Business Intelligence & Enterprise Systems

Question 1

What does the BI framework consist of?

Answer 1

• collection and storage of data
• aggregated data for decision support
• interface with unstructured data source
• group consolidation, budgeting and rolling forecast
• predictive forecast
• KPI evaluation
• version control
• process management

Question 2

What does KPI stand for and what does it mean?

Answer 2

Key Performance Indicators

Consists of measurements to assess effectiveness/success of a business

Question 3

What are the BI Architect components?

Answer 3

ETL Tools
Data Store
Query & Reporting
Data monitoring & Altering
Data Visualization
Data Analytics

Question 4

What is Data Store?

Answer 4

• represented by data warehouse
• optimized for data analysis & query speed
• supports decision making

Question 5

What is Query and Reporting?

Answer 5

• performs data selection and retrieval
• used by data analyst to create queries for DB access and reporting
• it can access operational DB depending on implementation

Question 6

What is Data Monitoring & Altering

Answer 6

• consist of real time monitoring of business activities
• BI represents information in Integrated View
• Integrated View: has specific metrics showing business performance activities e.g orders
• If metric passes the baseline, departments are contacted

Question 7

What is Data Analytics?

Answer 7

• performs data analysis and mining using stored data in DW
• advises which data analysis tool to use
• provides details on how to build a reliable business model

Question 8

What are the requirements for a Decision Support DB?

Answer 8

DB Schema

• able to present complex data
• aggregated & summarised data
• queries extract multidimensional time slices

Data Extraction & Filtering

• supports resources such as Flat Files, Hierarchical Network, Relational DB and Vendors
• checks inconsistent data

DB size
- support large DB

Question 9

What is DSS?

Answer 9

Decision Support System

Based on computerized tools to enhance managerial decision making.

It is essential to well being and even survival of a business that completes global markets due to:

• complex data
• proper analysis of data which is crucial to strategic and tactical decision making.

Question 10

Explain the Evolution of BI

Answer 10

1970: centralised reports running in mainframes, minicomputers and central server environments. Reports were predefined and took time to process
1980: desktop computers, spreadsheet downloaded from central locations
1990: first generation DSS, centralised reporting
Mid 1990: DW and OLAP
2000: BI web based dashboards and mobile BI

Question 11

Compare DS data and Operational Data and by Dimensionality

Answer 11

DS data - provides strategic and tactical business meaning to operational data

Operational data - stored in DB and is optimized to support transactions that highlight daily operations

Dimensionality:

DS data - can be examined from multiple dimensions by using filters to produce the dimensions

Operational data - represents individual transactions than the effects of transaction over time

Question 12

Advantage of BI

Answer 12

unified & single reporting system to analyze statistics in REAL TIME across all functions