Business Intelligence

The term Business Intelligence, BI abbreviation became popular from the early to mid 1990s, and refers to procedures and processes for systematic analysis (collection, analysis and presentation ) of data in electronic form.

The aim is to gain insights that enable better operational and strategic decisions with respect to the business goals. This is done using analytical concepts, appropriate software and IT systems, the data on their own company, the competitors or the market development in order to evaluate the desired gain in knowledge. With the knowledge gained, companies can make their business as well as customer and supplier relationships more profitable, reduce costs, minimize risk and increase the value. The term is attributed to the field of computer science economy.

In October 1958, the article " A Business Intelligence System " by Hans Peter Luhn published in the IBM Journal; this was very likely the origin of the term "business intelligence". From 1989, Howard Dresner, an analyst at Gartner Inc. has made a habit the term. He later also created the secondary term " Business Performance Management ".

The English term " intelligence" (from Latin intel casual "understand" from the Latin inter " between " and casual read " select" ) refers to the acquired from the collecting and processing information findings.

Business Intelligence in Action

In practice one sees in most cases under "Business Intelligence" the automation of reporting (reporting). The costs incurred in the ERP systems company data is used to analyze a range of perspectives, the situation of the company and adjust the assessment. The analysis is not in the ERP systems, but reside in a separate database, the data warehouse (DWH ). Reasons for this may include:

• Improper structuring of the data in the ERP system
• No evaluation possible for several ERP systems, for example in the aggregation for a consolidated report
• Insufficient ability, such as competitors or research institutes to include third-party data
• Burden of the ERP system through analytical evaluations
• Ongoing changes to the data in the ERP system.

The first task of a BI project is therefore, data, or ERP systems for analysis in its own database to make the data warehouse. This is done by extracting the data from the ERP system, their transformation and loading into the data warehouse (ETL ) process.

The second task is to establish the necessary for reporting analytical evaluations. This can go from simple aggregations of eg sales figures for individual products in the last few days, weeks, months total and developed in the various sectors to more complicated statistical analysis using data mining, for example, trend analysis of customer behavior.

See also: Business Intelligence Competency Center

Phases

The technical foundation of business data analysis ( Business Intelligence) can be divided into three phases: In the first phase (data delivery ) Focus will be set and collected ( quantitative and qualitative, structured or unstructured ). This data collection is done either via an " operating " system (OLTP ) or in a data warehouse. In the second phase ( discovery of relations, patterns, and principles ) to bring data in relation to each other, so that patterns and discontinuities are visible and can be compared with any previously established hypotheses, eg in the form of multi-dimensional analysis or data Mining. In the third phase ( knowledge sharing) the findings are then communicated in the company, that is, in the knowledge management integrated. The dissemination of the knowledge gained should be used to provide decision bases for measures and actions.

Understanding of the term

In a narrower sense BI denotes only the methodology of data collection, in the broader sense is meant by Business Intelligence the totality of management fundamentals such as knowledge management, customer relationship management or Balanced Scorecard, which in a process-oriented understanding of the term and the permanent data maintenance and adaptation include to a changing environment ( strategic alignment). The Institute for Business Intelligence defines " business intelligence " the integration of strategies, processes and techniques to deliver strategic knowledge about the status, potentials and prospects of distributed and heterogeneous enterprise, market and competitor data.

Tools

Business Intelligence uses the analytical information systems. The dataset analysis is fed from a data warehouse or excerpts from it ( data marts ). Analysis methods are, inter alia, OLAP, data mining, text mining, web mining and case-based reasoning. The integration of geographic aspects of using GIS is used (eg on sites) and external customers or uncover any spatial relationships between corporate information potential of data in order to involve them in management decisions.

Provider

BARC has analyzed in detail for the 2009 business intelligence (BI ) software market in Germany. License and maintenance revenues for user tools and data management components in Germany were recorded in 2009 The survey was conducted as a full survey. Purpose more than 150 provider of BI solutions have even provided information or were estimated by analysts.

Core findings: The market is growing in 2009, a total of 8 per cent to a total volume of 816 million euros in license and maintenance revenues for BI software in Germany.

The strongest growth in the larger companies ( top two quartiles of the top 50 providers, turnover > EUR 3.4 million) recorded IBM that are organically grown in both market segments as well as through the purchase of SPSS. The BI specialists Informatica, Evidanza, QlikTech and Information Builders follow with growth rates of more than 20 percent. Also in the bottom half of the top 50, there are rapidly growing challenger as Exasol, Sybase, Tagetik, board or LucaNet.

The development of the provider is more differentiated: 2009 could 24 of the 52 providers in the segment do not grow > 1 million euros. Individual providers had it recorded sales declines of up to 35 percent.

Sales of BI users tools ( frontend ) and applications will increase by 6 percent to 474 million euros; the backend / data management field is growing by 10 percent to 342 million euros.

The concentration continues to increase the market share of the "big five" providers (Oracle, SAP, IBM, SAS, Microsoft) increases to 61 percent (previous year: 57%), the share of the top 10 from 64% to 70%. The concentration on a few large players is in the backend area clearly marked than that of BI -user tools.

Despite takeovers, the number of providers continues to increase. In total, more than 150 companies offer software for business intelligence tasks in Germany. Meanwhile 52 providers achieve sales of 1 million euros or more ( previous year: 49 Provider).

The Gartner analysts at the U.S. in January 2010, conducted 16 international software provider of business intelligence solutions are, in alphabetical order:

• Actuate
• Arcplan
• BOARD International
• IBM ( Cognos )
• Infor
• Information Builders
• Microsoft
• MicroStrategy
• Oracle
• Panorama Software
• QlikTech
• SAP
• SAS Institute
• Tableau - new since 2010
• Targit - new since 2010
• TIBCO Spotfire

In 2007, was a true bidding war takes on the BI market. Oracle bought Hyperion, SAP acquired Business Objects, Cognos acquired Applix and IBM acquired Cognos. This consolidation has the consequence that the acquired systems need to be consuming integrated into existing or individual product lines are well- adjusted.

In addition to the above license fee systems, there are also open source solutions ( in alphabetical order):

• BIRT: Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools ( BIRT ) is an open source reporting system of the Eclipse Foundation, whose development is most operated by the company Actuate
• Bizgres: Business Intelligence with PostgreSQL
• Jasper Forge: Open source project of the Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite
• KNIME: Open Source Platform for data integration, analysis and exploration, and reporting
• Palo: developed in Germany open source OLAP database with free Microsoft Excel Addin
• Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence Suite - Inclusive package of various open source BI tools
• RapidMiner (formerly YALE): free open source software for business intelligence, knowledge discovery and data mining
• SpagoBI: The Business Intelligence Free Platform
• SQL Power Software: A complete OSBI software suite with various tools
• Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis ( Weka ): free, open - source software for data mining, which integrates also other free tools (including Weka, R and BIRT )

The significance of these so-called open source business intelligence ( OSBI ) Tools decreases in recent years more and more. Although their market share is still relatively low, but should be OSBI tools that have stable growth for years, prevail widely, according to market researchers until 2012.

In addition to the providers of BI software exist specialized BI consultations, which take over the implementation of the software. Partial entertain the manufacturer also consultant teams, called the Business Benefit is loud BI Survey 8 but higher when companies rely on specialized consulting firms.

Business intelligence market in Germany

The market research company Lünendonk GmbH, Kaufbeuren, considered since 2003 continuously the business intelligence market (BI ) in Germany. It is a peculiarity of the German market for BI standard software is that at the top few high-revenue companies face that German subsidiaries of U.S. software companies are. In the middle of the providers on the German BI market is medium sized a variety to meet business intelligence or business analytics specialist software houses, list the either -digit million turnover or low double-digit millions in sales. Due to this fragmentation in the standard BI software market is no ranking is possible.

Nor rises, the market research companies claim to depict the overall market. In the annually published Lünendonk market sample software companies are analyzed to generate at least 50 percent of their revenue from production, sales and maintenance of own business intelligence standard software products. Examples include software for data integration / data consolidation or reporting and dashboard applications. For large international IT companies that achieve significant revenues with standard BI software in Germany, as well as ERP software vendors that offer BI tools as add-on to their ERP suites, BI turnover is less than 50 percent. Therefore, the market sample contains no such software manufacturers. The analysis of 2013 includes 29 companies.

Overall, the market for business intelligence software standard in Germany is characterized by medium-sized suppliers that still predominantly act locally in the internal market and are often owner-managed. The export share amounts to an average of 9.6 percent.

The volume of the BI software market to the analysts of Lünendonk for 2012 to 1.2 billion euros (2011: 1.1 billion euros ). The expectations regarding market growth for the current year 2013 are almost identical to the votes in the last year market forecast for 2012 ( 11.3%) with an average of 11.5 percent. The surveyed BI software vendors go for the period up to 2018 on the assumption that the standard BI software market is growing annually by an average of 10.5 percent. Something conservative Respondents rated the long-term trend forecasts (2018 to 2020): A statistical average they expect an annual market growth rate of 9.9 percent.

In fiscal 2012, the supplier of business intelligence software standard could increase its total sales by 11.3 percent. The statistical mean of all forecasts issued in 2013 is 21.7 percent, to a very high level and thus falls almost twice as high as the expected market growth. In the medium term (up to 2018) go to the BI manufacturer of an average revenue growth of 19.4 percent per year.

The examined by Lünendonk companies employed a total of 2,436 employees in 2012. For comparison: 2011 2.265 people were employed ( 13.1 %). The average total number of employees is 90 employees and shows that the investigated BI specialist providers achieve comparatively high turnover with a relatively small number of employees. Billable employees make in the examined BI specialist suppliers average of 64.9 percent. These include " Consulting, IT professionals ", " developer " and " Customer ". This brings the number of billable employees has slightly reduced (mean 2011: 66.8 %). The largest group of employees is omitted (as in previous years ) to " Consulting, IT professionals " ( 31.0 %). "Developer " position with 23.7 percent the second largest group, followed by " sales and marketing " with 19.9 percent in the statistical average. In "Management, Administration" work an average of about 15 per cent of employees.

The demand for business intelligence software is dominated by customers from the automotive industry (13.4%). The second most important customer industry is the " consumer goods industry " with an average revenue share of 10.7 percent dar. " banks " stand for an average of 9.3 percent of sales. Also a very important industry is the "trade" with an average turnover of 9.3 percent. More customer industries with significant revenue shares are the "Mechanical Engineering" (8.3%) and "Chemical, Pharma" ( 8.2%).

BI applications are used both in accounting for the preparation of financial reports and quarterly and annual financial statements as well as for control operational business units. The proportion of use of BI tools for business operations has been rising for years. As in past years, the " Finance " of the application area with the highest turnover. On average, 28.1 percent of the sales of the investigated BI vendor on demand from the " Finance " and thus four percentage points less than in the previous investigation. 19.1 percent of sales generated BI vendors in 2012 in average with applications for the sector "Business management / risk management ". With some behind in third place of the most important areas positioned "Sales" with a revenue share on the arithmetic average of 15.5 percent, followed by " marketing " with an average turnover of 9.3 percent.

Business Analytics

The term " business analytics " or "Advanced Analytics " is an extension of BI, but whose goal is less to identify current problems through the analysis, but more to bet on the future and forecasts of development.

A sub- area of business analytics is predictive analytics, which includes various analysis tools, and existing data similar to the data mining analyzes to gain further knowledge.

Data Discovery

The term Data Discovery ( " data discovery " ) describes a new generation of business intelligence tools, which delimit compared to classical BI platforms with ease and flexibility as well as highest possible autonomy of the user. The focus of Data Discovery systems lies in the visual analysis of data of any kind Furthermore, data discovery tools are differentiated by their objectives, identify both using analyzes current problems but to also provide forecasts available and targeted specific issues by means of in-depth data analysis to answer. From a technical perspective based data discovery systems usually on in-memory techniques, which store the data in a dedicated repository, and these can be used so without complex modeling. Through the primary access to the local memory systems have in-memory techniques to shorter processing times, as not to be accessed on an external hard drive.