Business intelligence

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Business analytics , English Business Intelligence (abbreviation BI ), is a term that can be assigned to business informatics and describes procedures and processes for the systematic analysis of one's own company. This includes the collection, evaluation and presentation of data in electronic form.

The aim is to gain knowledge from the data available in the company to support management decisions . The evaluation of data - about the own company, the competitors or the market development - is done with the help of analytical concepts and more or less specialized software and IT systems . With the knowledge gained, the company can make its business processes as well as its customer and supplier relationships more successful; Aspects here can be cost reduction, risk reduction and value creation.

The English term business intelligence became popular from the early to mid-1990s. The English word intelligence describes the knowledge gained from collecting and processing acquired information. It goes back to the Latin intellegere for 'understand' - composed of the Latin words inter 'between' and casual 'read', 'choose'.

history

In October 1958 the article A Business Intelligence System by Hans Peter Luhn appeared in the IBM-Journal; this was very likely the origin of the term business intelligence . From 1989 Howard Dresner, an analyst at Gartner Inc. adopted the term. He later created the broader term " Business Performance Management ".

term

In a narrower sense, business analytics only refers to the data collection method. In a broader sense, the entirety of management fundamentals such as knowledge management , customer relationship management or balanced scorecard , which, with a process-oriented understanding of the term, also include permanent data maintenance and adaptation to a changing environment, is understood. The Institute for Business Intelligence understands “ Business Intelligence ” to mean the integration of strategies, processes and techniques in order to generate critical knowledge about status, potential and prospects from distributed and inhomogeneous company, market and competitor data.

Phases

The technical basis of business analytics can be divided into three phases:

  • Phase 1 (English data delivery ): Here, key data are defined and collected (quantitative or qualitative, structured or unstructured). The data acquisition takes place via the operative systems ( OLTP ) or in a data warehouse based on it (“ data warehouse ”).
  • Phase 2 (English discovery of relations, patterns, and principles ): Here the data are brought into relation so that patterns and discontinuities become visible and can be compared with any previously established hypotheses, for example in the form of multidimensional analyzes or data mining .
  • Phase 3 (English knowledge sharing ): Here, the findings are communicated in the company, i.e. integrated into knowledge management . The dissemination of the knowledge gained should provide a basis for decision-making for measures and actions.

Implementing a comprehensive solution for business analytics requires a lot of resources and is usually phased; there are often three main phases:

Strategy phase

As part of a strategy development process, the internal requirements and technical requirements as well as the external factors, new opportunities and technologies are collected and transferred to a BI strategy. This strategy development process often takes on the character of a project with its own project organization, schedules and catalog of requirements, which can be based on market studies, for example. The appropriate embedding of the BI strategy in the overall corporate strategy must be ensured.

Conception phase

In the conception phase, the target image formulated in the BI strategy is designed with control processes that are suitable for all target groups. This includes the selection of suitable system and data architecture and programs (BI software). Responsibilities are established; Employees are trained for their future BI roles.

implementation

The actual implementation translates the requirements from the BI strategy into concrete projects. These are processed in the implementation phase, which is generally the phase with the highest resource demands.

commitment

In practice, business analytics are primarily intended to automate controlling , reporting , planning and forecasting, as well as market and customer analysis. The company data accumulating in the ERP systems is used to analyze and evaluate the company's situation from different perspectives. The analysis is preferably not carried out in the ERP systems, but in a separate database, the data warehouse (DWH). Reasons for this can be:

  • unsuitable structuring of the data in the ERP system;
  • No possibility of evaluation via several ERP systems, for example when aggregating for a group report;
  • Inadequate opportunity to include third-party data, e.g. from competitors or research institutes;
  • Load on the ERP system through analytical evaluations;
  • ongoing changes to the data in the ERP system.

A central challenge, why one even deals with BI solutions, is the high effort involved in the preparation of key figures and data. Prepared data is often generated decentrally from various systems by exporting reports, for example in Excel files.

The first task of a BI project is therefore to put data from the ERP system (s) into its own database, the data warehouse, for analysis. This is done by extracting the data from the ERP system, transforming it and loading it into the data warehouse ( ETL process ).

The second task is to set up the analytical evaluations required for reporting. This can range from simple aggregations of, for example, sales figures for individual articles in the last few days, weeks, months to complicated analyzes using data mining , such as trend analyzes of customer behavior.

An often neglected aspect in BI projects is master data management .

A professional controlling application can only develop its full effect if the data coming from the previous systems is valid. This fact naturally applies to all applications that often access the same information and master data in interaction with other systems. The more systems a company has to maintain or the more companies, departments and departments deal with sensitive master data information, the greater the risk of data chaos. Karl-Heinz Schmitz , KH Schmitz or Mr. Karl Heinz Schmitz are three different spellings for the same customer. Additional information, such as address, telephone and e-mail, is attached to this information. And there are other areas such as employees, suppliers, partners and products that have to be maintained with the same sensitivity.

Tools

Business analytics makes use of analytical information systems . The database of an analysis is fed from a data warehouse or extracts from it ( data marts ). Analysis methods include OLAP , data mining , text mining , web mining or case-based reasoning . The integration of geographic aspects with the help of geographic information systems is also used to uncover any spatial relationships between company information (for example, on locations) and external customer or potential data in order to include them in company decisions.

providers

The Business Application Research Center (BARC) carried out a detailed analysis of the business intelligence software market in Germany for 2009. License and maintenance sales for user tools and data management components in Germany were recorded in 2009. The survey was carried out as a full survey: more than 150 providers of BI solutions themselves provided information or were estimated by the analysts.

Core findings: The market grew by a total of 8 percent in 2009 to a total volume of 816 million euros in license and maintenance revenues for BI software in Germany.

The strongest growth among the larger providers (top 2 quantiles of the top 50 providers, sales> 3.4 million euros) is recorded by IBM, which has grown organically in both market segments as well as through the acquisition of SPSS. The BI specialists Informatica , Evidanza, Arcplan , QlikTech and Information Builders follow with growth rates of more than 20 percent. In the lower half of the Top50 there are also rapidly growing challengers such as CoPlanner, Exasol, Sybase, Tagetik, Board and LucaNet.

The development of the providers is becoming more differentiated overall: In 2009, 24 of the 52 providers in the segment over 1 million euros could not grow. Individual providers had to record sales declines of up to 35 percent.

Sales with BI user tools (front ends) and applications increased by 6 percent to 474 million euros; the backend / data management area grows by 10 percent to 342 million euros.

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

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

International providers

According to the American analyst firm Gartner Inc. , the leading providers of business intelligence solutions in 2015 (in alphabetical order) were:

In 2007 there was an above-average wave of takeovers. Oracle bought Hyperion, SAP acquired Business Objects, Cognos acquired Applix, and IBM acquired Cognos. This consolidation means that the purchased systems have to be laboriously integrated into the existing ones or that individual product lines have to be discontinued.

In April 2014, Jaspersoft Corporation was initially bought by TIBCO Software Inc., then TIBCO itself was taken over by a private equity investor in December. OpenText acquired the BI provider Actuate Corporation in January 2015. The Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has taken over in June 2015 Pentaho Corporation, offering a written in Java BI suite. The purchase price was previously estimated at a good half a billion US dollars.

Open source provider

In addition to the systems that are subject to a license fee, there are open source solutions (in alphabetical order):

  • BIRT : Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) is an open source reporting system of the Eclipse Foundation, the development of which is mostly carried out by the company Actuate
  • Bizgres: Business Intelligence with PostgreSQL
  • JasperForge: Open source project of the Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite
  • KNIME : Open source platform for data integration, analysis and exploration as well as reporting
  • Palo : Open source OLAP database developed in Germany with free Microsoft Excel add-in
  • Pentaho : Open Source Business Intelligence Suite - integrative package of various open source BI tools
  • RapidMiner (formerly YALE): free open source software for business intelligence, knowledge discovery and data mining
  • ReportServer: Open Source Business Intelligence Platform developed in Germany (under the AGPL ). Integrates various reporting formats (including BIRT and Jasper)
  • 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 that also integrates other free tools (including Weka, R and BIRT)

In addition to the providers of BI software, there are also specialized BI consultants who implement the software.

Business intelligence market in Germany

The market research company Lünendonk GmbH from Kaufbeuren has been continuously looking at the business intelligence market (BI) in Germany since 2003. It is a peculiarity of the German market for BI standard software that at the top there are a few high-turnover companies that are German subsidiaries of US software companies. A large number of medium-sized software houses specializing in business intelligence or business analytics can be found in the middle of the field of providers in the German BI market, which have either single-digit million sales or low double-digit million sales. Due to this fragmentation in the BI standard software market, no ranking is possible.

Nor does the market research company claim to map the entire market. The Lünendonk market sample, which is published annually, analyzes software companies that generate at least 50 percent of their sales with the production, sale and maintenance of their own business intelligence standard software products. This includes, for example, software for data integration / data consolidation or reporting and dashboard applications. For large, international IT groups that generate significant sales with BI standard software in Germany, as well as ERP software manufacturers that offer BI tools as add-ons to their ERP suites, BI sales are below 50 Percent. This is why the market sample does not include such software manufacturers.

The analysts at Lünendonk estimate the volume of the BI software market for 2013 at 1.3 billion euros (2012: 1.2 billion euros | 2011: 1.1 billion euros). With an average of 11.5 percent, the expectations regarding market growth for the current year 2013 are almost identical to the market forecast for 2012 made last year (11.3 percent). For the period up to 2018, the BI software providers surveyed assume that the BI standard software market will grow by an average of 10.5 percent per year. The respondents rate the long-term trend forecasts (2018 to 2020) somewhat more conservatively: On a statistical average, they expect annual market growth of 9.9 percent. The 2013 analysis included 26 providers. The top 10 largest companies in terms of total sales consist of five companies with headquarters outside Germany, SAS Deutschland GmbH (Heidelberg), which is also the market leader in business analytics, Teradata GmbH (Augsburg), MicroStrategy GmbH (Cologne), the Informatica GmbH (Frankfurt am Main) and QlikTech GmbH (Düsseldorf), followed by the five companies with the highest turnover and headquartered in Germany; prevero AG (Munich), IDL GmbH (Schmitten), Cubeware GmbH (Rosenheim), CP Corporate Planning AG (Hamburg) and Comma Soft AG (Bonn).

New catchwords

The terms business analytics and advanced analytics are buzzwords that should stand for improved or expanded business analytics . It is advertised that the improved forms would place a stronger focus on forecasting future developments.

The term data discovery (" data discovery ") is a catchphrase for further developed business intelligence tools, which are supposed to guarantee more user-friendliness and flexibility as well as the greatest possible autonomy for the user. The focus is on the visualization of the data analysis. As with the buzzwords business analytics and advanced analytics , this buzzword also claims that it stands for improved forecasts and more in-depth analysis options. The increasing spread of in-memory databases to increase efficiency - due to the increasing cost of memory modules - is partly claimed for this catchphrase. Using business analytics tools to large amounts of data in companies can collect and analyze, to make to then further measures for optimizing business processes.

Self-service business intelligence describes the process in which the user imports, processes and visualizes data largely independently and independently of the IT or controlling department.

literature

  • M. Grothe, P. Gentsch: Business Intelligence - Gaining competitive advantages from information. Addison-Wesley, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-8273-1591-3
  • P. Mertens: Business Intelligence - An overview. In: Information Management & Consulting. 17, 2002 (special edition).
  • P. Zische: Business Intelligence for Small Businesses. W3L, 2004, ISBN 3-937137-51-3 .
  • P. Rausch, A. Sheta, A. Ayesh (Eds.): Business Intelligence and Performance Management: Theory, Systems, and Industrial Applications. Springer Verlag UK, 2013, ISBN 978-1-4471-4865-4 .
  • RM Müller, H.-J. Lenz: Business Intelligence. Springer Vieweg, Berlin / Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-35559-2 .
  • M. Seiter: Business Analytics - Effective use of advanced algorithms in corporate management. Vahlen, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-8006-5370-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Klumbies: business analysis . Create the data basis for decisions. July 4, 2012, accessed December 16, 2017 .
  2. ^ N. Dedić, C. Stanier: Measuring the Success of Changes to Existing Business Intelligence Solutions to Improve Business Intelligence Reporting . In: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing . tape 268 . Springer International Publishing, 2016, p. 225-236 .
  3. ↑ Business Intelligence . In: Kompakt-Lexikon Wirtschaftsinformatik . Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-658-03028-5 , p. 19 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-658-03029-2_2 ( springer.com [accessed on August 28, 2018]).
  4. ^ HP Luhn : A Business Intelligence System . In: IBM Journal . October 1958 (English, altaplana.com [PDF; 616 kB ; accessed on December 16, 2017]).
  5. ^ Institute for Business Intelligence: Understanding of Business Intelligence ( Memento from July 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Accessed August 12, 2014.
  6. ↑ How can a BI strategy be formulated and implemented? Blog post by Tim Uhlenkamp.
  7. ↑ Dr. Christian Schäfer: HowTo: Data Warehouse. In: Business Intelligence: A Brief History of Big Data and Smart Algorithms. Netzwirtschaft, September 1, 2017, accessed on December 17, 2018 .
  8. ↑ BI market defies the crisis, grows by 8 percent in 2009, 2010 press release Business Application Research Center (BARC) July 1, 2010
  9. ↑ Oracle buys Hyperion for $ 3.3 billion Heise.de news from March 1, 2007. Accessed July 14, 2014
  10. ↑ SAP buys Business Objects for 4.8 billion euros Golem.de on October 8, 2007. Accessed: July 14, 2014
  11. ↑ Cognos buys BI provider Applix Computerwoche.de on September 13, 2007. Accessed July 14, 2014
  12. ↑ IBM buys Cognos Heise.de on November 12, 2007. Accessed: July 14, 2014
  13. ↑ computerwoche.de
  14. ^ Vista Equity Partners Completes Acquisition of TIBCO Software. In: Tibco Software Inc. December 5, 2014, accessed December 16, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Open Text Buys Actuate Corporation. In: Opentext. January 16, 2015, accessed December 16, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Thomas Drilling, Nico Litzel: Hitachi Data Systems takes over Pentaho. June 15, 2015, accessed December 19, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Thomas Cloer: Hitachi Data Systems buys Pentaho. February 11, 2015, accessed December 19, 2017 .
  18. ↑ Luenendonk market sample 2014: The market for specialized business intelligence standard software providers in Germany.Accessed : October 22, 2014.
  19. ↑ Infomotion GmbH. infomotion.de (accessed on July 6, 2015)
  20. ↑ Norbert Gronau, Corinna Fohrhol: Competitive factor analytics - determining maturity levels, discovering economic potential. In: Competitive factor analytics. Status, potential, challenge; Research study 2012. Gito-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-942183-75-8 .
  21. ↑ Kristine Fredriksson: Guest Editorial. Data Discovery - BI in the age of apps and social media. In: Newsletter issue 72. Wolfgang Martin Team, July 2011, archived from the original on May 28, 2016 ; accessed on December 16, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Business Analytics Tools. Retrieved February 22, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Ignatz Schels: Business Intelligence with Excel , Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-446-45711-9 .