The age of BI

We are living in a digital world; everyday life gets more and more dependent on our decisions that are based on digital information. We read the news on the Internet, check the weather forecast on a screen, and we also shop online.

As our everyday decisions are influenced and aided by the technology surrounding us, there is an increasing amount of data that has an impact on our behaviour as well. This also results in an increasing urge to filter this huge volume of data and pick out the needed, useful information. New challenges, for example the excessive amount of information available or dynamic surroundings all make sound decision-making more difficult for us.

According to an article published in the journal ‘Science’, humanity broadcasts an amount of data every day that is equivalent to distributing 174 newspapers’ worth of information to each inhabitant on Earth. Based on researchers’ estimates, 295 exabytes of data were generated between 2002 and 2007. If we burned this much data on CDs, the tower built of said CDs would be so high as to reach the Moon. (Source: Kreatív) 

Thus, it can be stated that business intelligence (BI) is the key to productive data analysis. It helps to make decision-making faster and more efficient for corporate and business managers, as well as other end-users.  Since BI includes all tools, applications and methods that can help organisations gather valuable information from internal and external sources, they can perform analyses, and through queries, they can share the analytics with corporate executives and operative employees.

Ultimately, BI systems – by optimising internal business processes – prevent us from getting lost in the enormous flow of data and aid us in keeping track of current trends in the market, solving the problems we face and eventually, gaining a competitive edge over competitors.