Business Intelligence Advantages

A Collections of Data and Things

 

Within seconds, a company executive in the U.S. can know exactly how many parts their global manufacturing plants are producing. A delivery company can tell you exactly to the minute when their truck will be arriving. A utility company can monitor usage across the country and know when it’s reaching a peak. All of this can be done because of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data.

The IoT is basically a collection of Internet - enabled devices or sensors, other than your computer, which are connected to the Internet and can send and receive data. Big data is what you get when all of this information is collected and analyzed.

Devices such as smartphones, scanners, sensors, and GPS can gather and distribute a lot of information. IoT technology allows the input from these devices to be pulled together.
Once it's all been collected, companies can utilize big data analytics tools to improve business operations, manage equipment and people, target marketing and make their business run more effectively and efficiently.

The IoT is forcing people and companies to change the way they look at things. Information is being funneled fast, in large amounts, structured and unstructured and from places we never thought we’d get information from. Refrigerators talking to smartphones for a shopping list, or fitness trackers measuring your burned calories, sensors sending vital health data to doctors to monitor their patient‘s health in real time, and anything else you can imagine. Vendors can then use that information for marketing directly to consumers or provide better and timely service. Inventory in stores could soon be reliant on just a sensor on a shelf that indicates when an item needs to be restocked.

The next step for businesses is to figure out how to make the most of the data pouring in from things like smart meters, devices, and sensors. How is this data going to affect your next business decision and how is it all going to be analyzed?

Companies need to plan for a continuing influx of data as more devices become connected and interconnected. You need the bandwidth to store data, the real-time analytical tools to analyze it, and the ability to monetize it and turn it into something profitable. Without a plan, you could be left behind.

 

Mashups: Making Comprehensive Reporting and Embedded Analytics a Reality

Mashups are the latest Internet buzzword.  Many experts are touting mashups as the best thing to ever happen to Web applications.  But what exactly is a mashup?  And, what will in mean to Web-based business intelligence in the years to come?

A mashup is sort of like a puzzle.  It’s a fully-interactive Web application that is “mashed up” from the best pieces of other Internet-based systems and data sources.  These components are combined to create entirely new services for end users.  An e-commerce site that allows buyers to calculate shipping costs by drawing directly from the functionality of US Postal Service’s Web application for shipping estimates represents a mashup in its simplest form.

Mashups have been around for quite a while, but have mostly been applied in consumer- or social networking-based environments.  The primary reason companies have been slow to embrace mashups are their potential for increased risk.

According to Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst and principal at ZapThink, a service orientation and enterprise Web 2.0 advisory firm, “clearly no business would risk allowing any of its employees to assemble and reassemble business processes willy nilly, with no controls in place.”  He stresses the importance of rigid corporate policies and strict governance – guidelines that most organizations currently have yet to implement.

Yet, the value of mashups is undeniable, and companies are quickly realizing that they provide a fast and highly effective way to build powerful new mission-critical Web applications, or add more robust functionality to their existing ones.

Mashups become particularly beneficial in the case of business intelligence, where they can extend reporting and analysis capabilities in ways that never before seemed possible.  With mashups, reporting applications can draw directly from any Web-based information source, providing richer and deeper insight by combining intelligence gathered from across the Web with data that resides in enterprise systems.  Or, a BI dashboard can be enhanced by incorporating elements of Google Maps or other Web applications into the environment, allowing end users to dynamically present report output through those vehicles.

But perhaps the greatest impact mashups will have is through their ability to enable IT staff to truly embed BI into other applications.  Through a mashup of various APIs, end users can conduct more detailed and comprehensive reporting directly from within a CRM or ERP application.  Or, report output can become fully embedded within automated workflow or business process management systems, where the generation of a report can dynamically trigger a subsequent event, based on its content.

Imagine this scenario: A warehouse employee pulls a product off the shelf, and logs the transaction in the company’s inventory management system.  An updated inventory report is automatically run each hour and sent to the warehouse manager via email.  However, the employee’s removal of the product has caused stock to dip below acceptable levels, and the warehouse manager is away from his desk, and therefore, unaware of the problem and unable to correct it.   With a mashup, that report – and the issue it indicates – can automatically and instantly trigger a re-order through the company’s purchasing system, replenishing inventory before customer orders go unfulfilled.

The benefits that can be achieved through the use of mashups, as well as the ways in which they can be applied to extend and enhance BI applications, are virtually unlimited.  With the correct policies and procedures in place, companies can fully leverage mashups to ensure that intelligence drives the most effective decision-making and process execution possible.