University Report: Business Intelligence and Predictive Analysis

This report provides an overview of business intelligence (BI) and predictive analysis, highlighting their significance in modern business operations. It explores the need for BI, emphasizing how it helps businesses manage overflowing data, overcome the limitations of spreadsheets, and integrate multiple data sources. The report then focuses on predictive analytics, presenting it as a future trend in big data and explaining its role in forecasting future incidents, mitigating risks, and capitalizing on opportunities. The benefits of predictive analysis, such as risk reduction, optimizing market campaigns, and improving operations, are also discussed. The conclusion reinforces the importance of BI and predictive analysis for handling data effectively and making informed decisions.

Running head: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS
Business Intelligence and Predictive Analysis
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS
Introduction
Technologies, applications and practices that are used in data collection, integration,
analysis and presentation of business information are cumulatively referred as business
intelligence (Chen, Chiang & Storey, 2012). It serves the purposes of supporting the manager to
take better decision for the business. It provides views on historical, present and predictive
business operations from the stored data.
Need for Business Intelligence
Recent businesses have identified various needs in their business for the integration of
business intelligence. Some of the significant needs are discussed below.
 Overflowing data – Company after integration of modern technologies in their business
is stocking a huge amount of data. However, unsorted data in the system is of no use to
the business owners. BI can potentially help the business in sorting their significant data
to provide a meaningful context.
 Incapability of Spreadsheet – Excel was manufacture to handle only a limited amount
of data. The recent growth in business is overflowing the limits of excel spreadsheet.
Even the routine clean and manage of data is not providing any potential benefits for the
organizations (Chaudhuri, Dayal & Narasayya, 2011). Incoming data are taking no time
to overreach the maximum capacity of the spreadsheets the companies are using that calls
for the implementation o business intelligence that has potential to handle the big data of
the organizations.
 Multiple Data Sources – The data in today’s business is coming from multiple data
sources in a single coherent location. The companies that are using traditional system in

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the reporting are facing challenges and in turn overusing their resource with no gain.
They require shifting to the use of BI for gaining competitive advantage in current
market.
Predictive Analytics as the wave of the future
Many scholars assume predictive analysis as the future trend of big data. It rejects the
idea of reacting to the insights gained through data analysis. It enables the companies to use a
combination of real-time, historical and third party data to build forecasts of upcoming incidents
well in advance, ranging from hours, weeks even months. It will further facilitate the company in
avoiding the forthcoming problems and risk like equipment failure or depleted stock or even
capitalize on the opportunities to market products to customers. Hence, it definitely has secured
position in the future of data analysis. However, the prediction is only the beginning of the
multiple steps required to evade forthcoming risk. It is of no use until the exposed insight can be
deployed directly into software applications and business process. According to Siegel (2016)
predictive analysis has its significance in the future market and help organizations over industries
in their operation, Some of the significance of predictive analysis are risk reduction, optimizing
market campaign, improving operation and detecting fraud. As identified by Waller and Fawcett
(2013), it can help the retail industry by identifying the issues in the business process, improving
the supply chain, gain better insight on customer demand and many more.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that recent growth in technology increased the demand of business
intelligence. The traditional software used by the organizations are proving soiled and failing to
serve its purpose, which makes it necessary for the company to utilize business intelligence to

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better handle their data. Predictive analysis on the other hand has its utility on various grounds as
discussed above.

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Reference
Chaudhuri, S., Dayal, U., & Narasayya, V. (2011). An overview of business intelligence
technology. Communications of the ACM, 54(8), 88-98.
Chen, H., Chiang, R. H., & Storey, V. C. (2012). Business intelligence and analytics: From big
data to big impact. MIS quarterly, 36(4).
Siegel, E. (2016). Predictive analytics: The power to predict who will click, buy, lie, or die (pp.
103-110). Hoboken (NJ): Wiley.
Waller, M. A., & Fawcett, S. E. (2013). Data science, predictive analytics, and big data: a
revolution that will transform supply chain design and management. Journal of Business
Logistics, 34(2), 77-84.