InetSoft Articles & Resources: Business Intelligence Planning
Planning a business intelligence project? InetSoft offers an easier to use, easier to deploy BI application that can be embedded in another application or function standalone. View a demo, try interactive examples, and read articles below for more information.
Operational Business Intelligence - InetSoft focuses on operational BI through an intuitive self-service user interface that facilitates the dissemination of information, and institutes accurate and timely decision making...
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Click this screenshot to view a two-minute demo and get an overview of what InetSoft’s BI dashboard reporting software, Style Intelligence, can do and how easy it is to use. |
Operational Business Intelligence for a Credit Operations Analyst - Operational business intelligence for a Credit Operations Analyst involves using data and analytics to gain insights and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of credit-related operations within an organization. Here are some examples of operational business intelligence initiatives that a Credit Operations Analyst may undertake: Credit Application Processing Time: Analyzing the time taken to process credit applications can help identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the credit approval process. By tracking and measuring the processing time, the analyst can identify areas where the process can be streamlined, such as automating certain steps, reallocating resources, or improving communication channels. Credit Approval Rate: Monitoring the credit approval rate helps evaluate the effectiveness of credit risk assessment and decision-making processes. The analyst can identify factors that contribute to higher rejection rates, such as inconsistent credit policies, inadequate underwriting criteria, or incomplete documentation. This analysis enables them to recommend improvements to enhance the approval rate without compromising risk management...
Operational Decision Management - Now let’s talk about operational decision management. This is based on what we know for sure, so our policies, our regulations, the things that we’ve always done as a business. It could be based on internal data or external data, but it’s based on things that we know to be true. And then on the right, we have analytical decision management. These are based on things that we can predict. So I don’t know for sure if you’re going to default on a loan or if you’re going to commit some fraud, but I can devise models that will tell me what the probability that you’re going to default on a loan or that you’re going to take me up on my next marketing offer. So I’ve got, you know, things that we know for sure on the left and things that we can predict on the right. These are both being fed from all the data that I’ve got available to me, and they’re creating a decision service. And this decision service can then be called from any process from any application to be reused across the enterprise. So this now becomes an enterprise asset, something of real importance to the enterprise. And that’s why I brought up that fact of governance because I need to have a very easy to use governance capability for this decision service or else this decision service cannot be a true enterprise asset. So we go to the next slide, this is a really nice, interesting example from the a university hospital. They needed a BI system when they admitted patients to try to identify what the potential rare diseases were that those patients might have. And these diseases are so rare that a single doctor may only see this disease once or never in his or her career...
Orion Business Intelligence Alternative - Are you looking for a good alternative to Yardi Orion Business Intelligence? InetSoft's pioneering dashboard reporting application produces great-looking web-based dashboards with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop designer. Get cloud-flexibilty for your deployment. Minimize costs with a small-footprint solution. Maximize self-service for all types of users. No dedicated BI developer required. View a demo and try interactive examples...
Our Comparison of BI Tools - There are many different tools for BI on the market today, and they each has their own strengths and weaknesses. At InetSoft, we did our own analysis in which we compared our flagship BI software, Style Intelligence, against eight other prominent BI tools across eleven different criteria...
Own-hosted Business Intelligence - Looking for a good self hosted business intelligence? Unlike many other modern BI providers, InetSoft's server-based solution is designed to be hosted wherever you want it. You are free to choose whichever cloud computing service or install the application in your own network. The pioneering dashboard reporting tool makes producing great-looking web-based reports and dashboards easy with a drag-and-drop designer and the ability to connect to all your data sources, on premise or in the cloud. Maximize self-service for all types of users. No dedicated BI developer required. View a demo and try interactive examples. ..
Path to Business Agility Success - This is the path to business agility success. You still have to plan. I’m sorry there’s no automated planning technology out there that I think can really do it. You have to plan out where you are now and where you want to get to. The automation processing a lot of times is being able to go out and discover what is being consumed in your company now, how it’s being consumed, how it’s communicated, and how it’s going to be managed. What systems should be automated to provide you with time and money to concentrate on new capabilities. Again, don’t forget, you have got key issues about security, privacy, and compliance that have to be addressed. Those are the three obstacles to any new implementation and before you start automating, even things like you know logons and passwords, a lot of this can be automated, but you can’t forget about the security privacy and compliance pieces. Senior management has to know what’s going on. They want to understand what this business decision making and digital thinking, digital processing, business intelligence is all about and as you said, Michelle, we got to think mobile. Companies don’t just act in anyone location anymore...
Performance Dashboard Application - Looking for a business performance dashboard for tracking KPIs and managing performance? Do you want a solution that is quick to deploy and easy to use? Need a dashboard application that is easily adapted to changing data & business needs? Choose Style Intelligence from InetSoft...
Performance Management System Definition - A performance management system is an informational system that helps ensure that organizational goals are being met efficiently and effectively. The focus can range from organizational goals all the way down to individual employee performance on individual projects. A performance management system usually tracks key performance indicators (KPIs) through dashboards, reports, and scorecards...
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“Flexible product with great training and support. The product has been very useful for quickly creating dashboards and data views. Support and training has always been available to us and quick to respond.
- George R, Information Technology Specialist at Sonepar USA
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Popular Business Intelligence Tool - Looking for a cool business intelligence tool? InetSoft is a pioneer in dashboard reporting making possible the easy creation of great-looking analytics. View a demo and try interactive examples...
Portal Embedded Enterprise Business Intelligence - Looking for a good enterprise business intelligence portal solution? InetSoft is a pioneer in self-service BI with a very integratable platform. View a demo and try interactive examples...
Popular Business Intelligence Software - Looking for popular business intelligence software? InetSoft's pioneering dashboard reporting application is highly rated by users for successful adoption and responsive customer service. Make great-looking web-based reports and dashboards easily with a drag-and-drop designer and the ability to connect to all your data sources. Maximize self-service for business and technical users. View a demo and try interactive examples.
Powerful Business Information Tool - Looking for powerful business information tools? InetSoft is a pioneer in self-service business intelligence whose platform includes easy to use design tools. View a demo and try interactive examples...
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Read how InetSoft saves money and resources with deployment flexibility. |
Problem with the Standard Business Intelligence Model - The problem with the standard business intelligence model is there are two other layers in here, performance reporting and discovery and analysis which aren’t well served by operational reporting and advance analytics. And so the problem is that this causes what we can call the cycle of pain. What we often see at our clients is custom report requests. End-users submit requests to IT, and it ends up in the backlog that may take five sometimes 10, 15 days to get an answer. The answer comes back and begs another question so it goes back through the cycle which causes frustration on both sides. Here’s an example from a recent account who was doing planning for a fund raising event in New York for 130 people. You make a request to find alumni who live in New York, who have given over $75,000 and express and interest in financial aid. You get a list of 15 people. It's too little, so you’ll beg, adjust your request and say, well, let’s look at everybody who’s given over $10,000.00. Now you’re up with 600 people, and you start iterating this, at some point you’ve got to invite people to the events so you just send out against the list whatever you think before you get the data back. That’s sort of the problem there...
Problems with Traditional Business Intelligence - What are some of the problems with traditional BI solutions? Everyone knows the rewards from good business intelligence is that the quicker you are able to find problems or opportunities by analyzing your data, then the more chances you have to stand out and outmaneuver your competition? Since time is a factor, then the agility of your BI application comes into play. In other words, how do you use the time to find the insight as a competitive advantage, and how do you enable your business users to act faster? Traditional BI solutions have been inflexible to changing data needs and changing user requirements...
Process of Proliferating Business Intelligence - We connected directly to the data in our SAP system. And we were then able to demonstrate the capabilities of Style Intelligence to all our internal clients. That began to generate a lot of excitement, a lot of participation, and people started thinking about what the possibilities were for Style Intelligence. Since then, what we have done is we are now in the process of proliferating business intelligence, and what I mean that is actually getting the BI tool fully functional to make it available to use with all of our info cubes that we have already available. We expect to do that over the next probably about six or seven weeks. And in second half of the year, we will have a number of projects lined up. Even in this preliminary stage, though, we have already seen some organizational impact. People are starting to see how they can use this information, how easy it is to access. The tool is very intuitive. The ability to actually have it on the iPhone is great. We have gone ahead and we have demonstrated that. We have demonstrated it on the iPad now. So as a result of that, people are starting to say, “You know what, how can I use the information that I have available? What do I need available to me at my fingertips anytime...
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Click this screenshot to view a two-minute demo and get an overview of what InetSoft’s BI dashboard reporting software, Style Intelligence, can do and how easy it is to use. |
Productionalization of Business Intelligence - The next question is what’s to keep productionalization of business intelligence from becoming another bottleneck indeed? Well, it's an organizational issue at the end of the day. Productionalization is where IT needs to take responsibility to become responsive. And really what we are trying to do with speeding up the earlier stages of BI development and the design of the data warehouse is to enable IT to begin to focus on the parts that are farther down the delivery chain, in this case, listening to the end-users, becoming part of the end-user groups or working with the end-user groups that are prioritizing and are peer-reviewing particular queries or particular ways of analyzing the data and bringing that forward into the productionalization. But again, if you take all of the skills or all of the resources out of IT, it will become a bottleneck. So, it does need to be balanced. It needs to be seen part of the process. Next question, does InetSoft work with SAP BW? InetSoft works with quite a few data sources from file, relational databases, cubes, high-end data warehouses and so most of the time we connect to just about anything that’s out there. As it relates to SAP BW, yes, we do support connecting to BW directly...
Purposes and Types of Business Intelligence Software - You now know what business intelligence software is, but how exactly does it operate? The response is type-dependent. Using business intelligence software's intended use as a guideline is one of the best methods to categorize the categories. The three primary features of BI solutions often come under one of two packaging options: standalone applications or suites. Handling of data The main purpose of a BI is to clean up your current data. Raw data is disorganized and erratic. It must be ready for processing, such as reporting or analytics. For indexing and archiving, data management BI software employs a defined method. By using this program, you can be confident that the raw data you analyze is clean, correct, and that you are comparing like with like. Similar to other BI software types, this one employs the ETL (extract, transform, load) procedures to acquire data from many sources and put it into a target platform, such as spreadsheets, data containers, or data warehouses. Data management is a key component of the majority of top BI software programs...
Qlik Sense Business Intelligence - Looking for a good alternative to the Qlik Sense business intelligence tool? InetSoft's pioneering dashboard reporting application makes producing great-looking web-based reports and dashboards easy with a drag-and-drop designer and the ability to connect to all your data sources. Maximize self-service for business and technical staff. View a demo and try interactive examples. Read the comparison of InetSoft to Qlik based on G2 user feedback...
Qliktech Cost - Are you considering a less expensive alternative to Qliktech's dashboard software? With InetSoft, you have access to a web-based business intelligence software application that is easy to deploy and easy to use. But ease of use does not have to imply sacrificing performance. A state of the art BI solution can analyze and explore massive amounts of data, providing actionable insights at a competitive price....
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Read how InetSoft saves money and resources with deployment flexibility. |
Rapid Adoption of Business Intelligence - But what's happening because of the rapid adoption of business intelligence, the customer intelligence and this holistic enterprise intelligence view, total spending will be down in the $30 billion range. But more importantly, the dramatic reduction in the percentage of that being spent on administrative roles will be leveraged by higher investments and technology that deliver better results. To simplify this concept, maybe we should take a look at this as a formula. Customer intelligence is knowing everything that you can know about your customer base individually, collectively, market segments, all of those things that we have talked about under the CRM name. Business intelligence, again, is understanding what's underlying your business, what is the data that you have, how can it be used, structured and brought together to be effectively leveraged in the business. Now, all of that is good and well, but without something that we are calling intelligent delivery, it can't be used...
Real Estate's Digital Transformation through Web Apps and Business Intelligence - Gone are the days when property searches relied on word-of-mouth recommendations or wandering around the city. Today, we often rely on the internet to research real estate agencies and properties according to our preferences. 41% of buyers agree that they're ready to purchase properties without seeing them in person. This means that checking properties and communicating online via desktop or smartphone screens is enough to make them make a final decision. In this case, web apps and business intelligence (BI) become crucial for real estate businesses. This article will break down some remarkable transformations in this industry. But first, let's understand the basics more in-depth...
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Read what InetSoft customers and partners have said about their selection of Style Report as their production reporting tool. |
Real Time Business Intelligence - So let me jump right in, we’re starting to see a growing demand for access to real time data for business intelligence. For some of you, that’s not news. But it maybe to others. Obviously the adoption rates in real time are certainly growing, and there are a few reasons for why that’s occurring. I think that’s happening because people are assigned to operationalize their BI infrastructures. When you look at the current economic climate out there, people are trying to get the most out of their infrastructure investments, and I think we are going to see more and more people trying to leverage these investments more. What happens when you operationalize your BI infrastructure is, you need to start making things a lot more timely because operational people don’t care about what happened a month ago. They just care about what’s happening right now and what they need to know this second to do their jobs better...
Reasons to Search for Better Business Intelligence Solutions - There are many reasons why people search for better business intelligence solutions. We see analysis paralysis problems, information overload problems, operational inefficiencies. People are still managing a lot of data processes with Excel and manual data manipulation, and there is a still big problem of alignment. So there's a lot of spending going on to try to solve those problems, and I would ask myself, are you experiencing the same type of problems? Your clients or you also spend that amount of, of course, not by yourself, but you also spend a lot of money every year on your BI, and you ask has BI lived up to the promise so far for your organization at least. So here's a great quote by Steven Few, who is a well-known author and respected thought leader in the United States, specifically in the visualization space, and what he says is the following. He says that the methods and technologies that are supposed to support the analysis and reporting, what we know as BI, this intelligence, they often fail to deliver on the promise of intelligence, and that is because often the data is not well understood...
Re-Evolution of Business Intelligence - I find it interesting when you see technology solutions in business today are repeating themselves from previous incarnations and becoming more and more relevant in today’s world of business intelligence. For instance, there have been a lot of very interesting announcements in the last year about the virtual computing and cloud computing. If you were to look back 10 or 15, 20 years ago we called it distributed processing or client server computing. And even years before that we called it time sharing in a remote site and so forth. But today the software that’s being announced and the communication linkages and the architectures have afforded us the capability of doing massive amounts of new applications, shortening the cycle to get to the data. And it absolutely requires you to know new kinds of organizations, not from just a technical base but from a support base for business. One of the things I also see beyond just the technological introductions is a large amount of data, a large amount of systems, a large amount of integration requirements, master data management also being one of them and the use of data to better manage the customers internally and externally. And I guess a good answer for this also is when we start to think about the internal customers using IT information or business intelligence information as we focus here in this podcast...
Relationship Management Business Intelligence Solution - Are you looking for a good CRM business intelligence solution? InetSoft's pioneering dashboard reporting application produces great-looking web-based dashboards with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop designer. Get cloud-flexibility for your deployment. Minimize costs with a small-footprint solution. Maximize self-service for all types of users. No dedicated BI developer required. View a demo and try interactive examples...
Remaking Business Intelligence - CRM Systems - For contact center agents, retaining customers and improving sales starts with data-gathering. And business intelligence--or "BI"--is one technology that helps turn data about customers into improved retention rates as well as profits. Having solid BI methods and tools in place is becoming critical for firms what with forecasts showing a slow recovery, including with it marginal but growing increases in spending. Companies need to extract every last ounce of value from the data, obtaining from it a most accurate picture of what is happening with customers. This way they can fine-tune with customer relationship strategies to obtain maximum revenue at minimal costs...
Replacement for Cognos Business Intelligence - Are you looking for a good replacement for Cognos business intelligence? InetSoft's pioneering dashboard reporting application produces great-looking web-based dashboards with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop designer. Get cloud-flexibility for your deployment. Minimize costs with a small-footprint solution. Maximize self-service for all types of users. No dedicated BI developer required. View a demo and try interactive examples...
Report Writer for SQL - InetSoft's very first product offering was a reporting tool that made SQL database analysis easier than traditional methods.
Since then, InetSoft has expanded it's solution to include robust data mashup, intuitive visual dashboarding, and scheduled automated reporting. InetSoft's flagship product, Style Intelligence, can query Microsoft SSAS cubes through multidimensional expressions, for the easy creation of reports and dashboards. But it's reporting capabilities do not stop there...
Right Business Intelligence Tools - Are you in the process of selecting business intelligence tools? InetSoft is a pioneer in dashboard reporting making possible the easy creation of great-looking analytics. View a demo and try interactive examples...
Risk Free Business Intelligence Offer - Maximum Self-Service for Business and Technical Users Real-Time Monitoring and Analytical Dashboards Powered by a Data Transformation and Mashup Engine Explore the Live BI Dashboard Gallery...
Robust Business Intelligence - How is InetSoft's business intelligence software robust? InetSoft's flagship BI product, Style Intelligence, has a robust feature set serving both analysts and business users. It also has the robust infrastructure that is essential for an enterprise solution, enabling high performance and secure multi-tiered access...
Roots of Business Intelligence - Business intelligence has its roots in the early days of computing, when companies first began to collect and store large amounts of data. However, the concept of BI as we know it today did not fully emerge until the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1960s, IBM introduced the concept of "Management Information Systems" (MIS), which was designed to provide managers with access to data that could help them make better decisions. At the time, most companies used punch cards and mainframe computers to collect and store data, but this data was difficult to access and analyze. IBM's MIS system aimed to change that by providing managers with a way to access and analyze data in a more user-friendly format. In the 1970s, the rise of the personal computer (PC) revolutionized the way companies collected, stored, and analyzed data. The PC made it possible for companies to collect and store data on a much larger scale, and new software programs were developed to help managers access and analyze this data. This was the beginning of the BI industry as we know it today. One of the first companies to capitalize on this new technology was a small startup called Cognos. Founded in 1969, Cognos developed software that could be used to create reports and analyze data on a PC. This software was an instant success, and Cognos quickly became a leader in the BI industry...
Report Delivery Platform - Looking for a Reliable Report Delivery Platform?
Regular reports are vital for the monitoring and control of business conditions. But in many cases, the production of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual reports puts additional demands on administrators and employees...
Right Business Intelligence Platform - Whether you already have data management and analysis tools in place or are on the lookout for new software solutions as we speak, business intelligence (BI) systems can indeed have transformative effects for your company. According to Finances Online, 87% of businesses have a very low BI maturity and adoption rate while in 2018, 90% of marketing and sales teams expressed that BI was essential to their success. Both small-scale and international businesses can benefit highly from adequate BI systems which correspond with their operational needs with the right business intelligence platform to back them up. However, settling for the right set of analysis, tracking and management tools for BI can be tricky without guidelines or previous experience. Let's take a look at what makes BI so important, as well as several tools for business intelligence which you should consider implementing in your company going forward...