Albatross sometimes sleep while they're flying.
They don't see what's ahead of them.

Goldfish have a memory span of 3 seconds.
They can't even see the past, much less the future.

You adjust your problem into actionable solution by implementing some proven business intelligence and analytical software.

The globe is in the middle of a hastily moving river of technology and business innovations that is transforming the global business landscape. The globe has become one village where we observe the business people working and gathering information through different means, laptop computers connected to wireless networks and internet, cellular phones, hybrid handheld devices … all merged in order to share valuable data to form a specific structure of knowledge and communication patterns.

In our business world, all organizations rely on Information Technology (IT) that helps gather, process, manipulate, and organize data. This management of information eases the analysis of data in companies and facilitates the path to a successful decision making process. Information technologies and systems are revolutionizing the operation of the business market world. How fast we can gather data, how well we can manage the information and how quick we take decisions according to the package we got would result in Business Intelligence.

Business Intelligence is the use of an organization’s different data to provide meaningful information and analysis to employees, customers, suppliers, and partners for more effective decision making. The core potential of business intelligence assemble information from open resources and databases, measure it, give users access to it, and share information changes; taking into consideration the ethical issues in gathering and sharing the information.

Companies are all successful in their fields, but we live in a competitive world where firms work hard to keep, attract and grow customers, thus competition has to be accompanied with an added value that will differentiate one company from the other. The success of firms today and in the future depends on their ability to operate globally. Information systems provide the communication and analytic power that firms need to conduct trade and manage business on a global scale. There are many factors that contribute to this success, controllable and incontrollable factors. From the uncontrollable factors, we take into account the external environment which must be identified, evaluated, and ready to react to such forces outside the company that may affect its operations, we mention some of those factors: political and legal, ethical, social, technological, and economic factors. If these external factors of the organization were not forecasted or constrained, running the business will definitely be severe. From here, we can realize how important and essential the existence of information in the business world is. Moreover, the existence of information is invaluable until a useful business intelligence system is set.

The usage of the available data should follow a specific process. The Business intelligence process goes through 5 stages:

1- Data sourcing: extracting information
2- Data analysis: data mining using analysis techniques
3- Situation awareness: linking the facts and filtering information
4- Risk assessment: identify decision based on expectation of risk or reward
5- Decision support: make use of software to identify the decision and plan.

Information system help managers, make better decisions and improve the execution of the business process.

There are 5 key management challenges to building and using Business Intelligence information system:
- obtaining business value from information system
- providing appropriate complementary assets to use information technology effectively
- understanding the system requirements of a global business environment
- creating an information technology infrastructure that is flexible enough to support changing organizational goals
- designing systems that people can control, understand and use in a socially and ethically responsibility manner

Business Intelligence deals with Finance, Accounts, Purchase, Production, Sales, Quality, Service…and much much more

.

It solves the issues like: what is the net income, expenses, gross profit, and net profit for this quarter, year? What is the sales amount this month and what is the outstanding pending payment? Who is the vendor to be contacted to purchase products? How many products are manufactured in each production unit today, weekly, and monthly? How many products have been sold in each area today, weekly, monthly? How many products have been defective today, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly? Are the customers satisfied with the quality?

At each level of the organization, business intelligence deals with the major function areas of the business. Sales and marketing systems help the firm identify customers for the firm’s products or services, develop products and services to meet customers’ needs, promote the products and services, sell the products and services, and provide ongoing customer support. Manufacturing and production systems deal with the planning, development, and production of products and services, and controlling the flow of production. Finance and accounting systems keep track of the firm’s financial assets and fund flows. Human resources systems maintain employee skills, job performance, and training; and support planning for employee compensation and career development.

Business Intelligence applications, which are based on Business Intelligence Models, are created by Business Intelligence software which provides the cumulative details about suppliers, customers, internal activities, business to business transactions to the managers or whoever needs it to take better corporate decisions

.

Many business questions or situations need to be analyzed in order to achieve the target of an enterprise with the help of several managers or executives in each cadre.

Specific hardware and software are used to implement the work of Business Intelligence, examples of such software:
- Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) , it is a portfolio of technology and applications that provides the industry’s first integrated, end-to-end Enterprise Performance Management System, including category-leading financial performance management applications, operational BI applications, BI foundation and tools, and data warehousing.
- SAS is in business intelligence and predictive analytics software; helps manage performance by transforming data into predictive insights having many products such as: Activity-Based Management, Analytics, Anti-Money Laundering, Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Mgmt., Data Integration & ETL, Financial Intelligence/BPM, IT Management, Merchandise Planning, Performance Management, Risk Management, Service Intelligence , Supplier Intelligence

Managers and business firms invest in information technology and systems because they provide real economic value to the business. The decision to build an information system assumes that the returns on this investment will be superior to the others investments in buildings, machines, or other assets. These superior returns will be expressed as increase in productivity, as increase in revenues, thus firm’s stock market value and even on a long term strategic positioning of the company in the market.
Although computer systems have been sources of efficiency and wealth, they have Computer errors can cause serious harm to individuals and organizations, and existing laws and social practices are often unable to establish liability and accountability for these problems. Less serious errors are often attributable to poor data quality, which can cause disruptions and losses for businesses. Jobs can be lost when computers replace workers or tasks become unnecessary in reengineered business be aggravate socioeconomic disparities among opportunities for computer crime and computer abuse. Computers can also create health problems such as repetitive stress injury, computer vision syndrome, and techno-stress.

The internet’s global reach and connectivity, scalability, distributed design, universal standards, richness, and interactivity have made it the primary infrastructure for electronic business and electronic commerce. Challenges posed by networking and the internet loss of management control over information systems; the need for organizational change; and the difficulty of ensuring infrastructure scalability and reliability. Solutions include developing a strategic networking plan and carefully managing the business and organizational changes associated with intensive networking and the internet.

With data concentrated into electronic form and many procedures invisible through automation, computerized information systems are vulnerable to destruction, misuse, fraud, and hardware or software failure. Companies are using the Internet with no exception to any company, because those who are willing to survive in this competitive market are obliged to be connected to the internet. From here, they are all designed to be an open system vulnerable to actions from outsiders. Hackers can unleash denial of service attacks and penetrate corporate networks to cause serious system disruptions. Wi-Fi networks can easily be penetrated by intruders using sniffer programs to obtain an address to access the resources of the network. Computer viruses and worms can spread rampantly from system to system, clogging computer memory or destroying programs and data. Software presents problems because software bugs may be impossible to eliminate and because software vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers and malicious software. Security and controlling measures should be taken so that the information is safe, maintained and stored.

The main management challenges posed by the ethical and social impact of information systems are the need to understand the moral risks of new technology and the difficulty of establishing corporate ethics policies that address information system issues. Corporations should develop a corporate ethics policy statement to guide individuals and to encourage appropriate decision making. The policy statements should include: individual information rights, property rights of how to use software, system quality in which methodologies are identified and quality standards are to be achieved, quality of life and accountability control to clarify responsibility.

Business Intelligence programs is a necessity in order to achieve effective results in organizations, it ensures future success. Unlike the past, organizations didn't use to rely on its information systems; nowadays, the world is in a rapid nonstop growth and progress. Changes happen every minute, and organizations are obliged to respond to these changes, an active management should be ready for new applications and share of data flow, storage and process. Workgroup is very crucial; with no collaboration individuals will keep information for them and thus decrease the organization’s productivity and performance. Both small and large organizations need to have business intelligence systems allowing them share data and align actions…Access and Excel can benefit the small organizations but definitely not large multinational companies. That’s why large companies invest a lot in their information system and employ not only large capital but as well human resources in order to operate the system, without forgetting that human resources is most important factor that lead the information system. The ability to get the right information to the right people at the right time is more important than ever.

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