Much more than a specific “thing,” business intelligence is an umbrella term that covers the processes and methods of collecting, storing, and analyzing data from business operations or activities to optimize performance. All of these things come together to create a comprehensive view of a business to help people make better, actionable decisions. Over the past few years, business intelligence has evolved to include more processes and activities to help improve performance.
Using databases, statistics, and machine learning (ML) to uncover trends in large datasets
Sharing data analysis to stakeholders so they can draw conclusions and make decisions
Comparing current performance data to historical data to track performance against goals, typically using customized dashboards
Using preliminary data analysis to find out what happened
Asking the data-specific questions, BI pulling the answers from the data sets
Taking the results from descriptive analytics and further exploring the data using statistics such as how this trend happened and why
Turning data analysis into visual representations such as charts, graphs, and histograms to more easily consume data
Exploring data through visual storytelling to communicate insights on the fly and stay in the flow of analysis
Compiling multiple data sources, identifying the dimensions and measurements, and preparing it for data analysis
