3/08/2022

Introduction to Business Intelligence

Week 01: IS22225 Business Intelligence
Dr S. Thuseethan, Department of Computing and Information Systems

Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka

Page 1 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

Course details

 Title : Business Intelligence

 Code : IS22225
 Credits : 02
 Prerequisites : Nil

 Evaluation/ (Method of Assessments):

– Quizzes (02): 10%
– Assignments (02): 40%
– End Semester Examination: 50%

Page 2 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

1
 3/08/2022

Reference books

Page 3 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

Lecture topics

Lecture Topic
01 Introduction to Business Intelligence (BI)
02 Decision Support Systems and Data Warehousing
03 Data Mining for BI
04 – 05 Data Preparation
06 – 07 Data Exploration
08 Regression
09 – 10 Time Series
11 Classification
12 – 13 Clustering
14 BI Applications
15 Revision

Page 4 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

2
 3/08/2022

What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

 BI refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and

analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or
departments or associated costs and incomes.
 BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business
operations.
 BI often aims to support better business decision-making.
 Simply, a better BI infrastructure can lead any business towards success!

Page 5 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

Examples of BI

Page 6 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

3
 3/08/2022

Why is BI important?

 Ability to gain customer insights

– Better understanding about their customers by analyzing their buying patterns
 Improved business operations visibility
– Knowing what’s going on in the organization
 Get actionable insights
– Enabling to take any action
 Improved efficiency across the organization
 Real-time data availability
 Better marketing efforts
 Gives the business a competitive advantage

Page 7 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

Benefits of a BI system

Page 8 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

4
 3/08/2022

Effective and timely decisions

 In complex organizations, decisions are made on a continual basis

 Decisions are “more or less critical” and have “long- or short-term” effects
 Ability of knowledge workers in making decisions is one of the primary factors
that influence the performance and competitive strength of a given
organization
 Effective decisions
– Making better decisions
 Timely decisions
– Ability to rapidly react to the actions

Page 9 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

Data, information and knowledge

 Data: a structured codification of single primary entities

 Information: the outcome of extraction and processing activities
 Knowledge: enhanced information put to work into a specific domain

Page 10 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

10

5
 3/08/2022

What is 'data'?

 Data can essentially be:

– Continuous: ordered values with a scale.
− E.g., client monthly spending ($) and speed of car (km/h)
– Categorical: discrete, possibly ordered values.
− E.g., car class (small family car, large family car, executive, ...), bank customer credit class (A, B, C)
– Often data is categorical due to form of reporting
− E.g., data gathered from questionnaires
 Different data types need to be handled differently!

Page 11 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

11

BI architectures

 Data sources
 Data warehouses and data marts
 BI methodologies

Page 12 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

12

6
 3/08/2022

Components of a BI system

BI methodologies

Page 13 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

13

Components of a BI system

 Data exploration
– A passive business intelligence analysis
− Decision makers are requested to generate prior hypotheses or define data extraction criteria,
and then use the analysis tools to find answers and confirm their original insight
– Consists of query and reporting systems and statistical methods

Page 14 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

14

7
 3/08/2022

Components of a BI system

 Data mining
– Active business intelligence methodologies
– Purpose is the extraction of information and knowledge from data
– Includes mathematical models for pattern recognition, machine learning and data mining
techniques

Knowledge!

1. Male customers are

Mathematical
higher than females
model 2. Any other?

Page 15 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

15

Components of a BI system

 Optimization
– Allowing to determine the best solution out of a set of alternative actions
– Usually extensive and sometimes even infinite

Solution Solution
1 1

Solution Solution
2 2
Optimal Optimal
solution solution

Solution Solution
n n

Page 16 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

16

8
 3/08/2022

Decision

 Knowledge obtained as a result of the insight phase is converted into decisions

and subsequently into actions
 E. g.,

Knowledge!

1. Male customers are

Mathematical
higher than females
model 2. There is a drop in 2021

Decisions!

Page 17 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

17

Enabling factors in business intelligence projects

 Technologies
 Analytics
 Human resources

Page 18 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

18

9
 3/08/2022

Exercise 1

 Extract knowledge and some potential decisions from the chart given

Page 19 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

19

Exercise 2

 Extract knowledge and make decisions to help academics in designing future

courses

Page 20 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

20

10
 3/08/2022

Dr S. Thuseethan
https://sites.google.com/view/thusee/home?authuser=0

Page 21 of 21 Department of Computing and Information Systems

21

11