Business Intelligence Applications

In today's world many organizations identify opportunities to use business intelligence (BI) and analytics to monitor how the organization is progressing towards achieving goals and to identify areas where an organization has capabilities to compete in the industry by entering new fields of business.

In this respect, BI and analytics have many practical applications in diverse industries such as government, finance, sports, retail, technology, marketing etc.,

• Sports:- Selecting Players, finding competitor weaknesses etc.,
• Healthcare:- Diagnosing illnesses, proposing treatments etc.,
• Government:- Homeland security, Crime prevention etc.,
• Marketing:- Segmenting customers, Cross selling etc.,

There are many types of BI applications that are used based on the industry. In this blog, I will discuss Finance, Supply chain and Risk management business intelligence applications.

Finance BI Applications:-

In this type, data comes from payroll, budgeting, general ledger, account payables, account receivables etc., Particularly trend analysis is useful to help organizations manage their expenses to budgets and detect issues. Some examples of BI applications are:

• Asset Management
• Budget Management
• Cost Management
• Overhead reduction analysis

For designing these applications, few fact tables that can be considered are Asset Balance Fact, Budget Line Fact, Payment Fact, etc., Similarly, few dimension tables could be Date dimension, Facility Dimension, Geographic Area (Hierarchical Dimension).  Few metrics that go into the fact table are Asset balance amount, budget amount, payment amount etc.,

Supply Chain BI Applications:-

The analysis of data provides information for suppliers, manufacturers, transporters, wholesalers and retailers. The data comes from various sources such as procurement, inventory, and manufacturing systems.

Some supply chain BI examples are:-

• Supplier performance analysis
• supply chain forecasting and planning
• supply chain optimization
• Inventory & Sales analysis

For designing these applications, few fact tables that can be considered are Shipment Fact, Billing Fact, Procurement Fact, Inventory Snapshot/Transaction fact etc., In addition to the dimension tables listed in the Finance BI application, there are few additional tables that could be considered here. They are - Supply Chain partner dimension, Commodity dimension, Work order dimension, Shipment order dimension.  Few metrics that go into the fact table are Inventory balance amount, Procurement lead time, Manufacturing lead time, Unit production cost etc.,

Risk Management BI Applications:-

This encompasses various applications such as evaluating credit risks, scoring risks and detecting fraud. The data comes from various banking systems, customer data, credit unions and financial data.

Some risk management BI examples are :-

• Fraud detection
• Credit risk analysis
• Hedging analysis

Hence, BI space is growing day-by-day and its use in various industries for analyzing data and benefits from the analysis are proving advantageous for organizations to adapt to them quickly.

Readings:-
The Analytical Puzzle: Profitable Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and Analytics by David Haertzen