Business Intelligence and Analytics Assignment

The assignment provided is a comprehensive study guide on business intelligence and analytics. It includes a list of references from various academic sources, such as journals, books, and conference proceedings. The study guide covers topics related to business intelligence and analytics, including its importance, key concepts, theories, and practices. It also provides information on how to use business intelligence and analytics in organizations, including the role of business intelligence systems in organizational knowing. The assignment is likely intended for students taking a course or module on business intelligence and analytics.

Business Intelligence

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 Examine, using examples, the terms ‘Business Process’ and ‘Supporting Processes’..........1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
P2 Compare the types of support available for business decision-making at varying levels
within an organisation..................................................................................................................3
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................5
P3 Business intelligence and the tools and techniques associated with it...................................5
P4 Design a business intelligence tool, application or interface that can perform a specific task
to support problem solving or decision making..........................................................................6
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................7
P5 How business intelligence tools can contribute to effective decision making.......................7
P6 Legal issues involved in the secure exploitation of business intelligence tools.....................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFRENCES.................................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Business intelligence consider as a technology driven process which used to analysing
data and presenting actionable information (Ang and Van Dyne, 2015). Mainly, it comprises the
strategies implement by the company with the purpose for analysing the data of business
information. Along with this, it also provide historical, current and predictive views associated
with business operation. By this manager of the company can easily take right decision in order
to drives profitable business actions. It also plays a key role in the strategic planning process of
the company which may lead in enhancing the chances of attaining set target in appropriate time
frame. The main purpose of business intelligence is to support the better decision making that
may contribute in attaining strategic objectives in an appropriate way. Present report is based on
H&M, is a multinational company has also known for its fast-fashion clothing in men, women,
teenagers and children. The main purpose of this company to enhance their brand image by
serving quality services to its customers. Report will cover business process and supporting
processes that support in taking strategic decision within the organization. Along with this,
Business intelligence tools and techniques is also mentioned in this project. At last, legal issues
involved in the secure exploitation of business intelligence tools is also discussed here.
TASK 1
P1 Examine, using examples, the terms ‘Business Process’ and ‘Supporting Processes’
Business intelligence refers to variety of software which used to analyse raw data of
business organization. Mainly, it include data mining, business reporting and online analytical
processing which help business organization to keep track of information (Clark, 2016). The
main aim of company to use intelligence software is to evaluate what items within the business is
needed to changed because they are not sell items effectively. This type of business intelligence
system help workers to modify their practices accordingly with the of improved overall
performance among the sales team. This will directly contribute in enhancing efficiency level of
the company. In context of H&M, company also use BI with the aim of attaining competitive
advantage in market place by changing their products which is not sell well. By this company
can easily attract new customers towards its offerings and at the same time also attain their set
market target.
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Business process play a significant role in organization it used as a method of collection
of related activities and task that help in accomplishing the predetermined organizational goals
and objectives. Mainly, it occur at all the level of the company through which manager of the
company can easily take right decision and improve the efficiency level of the firm at market
place. In addition of this, business process is related with management that govern the operations
of a system, operation that constitute the core business of the organization in order to create the
primary values for the company, supporting that includes accounting and technical support. All
these process are directly contribute in making activities of the company more effective and
appropriate. This will directly contribute in enhancing the profitability level of the firm and at the
same time also established competitive advantage. In context of H&M, there are some effective
example of business process that includes by company are Invoicing, Shipping products,
Receiving orders, Updating personnel data and determining marketing and other budgets.
Supporting process is an activity as well as function that support day to day operational
activities such as accounting, communications, maintenance, sales and many more of business
organization. Mainly, it do not directly create products and services but at the same time it is
important to facilitate as well as execute the operating and management process that can help in
improving the overall activities of the company (Côrte-Real, Oliveira and Ruivo, 2017). The
example of supporting process for H&M is that support entire operating process like supply
procurements, replenishment of inventory and maintenance of machine used in the organization
to manage its activities. Apart from this, example of process that help management process such
as finance, administrative, sales, human resource and accounting as well. All these are put their
positive impact on managing as well as analysing business operation activities in systematic
manner that directly contribute in accomplishing competitive advantage at market from its rivals.
In H&M, management team play a significant role in managing data and information that
help in effectively implementing the business process. With the assistance of meaningful
information company can easily solve the problem and make effective decision making. In this,
business intelligence is also evolved from the technologies that may contribute in ensuring that
an end goal of delivering of products to a customer is accomplished successfully. By this
company improve their overall performance level at market place. For managing business
processes, company use databases software which helps in collecting as well as storing
intelligence (Duan and Xiong, 2015). As it provide file creation, data entry, update, query and
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reporting functions. This type of software is known by databases management system which
used for storing, modifying, extracting and searching for information with the database.
Furthermore, database software provides a graphical interface that help user to create edit and
manage data in a tabular or organized manner. With the assistance of this, H&M can easily
improve their performance by reducing the chances of arising any kind of error within the
operational activities. In this context, there are some advantage and disadvantage of Database
software for H&M. These can be understood by following points:
 Improve data sharing:
 Improve decision making:
On the other side, some drawback of Data base software for company that negatively
impact on the overall performance of the company at market place.
TASK 2
P2 Compare the types of support available for business decision-making at varying levels within
an organisation
Management of an organisation are required to make meaningful decision regarding different
business operation, formation of future strategy and implement techniques that help to attain the
long term financial sustainability and achieve future goals (Dudyc and Korczak, 2016).
Successful strategic business choices unite the correct resources for the correct markets at the
ideal time. Thus it is stated that timing is essential. For instance, Tesco built up its web based
requesting and delivering services as online shopping extended in recent year. Virgin sold off its
music stores as downloading music turned out to be progressively well known that support to
capture huge market in short time. Therefore it is responsibility of manager at different level in
H&M to make use of appropriate and accurate tool that support in effective decision making and
aid to improve the overall profitability. It is also stated that management at each level which
includes operational, tactical and strategic levels to have sufficient knowledge about business
intelligence tool used in order to draw beneficial decision so that entire functioning of company
can be managed and run in an appropriate manner. It can result in generating more value of
output increasing profit ratio, expanding brand value at global level and attain long term
financial sustainability so that they can survive for long in competitive environment.
Levels of decision making
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Manager of H&M make decisions at different levels with the support of assorted tool that
are discussed below:
Strategic level: It is observed that strategic choices or decision are made for long term as per
there impact. They influence and shape the heading of the entire business and are taken by upper
level manager (Krawatzeck and Dinter, 2015). The Manager makes use of authentic tool such as
Decision Matrix and SWOT Analysis to make meaningful judgement. This is because long
period estimations of business turnover set against likely economic situations, availability of
internal resources etc. With the support of decision matrix tool manager of respective company
use to critically analyse the resources available and make proper plans and set specific objective.
Effective planning supports them to increase sales and attain the desired objective. SWOT
analyse support manager of H&M to closely examine the actual strength, weaknesses, threat and
opportunities so that they can diversify their business and launch a product that is different from
other companies in same industry.
 Tactical level: Decision made at tactical level help to actualize the strategy. They are
normally made by middle level administration. For the H&M, a decision related to
tactical would be whether to open additional discount on sales of certain amount approx.
500 or gives extra coupon for some cafes that support to attract large number of new
clients at attain the competitive advantage in this dynamic business world. In order to do
so management are required to have proper research through internet that help to explore
information related to various discount schemes already implemented by other
companies.
 Operational level: These kinds of decision are helpful identify with the everyday
running of the business. In H&M manage at upper and middle level make this kind of
decision with the support of T-Chart tool. With the support of this tool manager are able
to compare the prices of different men and women’s cloth offered by them with other
option available in market. In case if company products are not able to attract large
customer manager make decision to reduce prices or position their product with unique
quality so that sales can be increased within a specific period of time.
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TASK 3
P3 Business intelligence and the tools and techniques associated with it.
In present scenario, the term business intelligence incorporates instruments and systems, for the
change of raw information into significant and net worthy data so that proper business
investigations are made to make meaningful changes (Laudon and Laudon, 2015). Each actual
industry has incredible exchange oriented frameworks, that stores the information assembled
from day by day activities into proper place so that decision are made at any point of time. In
present time company operating business through online portal is needed to stay competitive
manager are required to the capacity to rediscover and use the data they as of now hold.
Therefore the BI comes into pictures as management at any level in companies like H&M can
get bits of knowledge from a pool of information accessible, conveying careful, actionable and
practically constant contributions to take useful decision. There are large numbers of advantages
of BI to H&M such as:
 Empowered the staff member and employees to improve the bottom line of company.
 Reduce the stress of micromanaging for manager.
 Improve the quality of data conversation by focusing on actual facts and figures rather
than subjective expression.
 Help the manager to test an action rapidly to improve the sales volume and generate huge
profit margin.
 It supports to store the overall history related to business transaction so that future
decision are made with proper prediction.
 The main crucial support H&M to react fast and make effective solution ion case if any
problem arises.
In recent time, the concept of BI has emerged with the fast pace because of its unique feature that
aid manager to analyse the past information and make decision for future. The basic need of BI
is:
 Breaking down of huge lot of information to give verifiable, current and predictive
perspectives on the business activities happing within an organisation (Laursen and
Thorlund, 2016).
 To help business choices from activities to strategic.
 To process on-going information and create powerful business systems.
 Simple translation of unstructured information and utilizing it to help choices.
Business intelligence software comprises various essential tools that support an organisation
to make possible value for future use from big data. These tools are vital to powerful estimation
by making use of key execution indicators and measurements over all dimensions of business
firms, in all enterprises. BI instruments enable organizations to see both Historical and current
information in context, which authorizes to take better basic decision as well as anticipation
improvement depending upon the objective of entity. Some examples of business intelligence
technologies include data warehouses or mining, dashboards, Descriptive and predictive analysis
that are used in H&M to support their internal process and make effective decision for better
future and development. These are discussed below:
Data mining or warehousing: It is a procedure for gathering and overseeing information
from varied sources to give significant business experiences. It is a mix of innovations and
segments which permits the key utilization of information (Olszak, 2016). It is electronic
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capacity of a large amount of data within an organisation which is intended for inquiry and
investigation rather than exchange processing. It is a procedure of changing information into data
and making it accessible to user in an opportune way to make any differences. It mainly has three
different types that ease the process of decision making for manager such as:
 Enterprise Data Warehouse: It is a unified distribution warehouse in an enterprise. It gives
choice and help manager over the venture. It offers a bound together methodology for
sorting out and representing information. In addition it also give the capacity to characterize
information as indicated by the subject and give access according to the different divisions
in company.
 Operational Data Store: It is likewise called ODS, that only store information and make
required for manager when neither Data warehouse nor OLTP frameworks support
companies reporting requirements. In ODS, Data warehouse is invigorated continuously and
is generally favoured for routine exercises like putting records of the employees that reduces
the chances of conflicts.
 Data Mart: It is a subset of the data warehouse which is specially designed for a particular
line of business, such as sales, finance, sales or finance. In an independent data mart, data
can collect directly from sources.
Descriptive analysis: This kind of analysis fundamentally manages inside information within an
organisation and check what actually it holds. It manages examining datasets and driving bits of
knowledge for manager to deal with any types of problems. But at the same time it doesn't able
to manage with the correct solution to resolve a specific issue. In short, it helps in portray and
understand the highlights of a particular informational collection by giving short particulars
about the sample and proportions of the information (Murphy, 2016). The most perceived sorts
of descriptive measurements are the mean, middle, and mode, which are utilized at practically all
dimensions of math and insights. In any case, there are less-normal kinds of expressive
measurements that are still imperative.
Predictive Analysis: This kind of analysis is a type of advance examination that utilizes
both new and recorded information to estimate various activities, conduct and patterns within an
organisation. It includes applying measurable analysis methods, explanatory questions and
artificial intelligence calculations to informational set to make prescient models that place a
numerical esteem or score on the probability of a specific occasion occurring.
From, the above described main tool of BI the management of H&M uses these tools to
properly analyse the current market trends, customer actuals needs and desire, examine the last
year sales and overall profitability (Sangari and Razmi, 2015). It helps them to make effective
decision and make a backup plan so that future situation are managed and control in an
appropriate manner and sales can be improved. Manager mainly uses the software of predictive
analysis so that overall productivity can be analysed and various modelling techniques can be
applied in order to increase the productiveness and improve the profit within a specific time
frame.
P4 Design a business intelligence tool, application or interface that can perform a specific task to
support problem solving or decision making
Different business tools are beneficial for companies to make effective plans so that a
particular task can be adopted in order to resolve issues and improve decision making process. In
a online trading such as H&M are required to make effective use of specific BI tool that support
the entire functioning and make favourable result. For example company online portal is
becoming out dated and for a long time customer are not visiting the webpages or they do not
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buy any product. That is consider to be a serious problem for company has it will reduces profit
ration and diminish global image.
Manager of H&M are required to make proper use of Data Mining Business intelligence tool that
will support to have proper research and plan in significant manner to reduce the problems. With
the help of this tool manager arte able to analyse the effective sales strategy, quality of cloths and
other promotional activity used by other companies operating business within same industry. As
a result company can reduce the manufacturing cost and lower the selling prices by making use
of pricing strategy that will help them to increase sales over a specific period of time
(Schlesinger and Rahman, 2016). Manager can also applies product positioning schemes in
market that gives better option for customer to make proper use of these product. At last in order
to modify their web pages manager could tie up with different bloggers so that attractive
promotional advertisement can divert customer towards their cloths and other useful product.
These all strategy help company to overcome serious problem and increase sales and attain
competitive advantage.
TASK 4
P5 How business intelligence tools can contribute to effective decision making
In recent time the use of business intelligence tool has evolved very much because of the
authenticity it provide ion decision making and it also help to reduce the manger level. There are
numerous BI devices accessible that are made to help the successful basic decision making in
business operating its operation either physical or online. A portion of the focuses are assessing
using dashboards and reports, single parts that are not really related, increment the coherency
between the instruments, Selecting and executing utilizing AD Hoc query, consider the
possibility and forecasting, Designing and investigating utilizing interactive examination and
data mining, Collecting data using dashboards and reports are the main and the basic tool that
support the manager within an organisation to make meaningful decision for future successes
and growth (Smits, Pivert and Yager, 2016). These instruments mainly help in recognizing the
lacking points of business and hold the entire spread information which can help in
understanding the need of the business. They helps in understanding that what procedure can be
connected in the business to influence it to develop and pick up benefit. In H&M it is very
essential for manager to make proper use of these tool as it support them to analyse the last year
profit, sales during current and last month, current preferences of customer and the actual trends
within market. Therefore they can make meaningful decision such as lower prices for product
that are not making enough sales for company. Add some different features in their clothing
pattern so that more number of customer are attracted or provide additional voucher schemes that
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help them to grow sales for the periods and attain the competitive advantages. There are some
other benefits of business intelligence tool for H&M that are discussed below:
 Personalize sales strategy and anticipate objections: It enable the manager of
respective company to have a close research on the sales strategy of other online cloths
selling company. It aid them to be more prepared for their objections and personalize
companies sales polices in order to increase sales and achieve desired objectives.
 Track inventory and capitalize on trends: Various tools of BI support H&M to track
their inventories actually where it is located and how well it is selling. It makes the easy
for manager as they weather goods are delivered to the right customer or not. Thus,
proper investigation gives this understanding to purchasers and administrators so they can
gain by purchasing patterns."
Build brand in a competitive, complex retail environment: In the context to H&M
marketing, great business intelligence is the information that empowers advertisers to design and
respond quicker and all with the more proficiently, all through the decision making process
(Shollo and Galliers, 2016). This information enables permits expert sales manager to discover
innovative methods for developing the business through activities like cross-promotion
techniques with supplementing product categories.
 Get a single, consolidated view of your customers: "Business insight tools are
approaching all crucial business information of H&M in a particular unified dashboard.
This can incorporate buyer information from CRM framework, email marketing, and
online site that are tracked in data management platform. The other tools such as
Intercom.io helps to hold the information of customer chat with subordinates of H&M so
that manager can have a complete view on customer feedback and problems and make
effective decision.
P6 Legal issues involved in the secure exploitation of business intelligence tools
In present business scenario, it is observed that different tools of BI are helping the manager at
different level to make useful decision and figure out the best possible solution to the problems
that can increase the overall performance (Struhl 2015). But at the same time there are large
numbers of problems that are because of business intelligence tool. It is consider to be one of the
biggest threat to companies as it could leak important information to rivalry operating same
business and also explore other hidden companies legal documents. Some of the legal issues
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involved in the security exploitation of BI tools to H&M that can hinder their production,
reduces profitability are discussed below:
 Delivering self-service reporting/ analysis: It is one of the main problems with out-
dated BI tools, which is that they very much complicated to use and only few employees
in H&M are habitual to make use of them and produce report and company have fear that
these people can leak useful information to other companies. As a result bottlenecks can
rapidly from around these individuals that reduce the overall productivity. Therefore
there is an urgent need to investigate in self-service business intelligence tools that
support management of H&M to overcome these blocks. It has also been observed that
organisations that democratise the use of these tools across the business and focus to
become more user-friendly are able to attain a meaningfully advanced ROI on their
investment as a result.
 Reporting/ analysing across multiple systems: Many organizations such as H&M
nowadays effectively gather a great lot of information that are completed related to their
business activities. The issue is that this information is regularly spread over a wide range of
frameworks and programming, which makes it hard to unite. Information might be put away
in different ERP frameworks, CRMs and Excel spread sheets. So it is stated that with
information spread over numerous frameworks, getting at the data that is actually needed can
be time consuming and confusing. This also hampers the manager work as they cannot
achieve the truth information to make meaningful decision. Removing information from
these various source and bringing it into a unified information data warehouse are consider to
be more effective and easier for H&M to make reliable solution (Wang, 2016).
 Unlocking data buried in systems: In large companies manager have knowledge about the
data and the place where it is stored but this does not really imply that it is effectively
available. Getting at the data actually required by the manager of H&M when it is needed can
be an incredibly difficult procedure because the information is covered in complex
frameworks and programming. For example last sales are recorded in SPSS that is only
readable in Window software so to analyse it at a specific point of time can be painful for
audit manager. So to get real data manager of H&M make use of ETL process.
 With Cloud BI, on the other hand, there is a fixed price set-up fee, and all ongoing costs are
all covered under the price of your monthly subscription.
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 Reducing the cost of producing reports: In respective company there are numerous regions
of the business, with regards to reporting, it is essential that manager have look on expenses.
It is in this way nothing unexpected to see that 'lessening the expense of delivering reports'
was observed to be the fourth greatest BI challenge. This is also considering being greatest
legal issues of security exploitation that could reduce the overall performance. With Cloud
BI, then again, there is a repaired value set expense, and every progressing expense is
altogether secured under the cost of your month to month membership.
CONCLUSION
The above report, concludes that business intelligence are significant to compelling
estimation using key execution pointers and measurements over all dimensions of an association,
in all enterprises. BI tools enable organizations to see both recorded and current information in
setting, which empowers better basic leadership and additionally expectation improvement
relying upon your business targets. There are different tools that support and provide strength to
the internal process of company. Tools such as data mining, descriptive and predictive analysis
used by the manager at various level within an organisation to figure out effective plans and pass
meaning full judgements to improve the profitability and entire performance.
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REFRENCES
Books and Journals
Ang, S. and Van Dyne, L., 2015. Handbook of cultural intelligence. Routledge.
Clark, R. M., 2016. Intelligence analysis: a target-centric approach. CQ press.
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Dudycz, H. and Korczak, J., 2016. Process of ontology design for business intelligence system.
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agile business intelligence actions by means of a catalog and a selection
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Firm Plus MyMISLab with Pearson eText--Access Card Package. Prentice Hall Press.
Laursen, G .H. and Thorlund, J., 2016. Business analytics for managers: Taking business
intelligence beyond reporting. John Wiley & Sons.
Murphy, C., 2016. Competitive intelligence: gathering, analysing and putting it to work.
Routledge.
Olszak, C. M., 2016. Toward better understanding and use of Business Intelligence in
organizations. Information Systems Management. 33(2). pp.105-123.
Sangari, M. S. and Razmi, J., 2015. Business intelligence competence, agile capabilities, and
agile performance in supply chain: An empirical study. The International Journal of
Logistics Management. 26(2). pp.356-380.
Schlesinger, P. A. and Rahman, N., 2016. Self-service business intelligence resulting in
disruptive technology. Journal of Computer Information Systems. 56(1). pp.11-21.
Shollo, A. and Galliers, R. D., 2016. Towards an understanding of the role of business
intelligence systems in organisational knowing. Information Systems Journal. 26(4).
pp.339-367.
Smits, G., Pivert, O. and Yager, R. R., 2016, July. A soft computing approach to agile business
intelligence. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) (pp.
1850-1857). IEEE.
Struhl, S., 2015. Practical text analytics: Interpreting text and unstructured data for business
intelligence. Kogan Page Publishers.
Wang, C. H., 2016. A novel approach to conduct the importance-satisfaction analysis for
acquiring typical user groups in business-intelligence systems. Computers in Human
Behavior. 54. pp.673-681.
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