Business Intelligence – 2nd Lecture

The second lecture started off with the definition again and so is my second blog on BI.  You can define BI in a lotta different ways. BI is such a big field. Putting it all together, BI can simply be defined as any tool, technology or technique used for collection, measurement, understanding, analysis and prediction using (past) data for Performance Management. Our Professor stressed on ‘Performance Management’, as it is the whole point of using BI for your business. BI is used to help improve business, keep track of your performance, establish goals and targets for the future and find out ways to achieve it. This is exactly where KPIs come into play.

Now, what is KPI?

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator.

KPIs are commonly used to measure the performance of a business towards a specified target/goal which involves monitoring and measuring metrics. Metrics are defined pertinent to the business. A good example of a metric for a sales company could be: Amount of Dollars earned by sales of a product over a period of time.

Our Professor also talked about different types of data which are Unstructured, Historical and Real-time data. Data can also be broadly classified into two:

Internal – Data that a company or an organization possesses which are mainly about the operations and transactions performed.

External – Data that a company collects from discussion forums, review sites, blogs, etc. which will be helpful for its business.

I understood how data collected from these various sources is being used by companies. They don’t just use it blindly. The data that is collected is first cleansed and then it undergoes a process called ‘Data Profiling’ by which you eliminate fake, unnecessary and useless information. At this point, you will have to use the 6Ws which are called the Web Metrics: What, When, Why, Where, Who & Which.

Ex: What does a customer expect from your business? Where does he come from? Which category or age group does he belong to?

These questions help you derive some meaning outta the data that has been collected which is obviously useful for your company/business.