Business Intelligence Technologies Overview

With the advancement of technology, it is becoming easier for people to obtain a large amount of data. Therefore, the technical requirements for analyzing data are constantly increasing. This is the opportunity for the creation and development of Business Intelligence Technologies. This article will systematically introduce the definition of BI technology, and the technology list and provide technology examples and tool recommendations.

BI Technology Meaning

Before we understand what business intelligence technology is, it is always good to ensure that we have an overall understanding of Business Intelligence(BI). If you have never heard of BI, I suggest you read these two articles, one on BI and analytics and one on BI reporting, to build your background knowledge.

Let us enter the topic and define what BI technology is. BI technology is a series of technologies that can handle a large amount of structured and sometimes unstructured data. Their purpose is to help identify, develop, and otherwise tap the value of big data and create opportunities for new strategic businesses.

Business Intelligence Technologies Lists(with Examples)

Specific business intelligence technologies may include:

• Ad hoc analysis
• Data querying & discovery
• Data warehouse
• Enterprise Reporting
• Data visualization
• Dashboards

Now let’s take some critical BI technologies components as examples and explain them one by one. Also, I will give you some samples on dashboards, ad-hoc analysis, and enterprise reporting to help to understand.

Data Warehouse

The data warehouse is a core component of business intelligence technologies. It is a central store to integrate data accumulated from a wide range of sources within a company. The data stored in the data warehouse is from various operational systems, such as marketing, sales, and so forth. There are two approaches often mentioned to build a data warehouse system, respectively ETL（Extract, Transform, Load）and ELT（Extract, Load, Transform）. The main goal of the data warehouse is to centralize and organize the data so that it is easier to understand.

Thus, business intelligence lies on the top of the data warehouse, fulfills the query, and analyzes and visualizes stages.

Data Querying & Discovery

Data Discovery and Query are technologies that allow users to abstract and retrieve records from a data warehouse. Well, these two terms related to BI technology are two connected but different processes. In short, data discovery is the process of collecting various data and combining them into one, and then you can construct queries to help you find “needles” in the ocean of data.

Dashboard

The dashboard is a BI visualization technology that delivers KPIs and critical data in one informative and easy-to-understand interface. Often, dashboards are rich in graphics and visual representations. Dashboards are an essential part of most BI software platforms and are widely used in workplaces.

Ad hoc Analytics

Ad hoc analysis is a process designed to answer an ad-hoc business question. What makes ad hoc analysis different from standard reports is that ad hoc report is designed for one-time use. As a result, a distinguishing feature of ad hoc reports is that they are highly customized. That’s where BI technology comes in. Business intelligence enables anyone within an organization to answer specific business questions and present that data in a visual format by themselves and without relying on IT personnel.

Enterprise Reporting

Reporting is a feature that business intelligence technologies can realize. It presents data compressed and organized, making complex information easy to digest and understand. Enterprise reporting is also easy to understand. It is extracting, processing, organizing, analyzing, displaying, and reporting company data. The difference between enterprise reporting and ad-hoc analysis is the regularity. Enterprise reporting is viewed as a regular provision of information about the business.

Data Visualization

Data visualization is the graphical representation of data, and it is one of the most critical components of business intelligence technologies. Analysts can use visual elements like charts, graphs, and maps to illustrate trends, outliers, and patterns.

Business Intelligence Technology Tool

BI software plays an essential role in the business area. Here I list some previous articles for your appetite. 

• Top 10 Free and Open Source BI Tools
• Top 6 BI Tools Comparison 
• BI Visualization Tool

Meanwhile, for newbies to start, I highly recommend FineBI， FineBI is a modern big data analytics & BI software designed for everyone who needs data analysis. Everyone of any level can use FineBI to easily establish professional BI dashboards, perform self-service data analysis, gain useful insights, and thus drive your business forward.

Through simple operations like drag-and-drop, you can create professional dashboards without difficulty!

FineBI provides a variety of self-developed HTML5 charts (including histograms, line charts, radar charts, scatter charts, and boxplots), with excellent 3D dynamic effects. You can use lots of pre-built templates to create dashboards and reports promptly.

FineBI is free without time or feature limits for personal use. For enterprises, it offers a quote-based plan that charges according to different situations. In a word, FineBI is price-friendly to all customers! Why not try it now?

Conclusion of Business Intelligence Technologies

In this article, we talk about what is business intelligence technologies, and the list of BI technologies. Among them, we launched a more detailed discussion on data warehouse, data query and discovery, dashboard, ad-hoc analytics, enterprise reporting, and data visualization. Finally, we recommend FineBI as a BI and reporting tool to help you make progress in business competition.