In today's fiercely competitive environment, Business Intelligence has become a powerful tool, helping organizations leverage the power of data to create effective business strategies. So what is Business Intelligence ? Let's find out with 1C Vietnam what BI is and why this technology is important for the sustainable development of businesses in the current digital era.

1. What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) is a system that includes methods, technologies and processes that businesses use to analyze data, thereby supporting business decision making. Simply put, BI is a tool that helps businesses grasp past information and forecast future trends. The core goal of BI is to improve the accuracy of business decisions, helping organizations increase revenue, improve performance and create competitive advantages over competitors in the market.

2. The importance of Business Intelligence for businesses

To better understand what Business Intelligence is , let's find out the importance of this system for businesses. Today, Business Intelligence is not only a tool to support decision making but also plays a key role in helping maintain competitive advantage and optimize operating processes. Specifically:

• Providing accurate data helps businesses flexibly adapt to the volatile and fiercely competitive business environment.
• Support managers to make effective decisions in emergency situations.
• Analyze customer behavior, build marketing strategies, retain current customers and attract potential customers.
• Create a holistic picture of your business, define your position, competitiveness and predict the future.
• Save time, optimize management costs and improve business operating efficiency.
• Support assessment and improvement of internal processes, enhancing work performance.
• Condense reports into intuitive dashboards, making it easy for users to analyze data even without technical knowledge.
• Integrate internal and external data sources into a single data warehouse, allowing departments to access data synchronously and conveniently.

3. Main activities in BI system

Core activities in a Business Intelligence (BI) system include:

• Data Sources: Initial data is collected from various sources such as human resource management (HRM) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and e-commerce sites, etc.
• Data Warehousing: Collected data is stored long-term in the enterprise's electronic warehouse systems.
• Integrating Server: This is the tool that runs the ETL process, transforming data from data sources to the data warehouse.
• Analysis Server: Receives input data and processes it based on predefined business rules, returning corresponding results.
• Reporting Server: This component is responsible for providing reports from the analysis results of the Analysis Server.
• Data Mining: The process of processing and extracting data, which plays an important role in activities such as classification, clustering and prediction.
• Data Presentation: Finally, the data is aggregated and displayed in the form of charts through the data mining process.

4. Steps to deploy BI system

To effectively apply Business Intelligence, businesses need to establish systematic processes and be operated by a team of experienced BI analysts. This process will be implemented according to the following three-step model:

4.1 Collect data sources

First, the Business Intelligence department needs to collect raw data such as sales revenue, market information, and customer engagement metrics. These data will then be aggregated and visualized for easy analysis and use. To ensure accuracy and objectivity, the data must be rich and come from reliable sources such as:

• Supply Chain Management (SCM) System
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
• Web Logs: Data related to customer activities on a company's website or e-commerce platform
• Transaction database: Information about the business's current commercial transactions
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
• And many other data sources and tools from outside.

4.2 Data processing and storage

After collecting enough data, the next task of BI staff is to convert, classify and store into specialized data warehouses through the ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) process.

• Extract: Copy data from source systems, ensuring that the original system is not affected in subsequent processing steps.
• Transform: Convert or decompose extracted data into a form that can be efficiently stored and used.
• Load (data input): Put processed data into the data warehouse.

To avoid overload, BI staff need to monitor and remove data that is no longer valuable, creating space for more important information. Organizing the data warehouse properly will help businesses access information more quickly and easily.

4.3 Data analysis and extraction

This is the crucial stage when businesses analyze data to detect fluctuations in customer behavior and business performance. From these fluctuations, sharp-minded analysts will identify the problems that businesses are facing, whether they are opportunities or challenges. Strategists will then evaluate and propose solutions to optimize business performance.

5. Software and tools in the BI space

After understanding what Business Intelligence is , businesses can see that maintaining this system is not easy, requiring investment in tools and professional software. Some popular software and tools in BI include:

• Tableau: Self-service analytics platform that features data visualization capabilities and integration with multiple data sources like Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Excel.
• Splunk: Provides enterprise-grade data analytics and Business Intelligence solutions with deep analytics capabilities.
• Alteryx: Unify analytics from multiple sources to simplify workflows and provide BI insights.
• Qlik: Focuses on data visualization and analytics, providing an extensible and easy-to-use BI platform.
• Domo: A cloud platform that offers a variety of BI tools, suitable for many industries such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and education.
• Dundas BI: Specializes in creating dashboards and scorecards, and supports standard and custom reporting.
• Google Data Studio: An enhanced version of Google Analytics, offering advanced analytics and reporting features.

6. Keys to Building a Successful BI Strategy

To build a successful BI strategy, businesses need to focus on many factors such as defining goals and requirements, integrating technology or training employees. Below are important keys to help businesses deploy BI effectively and achieve optimal results.

• Database Synchronization: As Business Intelligence is integrated into the enterprise, the IT infrastructure becomes more complex. Therefore, IT infrastructure synchronization is necessary to clearly separate the architecture and future scalability.

• Identify business goals before implementing BI: Organizations need to prioritize features, tools, and data sources before implementing Business Intelligence. This helps optimize the benefits of BI by focusing on the factors that are most important to the business.
• Building a data culture supports successful digital transformation: Data culture is an important factor for successful digital transformation. Every employee needs to understand the value and role of data, how to use and analyze data in the decision-making process. Building a data culture is a continuous process and needs to be done regularly.
• Training of Business Employees: For a BI system to work effectively, employees need to be thoroughly trained on how to use the system. The change in the way employees work will require them to master new skills related to Business Intelligence.
• Employee Empowerment: Proper employee empowerment helps build a positive work environment where people actively contribute and feel satisfied. This also contributes to the success of the BI system.
• Consider using BI as a comprehensive strategic management tool: BI tools should provide data to all employees and real-time visibility. Businesses need to establish criteria to check the health of BI operations, thereby making necessary adjustments and upgrades.
• Continuously improve and enhance the solution: An effective BI strategy requires continuous updates and improvements. Data needs to be innovated to stay competitive in today's fierce market.

7. Future development trends of Business Intelligence

The Business Intelligence Analyst industry is facing a serious shortage of talent. As businesses rush to digitally transform and leverage data to compete, the ability to extract information from data becomes the key to success in the market. For this reason, Business Intelligence specialists, or Business Intelligence Analysts, are becoming one of the most sought-after careers.

Companies are actively building data collection and analysis departments to implement breakthrough strategies to lead the market. Global corporations such as Grab, Lazada, Tiki, Shopee, FPT, and Momo are exploiting their huge databases to optimize business operations.

In addition, the Business Intelligence Analyst profession opens up many international job opportunities. Candidates can find BI expert positions with attractive salaries at large companies. In addition, becoming a Business Intelligence Analyst also helps expand settlement opportunities in other countries, especially as experts.

8. 1C:ERP - Solution providing detailed data to support BI analysis and build effective strategies

1C:ERP is a fully integrated solution that helps businesses manage all aspects of their operations from finance, inventory management to CRM. With the ability to collect and organize data from a variety of sources, 1C:ERP provides a powerful data foundation for Business Intelligence systems, facilitating effective analysis and strategy building.

• Data from 1C:ERP as the foundation for BI: 1C:ERP provides a rich and reliable data source for BI systems. Business management, inventory and CRM data from 1C:ERP is collected and analyzed by BI to create detailed reports and useful insights. This helps businesses gain accurate and deep insights into actual operations, thereby supporting more effective decision making.
• BI helps analyze and make decisions based on data from 1C:ERP: BI tools use data from 1C:ERP to perform in-depth analysis. BI helps businesses identify trends, predict needs, and make strategic decisions based on real data. Thanks to powerful analytics, businesses can optimize strategies and gain a competitive advantage in the market.

9. Frequently Asked Questions about Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence is becoming an indispensable tool in supporting businesses in analyzing data and making strategic decisions. However, many people still wonder what Business Intelligence is or do not fully understand the different aspects of BI. Below are frequently asked questions about Business Intelligence, along with answers compiled by 1C Vietnam.

9.1 Distinguishing Business Intelligence and Business Analytics

Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) are both powerful tools for analyzing data and supporting decision making. However, the two systems have different goals and approaches. Here is a comparison chart that helps clarify the differences between BI and BA:

9.2 How to become a BI Analyst

To pursue a career in Business Intelligence (BI), candidates need to equip themselves with some necessary skills as follows:

• Technological Proficiency: The ability to use technology tools and applications to collect, extract and store data is essential. Candidates should be agile and willing to explore the latest technologies to optimize workflows.
• Soft Skills: Smart organization and management of data, visual presentation of information, and the ability to explain and persuade are essential soft skills in the role of a Business Intelligence Analyst.
• Ability to read and analyze data: This is a core skill in the field of BI. Candidates not only need experience in reading and analyzing data, but also need to understand the needs of customers or partners to provide accurate and useful information.

These skills help you meet the high demands of the BI profession, and support you in making effective strategic decisions based on analytical data.

9.3 Beneficiaries of BI

Business Intelligence brings many benefits to many different stakeholders within a business, and those who benefit the most include:

• Executives: Business leaders use BI to gain an overview of performance and make strategic decisions based on detailed data and in-depth analysis.
• Business Decision Makers: These individuals rely on BI to capture important information, evaluate options, and make informed business decisions.
• Analysts: Data analysts use BI to mine, analyze, and report data, helping to transform information into effective strategies.
• Customers: Although they do not directly use BI, customers benefit indirectly from businesses improving services and products based on information from BI.

Note:

• BI can support businesses in any industry and business model.
• Combining ERP with BI can increase value and efficiency.
• Careful consideration should be given when integrating BI with other systems to ensure consistency and efficiency.

Hopefully, through the above article, your business has a better understanding of what Business Intelligence is and the importance of the system. Effectively combining BI with other tools such as 1C:ERP not only enhances data analysis capabilities but also helps build a solid business strategy, promoting sustainable development and competitiveness. Contact 1C Vietnam now to learn more about the 1C:ERP solution!