Business intelligence (**) is the collection of strategies and tools used to analyze business information. Business intelligence projects are significantly more effective when they combine external data sources with internal data sources for actionable insight.
Business analytics, also known as advanced analytics, is a term often used interchangeably with business intelligence. However, business analytics is a subset of business intelligence since business intelligence deals with strategies and tools while business analytics focuses more on methods. Business intelligence is descriptive while business analytics is more prescriptive, addressing a problem or business question.
Competitive intelligence is a subset of business intelligence. Competitive intelligence is the collection of data, tools, and processes for collecting, accessing, and analyzing business data on competitors. Competitive intelligence is often used to monitor differences in products.
Business Intelligence used in the techniques :
Measurement
Many business intelligence tools are used in measurement applications. They can take input data from sensors, CRM systems, web traffic, and more to measure KPIs. For example, solutions for a facilities team at a large manufacturing company might include sensors to measure the temperature of key equipment to optimize maintenance schedules.
Analytics
Analytics is the study of data to find meaningful trends and insights. This is a very popular application of business intelligence tools since it allows businesses to deeply understand their data and drive value with data-driven decisions. For example, a marketing organization could use analytics to determine the customer segments most likely to convert to a new customer.
Reporting
Report generation is a standard application of business intelligence software. ** products can now seamlessly generate regular reports for internal stakeholders, automate critical tasks for analysts, and replace the need for spreadsheets and word-processing programs.
For example, a sales operations analyst might use the tool to produce a weekly report for her manager detailing last week’* sales by geographical region—a task that took far more effort to do manually. With an advanced reporting tool, the effort required to create such a report decreases significantly. In some cases, business intelligence tools can automate the reporting process entirely.
