What is Business Intelligence Reporting?

Discover how data & analytics driven BI reporting impacts your business

The term Business intelligence (BI) reporting can be used while referring to a variety of cases. It can range from data-driven reports, embedded analytics and even interactive dashboards. 

Long-term strategy is pivotal when planning and implementing any BI strategy. As an example, sometimes static reports may require a mechanism to notify you when KPIs pass a certain threshold. This function may necessitate the usage of interactive dashboards. These dashboards may further necessitate the need for full-fledged BI reporting mechanisms.

Highlights

  • What is Business Intelligence Reporting?
  • Benefits of BI reporting
  • Types of BI reporting tools
  • How UBIQ can help you enhance BI reporting


What is Business Intelligence Reporting

Business intelligence reporting is the process of amalgamating data from various sources through a mix of software tools to accurately identify useful insights. 

BI reporting comprises a predefined set of functions using a BI software. Based on the set of selected parameters, BI reporting begins the process of amalgamating and checking the relevant data.

Using this data, it serves to provide valuable suggestions and actionable insights to positively impact business decisions. 


Benefits of BI reporting

There are numerous advantages a business can gain if their BI reporting strategy is optimized. Afterall, the main goal of any efficient BI reporting mechanism is to deliver qualitative & accurate data that can then be easily utilized to provide actionable insights. 

Listed below are a few examples of BI reporting

  1. Enhances workflow speed & efficiency

There are scenarios wherein managers and important stakeholders of a business are left waiting for actionable insights from comprehensive BI reports. These reports usually arrive from the IT department or other SQL developers. Such compartmentalized processes can often take numerous days which delays the process of executing actionable insights and decision-making. A better way around this is to centralize all data sources into a singular point of access for all technical and non-technical users in the organization. An efficient BI tool can help here by analyzing data and presenting it in an understandable manner to non-tech savvy users. 


  1. Utilization of real time data

Traditional means of reporting are functionally unable to comprehend and utilize vast amounts of data in an efficient and timely manner. For example, a report written as a word document will be unable to provide as much usable and actionable data when compared to data with real-time analysis. BI reporting can successfully utilize such real-time analysis to provide useful suggestions, even warn in case of any business anomaly. Such an efficient reporting system not only increases efficiency but also serves to decrease costs. 


  1. Optimization of operational processes

BI reports are not limited to simply tracking data. Efficient BI reporting includes forecasting based on predictive analytics that enable making informed business decisions in a timely manner. It serves to accumulate and analyze data into quantifiable inputs that would have otherwise been overlooked.


Types of BI reporting tools

  1. Dashboards

Dashboards help to succinctly identify relevant data and then showcase it in an easy-to-understand manner. This is especially important for business owners and decision making heads who spend a large chunk of their time analyzing data over spreadsheets. An efficient dashboard tool can help expedite the analysis process by highlighting the important points. 


  1. Predictive analytics

There is a certain degree of risk involved in all business processes. However, this can be mitigated to some extent by appropriate utilization of predictive analytics of BI reporting. With predictive analytics, businesses can let predictive models simulate a myriad of permutations and combinations of the results of an idea before it is implemented. This also provides a greater understanding of the risk vs reward factor associated with those ideas to help the decision making process.


  1. Data Exploration 

Some tools are able to accurately extract actionable data but are ill-equipped to categorize it. Similarly, while some other tools may be able to categorize data well, they may be unable to source actionable data as effectively as their competitors. A proper balance between these two factors is critical In the era of business intelligence. Efficient BI reporting tools with their autonomous processes, data discovery and exploration tools allow businesses to scrutinize their processes through a smarter lens.


How UBIQ can help you enhance BI reporting

BI Reporting Tools like Ubiq allow its users to create interactive dashboards easily. It also allows them to create detailed reports with actionable insights in a timely manner. Ubiq serves as a full-fledged self-service analytics & Business Intelligence reporting tool for your business. It allows you to analyze, retrieve and monitor data. The efficient categorization and allocation of data allow the decision makers to make informed choices efficiently. That’s not all, Ubiq amalgamates data from multiple sources and assimilates it into a singular report, it even has functionalities that allow its users to create interactive reports that imbibe a variety of visualizations. Ubiq allows seamless collaboration between teams using its Business Intelligence reporting, this in addition to providing the tools to quantify business processes, performance and miscellaneous factors that affect your businesses.

Also read: Everything you need to know about BI Reporting Tools

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Sreeram Sreenivasan is the Founder of Ubiq. He has helped many Fortune 500 companies in the areas of BI & software development.