Welcome to the latest series on Business Intelligence and Data Analytics brought to you by Late Night Brew! In this exciting series, we’re delving deep into the world of business intelligence (BI) and data analytics, exploring what they are, why they matter to organizations, and how they can be game-changers in today’s data-driven landscape.
Our host, Robert Buktenica, and his guest, Brian Gilligan, kick things off by providing valuable insights into the key concepts of BI and data analytics. So, grab your favourite drink and join us as we unravel the fascinating realm of BI and data analytics.
TIMESTAMP
00:07 – Introduction
00:26 – The Brew
00:58 – What is Business Intelligence and Data Analytics?
02:40 – Why is BI important for organizations?
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Robert Buktenica: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Late Night Brew, where we talk the brews first, and then we get around to what we’re supposed to talk about afterwards. I’m Robert Buktenica, also known as Buck, and joining me today for the first time, is Brian Gilligan. Brian, welcome on.
Brian Gilligan: Thank you very much, nice to be here.
The Brew
Robert: Awesome. Now, I’ve briefed you so you know the important thing first, what brew are you having with me today?
Brian: Today I have a beer called Cosmic Microwave, out of Australia.
Robert: Awesome. Love a good microbrew because that’s also what I’m drinking. It’s a local Phoenix brewery, of course, SanTan Jungle Jack, the tropical haze IPA. It’s not a hop kick in the throat, which I know a lot of people do not like.
What is Business Intelligence and/or Data Analytics?
Robert: Now, today, we’re going to be diving into business intelligence and or data analytics and why that’s important. To kick that off, Brian, what exactly is it?
Brian: All right, business intelligence, oftentimes people also refer to it as data analytics. Business intelligence are slightly different, but you can use them interchangeably.
Business intelligence is really the process of collecting data, transforming data, analyzing data and visualizing it in a way that’s really easy to digest, really easy to look at. Business intelligence is really looking at what’s currently happening, what’s happened in the past, what’s currently happening.
Data analytics is very similar. It’s the same process of collecting the data, transforming and analyzing, but you are doing probably more things looking at both today and into the future. Things like predictive analysis, prescriptive analysis, stuff like that is probably more focused on data analytics, but I think today we’re going to talk a little bit about business intelligence more.
Robert: All right, so if I’m hearing it, business intelligence is more why or what has happened.
Brian: Yes.
Robert: Why are we here as it were, and data analytics is more of that based on where we’ve been, what we can expect coming in or coming out in the next three months.
Brian: You nailed it, fantastic.
Robert: Careful, your job’s on the line now.
Why is BI important for organizations?
Robert: Now, of course, I’m sure anyone watching this is asking, “Well, that’s great.” Beyond the obvious of, hey, understanding why we’re here or where we want to go, or how do we get there, why is this important for organizations?
Brian: That’s a very good question. I think– You know, there’s so much data out there now, it’s incredible. I mean, it’s been just a huge data explosion. How do you take that data and make sense of it? So you have a lot of data, and I feel like the reason why you want to have that data in an easy way to be able to view is so that you can ultimately make decisions. It’s really quite important.
I think when you have good data or business intelligence, not only are you able to make good decisions, but really what it comes down to is you get to see what’s working well, what’s not working well, where you could save money, some time and ultimately what you’re trying to get to is your goals and whatever your goal of your organization is.
We’ll get into that a little bit further later down the road, but it really is that process of being able to take all the stuff and get through it, and be able to see through, see the forest through the trees.
Robert: To your point, I mean, outside of this explicitly, you get the situation where there’s so much information available, it really sounds like it’s filtering through and how do you know what you need to pay attention to because, “Oh, well this is important.” If everything is important, nothing is important. Is that about where we’re landing?
Brian: Absolutely, there is a lot of data out there. The way I kind of like to think of it is you might have a piece of data here, and you can look at it and you know that’s important. You might have a piece of data here, and also you can look at that, understand it, but know it’s important.
Where data analytics and business intelligence come in, it’s like, where can we take both of those pieces of data and kind of bring them together? And when you start to bring data together, you’re going to start to see things like insights. This could be data that you might not think is even related. It may be finance data here, might be, let’s just say, HR data there. They do somewhat relate, but how do we bring these things together?
When you start to do those kind of things and start to bring it together, you will start to see the insights. I think one of the important things to point out for organizations thinking about this or raising their game in this, is that when you have those insights, then all of a sudden you start to see, “Okay, we need to change this.” It’s like a change agent, if you want to call it, but you start to have innnovation. That innovation is, I think, what drives organizations to transform and be the best that they can. I try to look at it a really very basic level. When I think about data analytics and business intelligence, there’s just so much jargon in so many different systems, and all these different things can get quite confusing really, really quickly.
I like to boil it down, it’s really, it is data. It’s taking that data and making sense of it in a way that anybody can really understand it.
Robert: Absolutely. I’m looking forward to getting into this one because that’s always a huge one. I was going to say with the unrelated data that is related, that’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in IT. You don’t think HR data’s related to production. However, when you follow this, look, you’re back at HR.
Brian: Exactly right.
Robert: On that really terrible joke, we have unfortunately hit the end. Brian, thank you so very much for your time, looking forward to getting into these next episodes.
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