Most companies now see the value of mining through data to find useful statistics and trends. Company leaders use these trends to make profitable decisions. For example, a supermarket manager might notice that more people buy salsa when the salsa is placed right next to the tortilla chips. This makes sense, but the manager may not have thought of it until they saw the actual data. The act of mining through data to find information is known as business intelligence.
Keeping all of your data organized requires a lot more work than you might think. It requires a solid foundation and good structure. The way you organize your data is known as the business intelligence architecture of your company. Each company is organized differently, but here are four common components of most companies’ BI architecture.
- (1) A sales system or database. When a customer buys something, he leaves behind important information. Information like customer name, address, phone number, and purchasing habits can be tracked in a sales operating system. Knowing information about your customers is often the key difference between success and failure.
- (2) An accounting system. This is where all the important accounting information of a company is kept. Information on revenues and expenses are kept in this system.
- (3) A manufacturing system. If your company actually creates physical products, then chances are you are going to have a database that keeps track of everything. There is a lot of information that travels through a manufacturing warehouse. You have your raw materials, your work-in-process materials, and your finished goods. Having a good system here will ensure that you don’t have shrinkage from employee theft or carelessness.
- (4) The business intelligence front end. This is a key part of your business intelligence architecture. The front end usually refers to some form of software that you use to access the information. It is a computer program that you use to go through and organize all the data into understandable reports.
If any one of these four parts is missing or not functioning properly, then this can cause considerable damage to your business. For example, if your sales database isn’t functioning properly, this means you won’t be able to access information on customer purchasing habits. If you don’t know what your customers are buying, then you are going to have a hard time selling things to them. In order to get the most out of your data, you need a good, solid business intelligence architecture.