Is It Time for a Business Intelligence Solution?

There was a time when data, especially “good” data, was hard to come by. These days with many years of structured data from all the digital transformation we have been going through, we are awash in data. The question now is, how can we take full advantage of this intellectual property to make better and new decisions?

Very few employees, around 30% are estimated  (1), have in their hands the powerful business intelligence (BI) tools of today to help them make decisions. While 30% may seem high, one could argue that having access to dashboards, advanced reports, and even big-screen TVs mounted to the wall can put information in the hands of those who need to make decisions.

What are BI tools?

There is certainly a wide band between what a BI tool is and what the traditional reporting solution looks like. If a solution is simply a list of records, printed or otherwise, then most likely it is not a BI solution. Not to say that these solutions do not have value to the business. If a list of records and information suits the needs of the decision makers, then the solution has value. If nothing more sophisticated is needed, then stay in place.

A few select BI tools that are on the market today are: Power BI by Microsoft, Cognos and watsonxBI by IBM, Tableau, Domo, and Sisense.

BI tools are those that can draw in data from numerous and disparate sources and have built-in functions to assist the user in forming visualizations of insights buried deep in the data. The previous generation of BI tools were complex, requiring deep skills and time to dig the gold out of the data. This left the realm of using BI tools to the IT or analyst department.

Modern BI tools have come a long way in assisting the user to navigate the data streams, and with the advent of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, gone are the days of manually interpreting data. A user can verbally ask a question (think, “prompting”) and the tool will generate a plethora of choices and view of the data sets.

Further, gone are the days where management needs to put in a request (at the last minute before the audit of course) to have a report constructed, tested, then published. With modern BI tools, people at all levels of the organization, given proper data security/access protocols, can develop their own BI products with only a little up-front training. Yes, there are instances where sophisticated logic is needed to produce useful information, but those situations are only a small percentage of typical data discovery needs.

What does the use of BI tools look like for the “average” employee?

Not quite sure what an “average” employee looks like, but let’s assume that they are a person in a position where they need to make decisions daily, and there are data sets they could rely upon to give them insight to make those decisions.

A company can have many, many sources of data, spread out across the enterprise. Some are operational and stored in systems on the production floor. Some are more business transactional and may be in the on-prem data center. Other data may be out in the cloud and perhaps related to customer satisfaction or marketing. Yet other valuable sources of data can be stored in spreadsheets sitting on employees’ computers. One could argue that this data may have the most value to a company, and yet it is the least accessible.

The average employee who is empowered with modern BI tools may have access to only a part of the tool set to meet their needs. Certainly, they will be limited by security configurations to only that corporate data they need access to in their context. If they have some local data hidden in spreadsheets, they will have an opportunity to import that data into their workspace. Now they can correlate data sets using these BI tools in a manner that they couldn’t just a few years ago.

Given the many different mechanisms available to communicate, these empowered users can efficiently and securely share their findings with others. No more passing printed reports or emails with attachments. Users can manage their own dashboards and share what they have created.

What about more advanced users or analysts?

For the analysts who may have far more advanced needs, BI tools are certainly not lacking in feature/functionality. As stated earlier, BI tools of the past were difficult to operate, often requiring a degree of “coding” to get them to deliver. Modern BI tools have become even more powerful, all the while becoming easier to operate.

Taking advantage of the generative nature of AI, and the notion of “prompt engineering,” BI tools have no shortage of ways to look at data. Advanced users can ask questions about data sets and the BI tool returns many different levels of responses… each with a confidence level for the user to then decide if the answer is reasonable.

For example: With a data set related to global sales, annual weather patterns, and the New York Stock Exchange, the advanced user could ask the simple question, “Is there any correlation between these different sources of data?” The returned results can be fascinating!

For the team of report writers and analysts who have cut their teeth on tools such as Crystal Reports, Actuate, or even open-source tools like BIRT, having access to a new breed of tools may come with some trepidation. Leveraging the vast knowledge that these folks have of not only the operations of the company, but also their logic and reporting structure skills, the company is already starting in the right direction to further digitally transform by adopting BI tools.

Ignore the hype… seek the business value

As we stated earlier, if a list of records and information is enough for the company to make good decisions, then there is no need to look further. However, if the management of the company, or even the line employees have an inkling that there are insights buried in all the different sets of data, then an investment in a BI tool set may be in order. It is very common for tools such as these to draw out trends and relationships, along with confidence levels, that had yet to be discovered using tools of the past. The gold is in the data, you just need the tools to go get it.

Wrap up

TRM has been working with clients for many years to not only protect their data, but to also ensure its validity using solutions such as Maximo. We have helped clients use this data via reports and analysis using traditional reports and methods, so we know where you are starting from. TRM is also working with IBM directly to develop ML/AI tools that can analyze work order and other transactional data and make suggestions and even corrections.

Contact us to see how we might help you make a lead in your digital transformation progress by adopting a BI solution.

“IBM.” WatsonX BI Assistant. IBM, n.d. Web. 16 July 2024. https://www.ibm.com/blog/announcement/watsonx-bi-assistant/.

1 -“BI Adoption Poised to Break Through Barrier, Finally.” TechTarget, n.d. Web. 16 July 2024. https://www.techtarget.com/searchbusinessanalytics/news/365530077/BI-adoption-poised-to-break-through-barrier-finally

2 – “Top Business Intelligence Tools.” DataCamp, n.d. Web. 16 July 2024. https://www.datacamp.com/blog/top-business-intelligence-tools.