Business intelligence (BI) mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting,[clarification needed] and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes.
BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of business intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining and predictive analytics.
Business intelligence aims to support better business decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS).[2] Though the term business intelligence is sometimes used as a synonym for competitive intelligence, because they both support decision making, BI uses technologies, processes, and applications to analyze mostly internal, structured data and business processes while competitive intelligence gathers, analyzes and disseminates information with a topical focus on company competitors. Business intelligence understood broadly can include the subset of competitive intelligence.
What is business intelligence?
Business intelligence, or BI, is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting.
Companies use BI to improve decision making, cut costs and identify new business opportunities. BI is more than just corporate reporting and more than a set of tools to coax data out of enterprise systems. CIOs use BI to identify inefficient business processes that are ripe for re-engineering.
With today’s BI tools, business folks can jump in and start analyzing data themselves, rather than wait for IT to run complex reports. Although BI holds great promise, implementations can be dogged by technical and cultural challenges. Executives have to ensure that the data feeding BI applications is clean and consistent so that users trust it.
What are some benefits of business intelligence efforts?
A broad range of applications for BI has helped companies rack up impressive ROI figures. Business intelligence has been used to identify cost-cutting ideas, uncover business opportunities, roll ERP data into accessible reports, react quickly to retail demand and optimize prices.
Besides making data accessible, BI software can give companies more leverage during negotiations by making it easier to quantify the value of relationships with suppliers and customers.
Within the walls of the enterprise, there are plenty of opportunities to save money by optimizing business processes and focusing decisions. BI yields significant ROI when it sheds light on business bloopers. For example, employees of the city of Albuquerque used BI software to identify opportunities to cut cell phone usage, overtime and other operating expenses, saving the city $2 million during three years. Likewise, with the help of BI tools, Toyota realized it had been double-paying its shippers to the tune of $812,000 in 2000. Companies that use BI to uncover flawed business processes are in a much better position to successfully compete than companies that use BI merely to monitor what’s happening.
What are some potential problems?
User resistance is one big barrier to BI success; others include having to winnow through voluminous amounts of irrelevant data and poor data quality.
The key to getting accurate insights from BI systems is standard data. Data is the most fundamental component of any BI endeavor. It’s the building blocks for insight. Companies have to get their data stores and data warehouses in good working order before they can begin extracting and acting on insights. If not, they’ll be operating based on flawed information.
Another potential pitfall is BI tools themselves. Though the tools are more scalable and user friendly than they used to be, the core of BI is still reporting rather than process management, although that’s slowly beginning to change. Be careful not to confuse business intelligence with business analytics.
A third impediment to using BI to transform business processes is that most companies don’t understand their business processes well enough to determine how to improve them. And companies need to be careful about the processes they choose. If the process does not have a direct impact on revenue or the business isn’t behind standardizing the process across the company, the entire BI effort could disintegrate. Companies need to understand all the activities that make up a particular business process, how information and data flow across various processes, how data is passed between business users, and how people use it to execute their particular part of the process. And they need to understand all this before they start a BI project, if they hope to improve how people do their jobs.
How should you implement a BI system with help of ATN & RK Software Ltd?
When charting a course for BI, companies should first analyze the way they make decisions and consider the information that executives need to facilitate more confident and more rapid decision-making, as well as how they’d like that information presented to them (for example, as a report, a chart, online, hard copy). Discussions of decision making will drive what information companies need to collect, analyze and publish in their BI systems.
Good BI systems need to give context. It’s not enough that they report sales were X yesterday and Y a year ago that same day. They need to explain what factors influencing the business caused sales to be X one day and Y on the same date the previous year.
Like so many technology projects, BI won’t yield returns if users feel threatened by, or are skeptical of, the technology and refuse to use it as a result. And when it comes to something like BI, which, when implemented strategically, ought to fundamentally change how companies operate and how people make decisions, CIOs need to be extra attentive to users’ feelings.
Seven steps to rolling out BI systems:
- Make sure your data is clean.
- Train users effectively.
- Deploy quickly, then adjust as you go. Don’t spend a huge amount of time up front developing the “perfect” reports because needs will evolve as the business evolves. Deliver reports that provide the most value quickly, and then tweak them.
- Take an integrated approach to building your data warehouse from the beginning. Make sure you’re not locking yourself into an unworkable data strategy further down the road.
- Define ROI clearly before you start. Outline the specific benefits you expect to achieve, then do a reality check every quarter or six months.
Focus on business objectives. - Focus on business objectives.
- Don’t buy business intelligence software because you think you need it. Deploy BI with the idea that there are numbers out there that you need to find, and know roughly where they might be.
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
A document management system (DMS) is a computer system (or set of computer programs) used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. It is usually also capable of keeping track of the different versions created by different users (history tracking). The term has some overlap with the concepts of content management systems. It is often viewed as a component of enterprise content management (ECM) systems and related to digital asset management, document imaging, workflow systems and records management systems.
ATN & RK Software Ltd. provide a complete paperless document management software solution, allowing organizations to increase efficiency and security, mitigate compliance risks, save physical space and reduce their carbon footprint — all without fundamental changes to existing workflows and processes. Traditional filing systems — documents scattered across filing cabinets, shared drives and personal hard drives, with ad hoc security measures and little or no version control protocol — are rife with hassles, headaches, risks and expense. By creating a centralized repository where all documents are accessed, managed, indexed and shared, Our document management software allows you to get rid of paper, find information easily and focus on core competencies. We provide:
Initial study and choice of best-suiting document management system Implementation and customization of document management software.
1,2,3rd line support and maintenance of chosen electronic document management software
More details on our services around ECM project. We provide: - Development of the strategy for creation of a complex ECM system in context of the business strategy and IT strategy of your company
- Preliminary inspection of your company for the introduction of typical or branch-oriented solutions
- Analysis and projecting of the requirements to the Input Management
- Analysis and projecting of the requirements to the handling of confidential information
- Projecting of the solution architecture due to the corporate IT architecture and project dimensions
- Analysis and projecting of the requirements to the hardware for the solution
- Introduction of a typical functional solution
- Development and introduction of an individual solution (functional or branch-oriented)
- Integration of the solution with the corporate information system of the client, the data storage infrastructure and the IT infrastructure management system
- Training of the IT specialists and the users
- Technical support
- Further development and adjustment of the realized solution
If you need an electronic document management system, you can choose between: - Licensed document management system software, e.g. such big DMS solutions as Documentum from EMC and SharePoint, great document collaboration software from Microsoft
- Open source document management system software, such as Alfresco, a fairly new web based document management system.
- Smaller licensed documents management software, such as Directum, DocVision, etc. which we can choose together with you
Why you should use the document management services of Inter-computer:
Reasonable prices - We can offer you a ready document management solution which we already developed, so you will save costs on custom development of your document management software system
- Quality
- We have great expertise in creating and implementing DMS solutions using best document management software, so speed and quality guaranteed
- We have our own IP
- We have internally-developed PDF software, which we can use in your documents management system, making your electronic archives extremely efficient
Deep vertical expertise - We have deep expertise in the financial and industry sectors, so we will make sure your desktop or online document management system really add value to your business
- Smart intergation
- We know now to integrate new document management software system into your existing IT ecosystem
As you can see, we can design a document management software system tailored to your company’s processes. Rest assured, be it licensed or document management system open source, we’ll choose the best tools for your particular situation. Using ECM solutions, your employees can securely convert hardcopy pages into electronic documents and data, store them in an archive, quickly search for the right document, add attributes and watermarks to documents and distribute documents automatically to multiple users.
Our solutions solve a number of complex, critical business tasks. We have developed solutions for such serious enterprises as banks, insurance companies, nuclear power plants, automobile manufacturers, international medical companies, oil companies, etc. Large enterprises require a very careful approach – you need to ensure the smooth migration of existing data, implement the correct business processes in a very flexible way and improve performance without affecting production. Smaller companies need flexible solution solving their needs with good budget. We are able to satisfy both. We provide a thoughtful, detail oriented approach and the highest quality of service.
MOBILE BANKING
Mobile banking (also known as M-Banking, mbanking, SMS Banking) is a term used for performing balance checks, account transactions, payments, credit applications and other banking transactions through a mobile device such as a mobile phone or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The earliest mobile banking services were offered over SMS. With the introduction of the first primitive smart phones with WAP support enabling the use of the mobile web in 1999, the first European banks started to offer mobile banking on this platform to their customers
Mobile banking has until recently (2010) most often been performed via SMS or the Mobile Web. Apple’s initial success with iPhone and the rapid growth of phones based on Google’s Android (operating system) have led to increasing use of special client programs, called apps, downloaded to the mobile device.
Most poor people in developing countries still have to rely on physical delivery of cash to make payments or access financial services. But with the emergence of new delivery models which drastically alter the economics of banking the poor, that is changing. An estimated 1.7 billion unbanked customers have access to mobile phones. These and other new technologies are now enabling poor people to make financial transactions that are accessible and reliable.
One of the major impediments to providing convenient financial services for the poor has been the high cost inherent in the traditional brick-and-mortar branches model. The rapid growth of mobiles and point-of-sale (POS) devices has now created an opportunity to reach more unbanked people than ever before. Branch-less banking encompasses the provision of a broad range of financial services outside conventional bank branches, and often involves agent banking, technologies such as card-reading point-of-sale terminals, or mobile phones to access financial services and execute financial transactions.
Agent banking has become particularly widespread over the past decade because by using retail points as cash merchants, banks, telecom companies, and other providers can offer financial services in a commercially viable way. Though the early experience with branchless banking is encouraging, it is not a foregone conclusion that such services will reach poor people at scale, or go beyond payments and transfers. The number of branch-less banking services has grown rapidly, but the vast majority of registered customers are not actively transacting. Of the over 140 live branch-less banking services around the world, only 26 have reached more than a million customers.
One key to success has become clear: branch-less banking services depend on a widespread distribution network of non-bank retail agents to foster a positive and consistent customer experience that creates and maintains trust in the system. There are several types of branchless banking business models. In some cases, the bank is the main driver of the business. In others, it’s the mobile network operators (MNOs) by themselves or in partnership with other banks and third party providers. The industry as a whole is still working to demonstrate the viability of these different models and partnership arrangements.
Branch-less banking provides a path to scale for financial inclusion. For example, by early 2012, M-PESA in Kenya had 16 million customers served by a country-wide network of almost 30,000 agents. Early successes have shown the huge potential that technology can offer, but the journey toward financial inclusion via branch-less banking is just getting started.