What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

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The definition of Business Intelligence (BI) can be quite complex, but in general, it is a process of transforming raw data into meaningful and insightful information that can help businesses make better decisions. BI involves using various tools and techniques to collect, analyze and report on data that is relevant to the organization’s operations.

Why is BI Important?

There are many reasons why businesses should invest in BI solutions. Some of the key benefits include:

  1. Increased Efficiency and Productivity – BI can help organizations become more efficient by streamlining their processes and making it easier to access the right information at the right time. This leads to improved productivity as employees are able to work faster and more effectively.
  2. Improved Business Decision-Making – BI solutions allow businesses to make better decisions by providing access to accurate and timely information. This is especially helpful for companies who want to implement a data-driven decision-making culture across their organization.
  3. Competitive Advantage – Businesses that know how to use the insights gained from BI analysis have a competitive advantage over organizations that do not use BI effectively.
  4. Improved Customer Experience – By providing customers with personalized content and recommendations, organisations can improve the customer experience.

There are various other benefits which BI tools can offer.

EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

The history of business intelligence (BI) is fraught with cases of missed opportunities and wrong turns. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that organizations began to fully appreciate the potential of BI, and started to invest in systems and tools to make better use of data.

One of the key turning points in the history of BI was the development of decision support systems (DSS), which helped business users make better decisions by providing them with access to data and analytics. In the late 1970s, DSS started to gain traction as a way to help managers make more informed decisions.

In the 1980s, business intelligence started to move away from decision support systems and towards management information systems (MIS). MIS reporting gave business users more flexible canned kind of document reports with input parameters, exporting and downloading capabilities to name a few.

In the 1990s, business intelligence became corporate information management as organizations started looking for ways to make better use of data from all over their enterprises. In the mid-2000s, business intelligence evolved into what is now known as decision management or business analytics as new technologies allowed business analysts to generate customized reports and analyses that they could then share across lines of business or within an organization. BI tools also started providing early warning indicators based on key performance metrics and external market trends. This shift represents a fundamental in how organizations can innovate and differentiate

In 2000’s self service BI products became famous and started maturing allowing simple drag drop interface to create analysis. Then lately there have been tools which are using Natural Language Processing (NLP) engines to allow ask questions from the data but with limited success, atleast as of now.

TYPES OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOLS

There are various kind of Business Intelligence tools which are there in the market.

There are open source Business Intelligence tools like Helical Insight, Jaspersoft, Pentaho etc. They generally have free community version and paid enterprise version but generally they are extremely cost competitive as compared to proprietary BI tools.

The second type of tool’s are licensed Business Intelligence tools. The popular ones among them are Tableau, Microsoft BI and SAS. They offer a wide range of features but come with a hefty price tag.

These BI tools can be deployed on premise or on cloud. There are certain BI products which

Then these BI tools can also offer in-memory mode or extract mode and the second mode is when they can run directly on the live data. When it is in-memory mode the entire data from the db can be loaded into the BI memory which gives very high performance but on the flip side the hardware requirement is very high. Whereas when querying the live data the hardware requirement is not high but it can give performance issues with more data.

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Helical Insight’s self-service capabilities is one to reckon with. It allows you to simply drag and drop columns, add filters, apply aggregate functions if required, and create reports and dashboards on the fly. For advanced users, the self-service component has ability to add javascript, HTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS3 and AJAX. These customizations allow you to create dynamic reports and dashboards. You can also add new charts inside the self-service component, add new kind of aggregate functions and customize it using our APIs.
Helical Insight’s self-service capabilities is one to reckon with. It allows you to simply drag and drop columns, add filters, apply aggregate functions if required, and create reports and dashboards on the fly. For advanced users, the self-service component has ability to add javascript, HTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS3 and AJAX. These customizations allow you to create dynamic reports and dashboards. You can also add new charts inside the self-service component, add new kind of aggregate functions and customize it using our APIs.
Helical Insight, via simple browser based interface of Canned Reporting module, also allows to create pixel perfect printer friendly document kind of reports also like Invoice, P&L Statement, Balance sheet etc.
Helical Insight, via simple browser based interface of Canned Reporting module, also allows to create pixel perfect printer friendly document kind of reports also like Invoice, P&L Statement, Balance sheet etc.
If you have a product, built on any platform like Dot Net or Java or PHP or Ruby, you can easily embed Helical Insight within it using iFrames or webservices, for quick value add through instant visualization of data.
If you have a product, built on any platform like Dot Net or Java or PHP or Ruby, you can easily embed Helical Insight within it using iFrames or webservices, for quick value add through instant visualization of data.
Being a 100% browser-based BI tool, you can connect with your database and analyse across any location and device. There is no need to download or install heavy memory-consuming developer tools – All you need is a Browser application! We are battle-tested on most of the commonly used browsers.
Being a 100% browser-based BI tool, you can connect with your database and analyse across any location and device. There is no need to download or install heavy memory-consuming developer tools – All you need is a Browser application! We are battle-tested on most of the commonly used browsers.
We have organization level security where the Superadmin can create, delete and modify roles. Dashboards and reports can be added to that organization. This ensures multitenancy.
We have organization level security where the Superadmin can create, delete and modify roles. Dashboards and reports can be added to that organization. This ensures multitenancy.
We have organization level security where the Superadmin can create, delete and modify roles. Dashboards and reports can be added to that organization. This ensures multitenancy.
We have organization level security where the Superadmin can create, delete and modify roles. Dashboards and reports can be added to that organization. This ensures multitenancy.
A first-of-its-kind Open-Source BI framework, Helical Insight is completely API-driven. This allows you to add functionalities, including but not limited to adding a new exporting type, new datasource type, core functionality expansion, new charting in adhoc etc., at any place whenever you wish, using your own in-house developers.
A first-of-its-kind Open-Source BI framework, Helical Insight is completely API-driven. This allows you to add functionalities, including but not limited to adding a new exporting type, new datasource type, core functionality expansion, new charting in adhoc etc., at any place whenever you wish, using your own in-house developers.
It handles huge volumes of data effectively. Caching, Pagination, Load-Balancing and In-Memory not only provides you with amazing experience, but also and does not burden the database server more than required. Further effective use of computing power gives best performance and complex calculations even on the big data even with smaller machines for your personal use. Filtering, Sorting, Cube Analysis, Inter Panel Communication on the dashboards all at lightning speed. Thereby, making best open-source Business Intelligence solution in the market.
It handles huge volumes of data effectively. Caching, Pagination, Load-Balancing and In-Memory not only provides you with amazing experience, but also and does not burden the database server more than required. Further effective use of computing power gives best performance and complex calculations even on the big data even with smaller machines for your personal use. Filtering, Sorting, Cube Analysis, Inter Panel Communication on the dashboards all at lightning speed. Thereby, making best open-source Business Intelligence solution in the market.
With advance NLP algorithm, business users simply ask questions like, “show me sales of last quarter”, “average monthly sales of my products”. Let the application give the power to users without knowledge of query language or underlying data architecture
With advance NLP algorithm, business users simply ask questions like, “show me sales of last quarter”, “average monthly sales of my products”. Let the application give the power to users without knowledge of query language or underlying data architecture
Our application is compatible with almost all databases, be it RDBMS, or columnar database, or even flat files like spreadsheets or csv files. You can even connect to your own custom database via JDBC connection. Further, our database connection can be switched dynamically based on logged in users or its organization or other parameters. So, all your clients can use the same reports and dashboards without worrying about any data security breech.
Our application is compatible with almost all databases, be it RDBMS, or columnar database, or even flat files like spreadsheets or csv files. You can even connect to your own custom database via JDBC connection. Further, our database connection can be switched dynamically based on logged in users or its organization or other parameters. So, all your clients can use the same reports and dashboards without worrying about any data security breech.
Our application can be installed on an in-house server where you have full control of your data and its security. Or on cloud where it is accessible to larger audience without overheads and maintenance of the servers. One solution that works for all.
Our application can be installed on an in-house server where you have full control of your data and its security. Or on cloud where it is accessible to larger audience without overheads and maintenance of the servers. One solution that works for all.
Different companies have different business processes that the existing BI tools do not encompass. Helical Insight permits you to design your own workflows and specify what functional module of BI gets triggered
Different companies have different business processes that the existing BI tools do not encompass. Helical Insight permits you to design your own workflows and specify what functional module of BI gets triggered