Business intelligence (BI) refers to the software applications that support decision making in organizations. BI softwares cover a broad array of applications used to perform different functions, some of the applications include: applications for collecting, storing, analyzing and providing access to data. BI enables organizations to make evidence-based decisions based on the available data and information instead of making assumptions based on popular trends. As the competition intensifies in the external environment, BI has become a necessity for all businesses.
XX Eatery* is a restaurant chain that specializes in fast food within the hospitality industry. In the past, XX relied on manual customer feedback to update its menu and products, but in today’s digital world, XX Eatery is finding it hard to process rampant customer information and requests. The exploding data has made it difficult to come up with effective business insights. XX has a website, social media pages, and a variety of softwares used to handle different operations across various units. Wieder & Ossimitz (2015) state that while big data can help organizations, however, managing and analyzing it effectively seems to be the problem among business including XX Eatery. Despite the availability of data, XX Eatery’s management finds it hard to analyze and relate data from different sections of the business.
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According to Obeidat et al. (2015), BI applications can improve decision making in the business. BI applications interact in a manner that transforms raw data into meaningful information that can be used to create effective business strategies. For example, a specific BI application will extract customer data from the internet, particularly streaming engines, data warehouses, mid-tier servers and front end applications. Alternatively, the analytic application in the BI will effectively evaluate all the data quickly to shorten the time between data acquisition and decision making (Obeidat et al., 2015). Alternatively, BI applications enable easy generation of reports such that an employee in one department can access reports from another department without having to go through a longer process.
BI applications will improve decision making at XX Eatery by enabling the management to access customer insights in a much easier manner. BI application will summarize and classify customer online information and feedback into simple reports that can be easily understood. Additionally, BI applications will enable XX Eatery to align business activity with the corporate strategy. XX Eatery is operating on a mass market strategy, its aim is to expand further since the fast food industry does not allow much specialization. However, the business cannot expand unless it provides exactly what the customer needs. Through BI applications, XX Eatery’s management will establish metrics and key performance indicators to align business activities with the strategy to ensure attainment of desirable outcomes.
Alternatively, BI applications will simplify decision making by identifying areas for cost cutting (Obeidat et al., 2015). Like many businesses in the hotel industry, XX Eatery is dealing with the problem of excessive inventory. A BI application will enable the business to immediately make the decision on expenses that should be maintained and those that should be done away with. A BI application with an effective dashboard will provide the management with better visibility into the inventory, making it easy to identify goods that sit idle in the warehouse. A BI application will also collect data on the kitchen and front operations of the business to maximize on efficiency.
Oracle Business Intelligence enterprise edition (OBIEE) will help XX Eatery to make sense of the big data and control its activities better. OBIEE is a unique platform that enables businesses to discover new insights and make informed business decisions (Oracle, 2016). OBIEE is recommended for organizations with serious BI needs because of its superior functionality. The key advantage of OBIEE is that it has many components to address the various needs at XX Eatery. OBIEE is made up of BI servers, BI answers, interactive dashboards, BI delivers, BI publisher, Oracle Real-Time Decision Server, Oracle scorecard and strategy management and Oracle data visualization (Oracle Website). Each of the above components serving different needs, for instance, BI servers act as the foundation of OBIEE responsible for ensuring that all BI components are accessed by the largest audience as possible. XX Eatery is a fast food chain with various branches, the integrated web environment provided by the BI servers will ensure that the data and other components of the software remains accessible to different users. The second component is BI Answers, it provides more end-user capabilities such that the user can create personalized charts, charts, reports and dashboards and share them. BI Answers will be useful in the XX Eatery as employees will have access to tools for creating reports easily and sharing them across the organization. However, one of the most important aspect of OBIEE is the BI Interactive Dashboards, it provides every knowledge worker within the organization with intuitive and up-to-date information from shared sources, shared file servers, document repositories and the internet (Oracle Website, 2016).
Another advantage OBIEE is the availability of various types of reporting, particularly, financial reporting, Hyperion interactive reporting and Hyperion SQR Production Reporting (Oracle Website, 2016). The different kinds of reporting will provide the executives, business users and analysts with a wide array of useful financial, production and other important reports that affects decision making.
Besides the inherent advantages of OBIEE, Oracle is a well-known organization in the technology market. Oracle offers 24/7 support and training for OBIEE, and for organizations that cannot manage the BI, Oracle offers a partnership option.
The primary user of the BI application is the executives. XX Eatery’s management will be the primary user, it will use OBIEE to boost business performance through better-informed decision making. OBIEE is quite valuable to the business, it has various components that stores, analyzes and shares crucial information. OBIEE will not be used to analyze customer needs only, rather it will be used to analyze market trends and internal operations at XX Eatery. XX Eatery has a higher chance of achieving its corporate strategy if it implements and uses OBIEE effectively.
An impressive feature in OBIEE is the Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management, this component enables easy goal setting and tracking (Oracle Website, 2016). Most BI softwares lack the scorecard and strategy management software as they focus on the analytics and reporting. OBIEE goes a step further by providing a scorecard and strategy management option to ensure that the organization is headed in the right direction. XX Eatery’s corporate strategy is expanding, hence this component will align business operations with the organization’s strategy. The scorecard will be used to evaluate the strategies implemented by XX Eatery to test their effectiveness.
Implementing OBIEE will be challenging. It will take some time before XX Eatery’s executive and business users get used to OBIEE. OBIEE is a complex BI software, and without effective training and support, the users might not be able to master its usage. Undoubtedly, BI softwares are useful to the organization, but mastering all the aspects of the BI will be challenging, especially when it has many components as seen in OBIEE. Some of the challenging aspects of OBIEE include: delivering self-service reporting, reporting across various systems and unlocking hidden data.
Despite the above challenges, OBIEE is a popular BI that can revolutionize decision making at XX Eatery. Some of the above challenges can be eliminated through initial negotiations with the vendor, so that the vendor will create a customized BI software. Upon successful implementation, BI software will reduce operational risks, improve business strategies and ensure that the organization is headed in the right direction in accordance to its corporate strategy.
References
Obeidat, M., North, M., Richardson, R., Rattanak, V., & North, S. (2015). Business Intelligence Technology, Applications, and Trends. International Management Review , 11 (2), 47.
Oracle. (2016). Oracle Business Intelligence 12c. Retrieved from: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise- edition/overview/enterprise-edition-099978.html
Wieder, B., & Ossimitz, M. L. (2015). The impact of Business Intelligence on the quality of decision making–a mediation model. Procedia Computer Science , 64 , 1163-1171.
