Analysis of Business Intelligence Functionality for Brentford College

This report delves into the realm of business intelligence (BI) and its practical application within the context of Brentford College. It begins by exploring the fundamental concepts of business processes and the mechanisms that support effective decision-making, emphasizing the importance of strategic choices in organizational success. The report then transitions to a discussion of various BI features, such as ranking reports, what-if analysis, executive dashboards, interactive reports, and pivot tables, highlighting their utility in data analysis and trend identification. The core of the report examines the information systems available to Brentford College, specifically focusing on the Decision Knowledge Center and the Business Vision statement, and how these tools can be leveraged to improve business processes and achieve organizational goals. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the subject matter, offering valuable insights into the practical application of BI in a real-world setting.

Running head: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FUNCTIONALITY
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FUNCTIONALITY
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Executive Summary
Business Process is one of the most important things to consider while managing a business.
Business process defines the methodologies and mechanisms needed to make important business
decisions. This report will discuss about the different BI features and how they can help to
improve the Brentford College by analyzing their datasets and identifying new trends and give
them vision.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Different systems used in business decision making....................................................................3
Key features of Business Intelligence..........................................................................................4
Information systems available to Brentford College...................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Making business decisions is a very important aspect of managing and growing a
company. Business decisions play a critical role in any organization as these decisions can either
make or break the organization. In Brentford College, the business decisions is mainly related to
administration, human resources and student body. In an organization following the matrix
structure, the company is divided into sections and each sections follows its own decision
making process. This report states all the above mentioned subjects and explains them in detail.
Discussion
Different systems used in business decision making
In our scenario, the college administration sets a target before the deans of the college to
generate revenues via research or more student intake. Deciding the target is up to the
administration body. Each department in the college has a separate dean and the deans in turn
asks each of the department to conduct new researches or find potential students. The decision to
distribution of the funds is decided by the respective deans. Then each department makes their
own decisions regarding the allocation of the funds to the students, the types of researches to be
conducted and looking up potential students. Thus each level is given a chance to make their
own decisions. The business intelligence mechanisms used here can be anything from Decision
knowledge center to Enterprise resource planning. These systems could be effectively used by
Brentford college to reduce decision making complexity as the flow of the processes would be
streamlined using these tools. This will make decision making faster and more accurate. ERP can
be used by the whole college organization from the administration to the individual departments.
The decision knowledge center or DKC is very useful to the individual departments as they will

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be able to analyze the data they collected and derive useful trends and insights from them. The
main benefit of the matrix system is that it enables each component of the organization to benefit
from the different decision making systems as each department is independent of the other
department. This can also lead to increased productivity and innovations due to lack of
constraints. The business vision statement is another important tool that should be set by the
college administration and should be followed by every staff and student of the college. It is the
statement that sets the goal of the college and what it wants to achieve in the future. This helps in
planning next decisions accordingly.
Figure 1 Difference between Business vision statement and business mission statement (Source: google images)

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Key features of Business Intelligence
The business intelligence has become useful during making important business decisions.
Business Intelligence technologies are about analyzing the current trends in the market and then
using the data collected to use in the company’s favor. In our case, the organization taken will be
Brentford College. These data can be used to make important strategic and tactical business
decisions. Business Intelligence tools are nowadays designed keeping in mind companies of all
sizes and budgets. They can help any company get insight of the collected data to grow the
business and bring in profits. In fact, many small to medium enterprises are increasingly using
business intelligence tools to increase their profits in this age of big data.
Business Intelligence can be effectively used by Brentford College to analyze the current
trend in the community, estimate where they are lacking and what changes are needed to be
implemented and then implement the improved strategies to get the desired results. The key
features of business intelligence are:
1. Ranking Reports. Example: The Brentford College can use this feature to highlight
their best and worst performing departments.
2. What if analysis. Example: Brentford college can use this feature to predict business
results of possible changes it is thinking of implementing.
3. Executive dashboards. Example: This important feature will give the Brentford
college management a overview of all its processes and the data it gathered in one frame with the
help of graphs and charts.

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4. Interactive reports. Example: Brentford College can make use fo this feature to
analyze the huge amount of data it gathered to find possible trends and anomalies by statistically
analyzing the data.
5. Pivot tables. Example: Pivot tables are massively useful as it can extract information
from raw data and arrange them in the form of meaningful charts and graphs. This feature can be
used to handle the unstructured data from the pool.
Figure 2 Some other business intelligence features (Source: google images)
Information systems available to Brentford College
The two information systems that can be used by Brentford college to help them better
their business processes are Data Knowledge center and Business Vision statement. The decision
knowledge center or DKC helps the organization leaders to make better business decisions by

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using a scalable and systematic decision-making process. It achieves that by using focused
visualizations, knowledge reuse and result oriented collaboration. It uses strategic decision
managing to speed up organizational learning. It uses a process to avoid common decision
making mistakes. It helps the in enabling true change management by using a connected decision
model. This helps in improving the operational aspect of the organization. Business vision
statement is nothing but the idea of what the Brentford College wants to achieve with the huge
amount of data they have collected. The people of the organization must also see the business
vision as their goal too.
Conclusion
To conclude, business vision statement details the future goal of the company. The vision
needs to be full filled and all the work done should be done keeping the vision in mind as the
ultimate goal. The DKC can be used to make the system more informatics and useful. The
statement defines the fundamental purpose and aspirations of the Brentford college management
and how they can achieve those goals. This can help in improving the tactical aspects of the
organization.

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References
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reader: Relentlessly practical tools for data warehousing and business intelligence remastered
collection. John Wiley & Sons.
Laguna, M. and Marklund, J., 2018. Business process modeling, simulation and design.
Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Larson, D. and Chang, V., 2016. A review and future direction of agile, business intelligence,
analytics and data science. International Journal of Information Management, 36(5), pp.700-
710.
Laursen, G.H. and Thorlund, J., 2016. Business analytics for managers: Taking business
intelligence beyond reporting. John Wiley & Sons.