More than 20 years ago, Gartner put forward the concept of business intelligence and defined it as "a type of technology and application that consists of data warehouse, query report, data analysis, data mining and other parts to help enterprises make decisions". Technically speaking, business intelligence is the comprehensive application of technologies such as data warehouse, OLAP and data mining, which can effectively integrate existing data, provide reports and decision-making basis quickly and accurately, and help enterprises make sensible business operation management decision making.
In foreign countries, business intelligence has been widely recognized by all walks of life. The products of large companies such as SAP and ORACLE basically occupy most of the market of business intelligence software, and their functions are also integrated into ERP , CRM and other modules. And many large domestic enterprises have also begun to enjoy the huge benefits brought by business intelligence. However, for many small and medium-sized enterprises, the use of business intelligence software has been taking a wait-and-see attitude. First of all, its high cost plus configuration and post-maintenance costs have made it unbearable for many enterprises. Secondly, most of these foreign software systems are complex and require specialized training and learning for business personnel to get started, which increases training costs. Even if these software are finally bought, due to their incompatibility with other applications, the data resources cannot be fully utilized, and the cost performance is low.
However, in today's customer-first era, if an enterprise wants to develop further, it must realize that the analysis and insight of enterprise data are the beacon that drives the growth of the enterprise. The existing data must be processed quickly and in real time to guide subsequent decision-making operations. .
In response to this dilemma, enterprises are not helpless, and the second choice is the business intelligence SAAS system, which can also realize the intelligent courtesy of enterprise data. It should adopt the innovative model of platform + module, which can avoid enterprises to build servers and install software independently, and only need to use the shared services provided by the platform, which is the so-called "as-a-service" model. This method is flexible and open, and enterprises can customize the required functional modules according to their own needs and enjoy customized business intelligence services, which can greatly reduce the cost of informatization construction and help small and medium-sized enterprises embark on the road of business intelligence.
For such a business intelligence system, the author believes that the following needs should be met for small and medium-sized enterprises :
1. Unified platform system.
At present, many business intelligence software presents the characteristics of multi-architecture and multi-component, and the design is isolated from the interface. However, for small and medium-sized enterprises, due to its complexity, learning and management are difficult, and its practicality is not high for its business status. The business intelligence SAAS system for SMEs can adopt unified data management, application framework and user management. The information access of each application platform can be realized in one system to adapt to the current situation that the overall IT level of small and medium-sized enterprises is not strong.
2. Simple to implement and easy to use.
Considering the limitations of small and medium-sized enterprises' capital and labor costs, it is best for business personnel to get started quickly when using business intelligence, which requires business intelligence to also avoid the original manual data integration and association work, and provide a drag-and-drop method. The user-friendly operation interface enables ordinary users to reduce learning costs and conduct self-service analysis.
3. Service Oriented Architecture ( SOA )
The service-oriented architecture can shield the differences between different platforms, programming languages, operating systems and hardware architectures, and realize the simple integration of various applications. This also makes the flexibility of the IT system unprecedentedly improved, and the development cost is also reduced. After choosing the service-oriented architecture, the business intelligence SAAS system can be more easily integrated with the existing ERP system of small and medium-sized enterprises, and a personalized enterprise information portal can be constructed.
4. Powerful data analysis technology
Data analysis is the foundation. In order to meet the needs of the rapid development of enterprises, business intelligence needs to access data quickly, consistently and interactively to support complex analysis operations. Taking FineBl as an example, the use of its cube data storage can achieve full and incremental update of data at regular intervals, and it has an intelligent caching mechanism to avoid repeated calculations, which can avoid the time-consuming caused by continuous extraction of input data.
5. Smooth and rich visualization experience
The OLAP of the business intelligence SAAS system is a multi-dimensional analysis technology based on BI , which enables enterprise managers and decision makers to conduct self-service query analysis. Users can explore the value of data from multiple dimensions and various aspects. In terms of data display, in addition to basic chart display, GIS map integration, Dashbord technology and HTML 5 embedded development technology can improve the visualization function and add a lot to enterprise applications.
In the current era, business intelligence is the only way for enterprises to develop in the future. Due to its business agility, enhanced competitive advantage and customer interaction , SAAS system can quickly release the power of data in enterprise applications, and its utility will also affect enterprise optimization. Every aspect of operations is critical to the next wave of business innovation.