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5 Ways to Optimize Business Intelligence

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Pathways to Data Monetization (27-slide PowerPoint presentation). We are living in the Age of Data. Every company operating today is essentially a data company. However, only 1 inf 12 are monetizing data to its full extent. For organizations to achieve Data Monetization, there are 2 pathways they can take--one with an internal focus and the other with an [read more]

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Business intelligence (BI) is a process for turning data into insights that help organizations make more informed decisions. When done right, BI can help organizations improve their performance by better understanding their customers, markets, and operations.

There are many different ways to optimize business intelligence, but here are five of the most important.

Data Governance

Data governance is the process of ensuring that data is accurate, consistent, and compliant with regulations. It includes specifying roles and responsibilities for managing data, setting up processes and procedures for maintaining data quality, and enforcing compliance with policies and regulations.

Data governance resources are critical for ensuring that business intelligence is accurate and reliable. Organizations risk making decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete data without proper data governance, leading to wasted resources, lost opportunities, and reputational damage.

Businesses should implement a data governance framework to optimize the process of outlining roles and responsibilities, processes and procedures, and compliance requirements. Taking advantage of data governance resources is the key to solid business intelligence.

Master Data Management (MDM)

One fundamental way to optimize business intelligence is through master data management (MDM). MDM is the process of ensuring that all critical data is accurately captured, cleansed, and standardized. This includes customer data, product data, supplier data, and other types of critical business data.

MDM helps organizations improve the quality and accuracy of their data, which can lead to more accurate and reliable business intelligence. Master data is often used as a foundation for other BI initiatives, so ensuring that it is accurate and reliable is essential for getting the most out of BI.

MDM also helps organizations improve operational efficiency by standardizing data collection and processing. This can help businesses automate many routine tasks and improve the speed and accuracy of their decision-making.

Companies should consider implementing an MDM system if they are looking to advance their BI. MDM systems may assist firms in cleaning and standardizing their data, resulting in more accurate and reliable insights.

Data Quality Management

Data quality management ensures that data is accurate, complete, and free of errors. Poor data quality can lead to bad decision-making, so it’s important to put processes in place to ensure that data is of the highest quality. This can be achieved through data cleansing, validation, and enrichment.

Data quality management is essential for ensuring that business intelligence is accurate and informative. Organizations can avoid making decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete data by taking steps to improve data quality.

Organizations may want to use data quality management procedures to optimize business intelligence. These processes should include data cleaning, confirmation, and enrichment. Data quality management solutions may also automate these procedures and enhance their efficiency.

Data Integration

Data integration is the process of combining data from multiple sources into a single repository. This gives businesses a more holistic view of their operations and makes better-informed decisions. Data integration can be achieved through extract, transform, load (ETL) frameworks like Hadoop or Informatica.

Data integration is critical for business intelligence optimization because it gives businesses a complete picture of data. Organizations may make better-informed judgments by connecting data from many sources.

Data integration technologies and architectures may be used to improve business intelligence. These techniques and standards can help businesses combine data from many sources into a single repository.

Self-Service BI

Self-service BI refers to tools that allow users to access and analyze data without relying on IT staff or other experts. This empowers business users to promptly get the answers they need without being bottlenecked by IT resources. Popular self-service BI tools include Tableau and QlikView.

Self-service BI is a great way to optimize business intelligence because it enables users to get the answers they need quickly and efficiently. With self-service BI tools, businesses can avoid relying on IT staff for data analysis and get the insights they need on time.

Businesses can use self-service BI tools to enable their employees quick and efficient access to data. This way, they don’t have to rely on the IT department and can get the answers they need in a timely manner.

Conclusion

Business intelligence can be optimized in many ways, including master data management, quality management, integration, and self-service BI. Each method has its advantages and can help organizations improve their decision-making processes.

Organizations should implement a combination of methods that best suits their needs. However, all businesses can benefit from taking steps to improve their business intelligence.

Following the tips in this post, businesses can optimize their intelligence and make better-informed decisions.

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About Shane Avron

Shane Avron is a freelance writer, specializing in business, general management, enterprise software, and digital technologies. In addition to Flevy, Shane's articles have appeared in Huffington Post, Forbes Magazine, among other business journals.




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