silos and promote efficient, streamlined data handling across many segments."
In BI applications, DataOps is the process of creating the data behind the applications and then going about maintaining and adding to it.
Take the first steps to develop a robust business intelligence system that enables better processes, decision-making, and accelerated business growth by downloading the eBook, "10 Steps to Successfully Democratizing Your Company Data."