Syed Sohaib Akhtar

ASSIGNMENTS –MBA Semester 3

MI 0027 - Set 1
Business Intelligence Tools

Q.1. Define the term business intelligence tools? Discuss the roles in Business Intelligence project?

A.1. (a) Business Intelligence Tool:- also referred as BI. (BI) is a generic term used to describe leveraging
the organizational internal and external data, information for making the best possible business decisions.
The field of Business intelligence is very diverse and comprises the tools and technologies used to access
and analyze various types of business information. These tools gather and store the data and allow the
user to view and analyze the information from a wide variety of dimensions and there by assist the
decision-makers make better business decisions. Thus the Business Intelligence (BI) systems and tools
play a vital role as far as organizations are concerned in making improved decisions in the current cut
throat competitive scenario.
In simple terms, Business Intelligence is an environment in which business users receive reliable,
consistent, meaningful and timely information. This data enables the business users conduct analyses that
yield overall understanding of how the business has been, “how it is now and how it will be in the near
future”. Also, the BI tools monitor the financial and operational health of the organization through
generation of various types of reports, alerts, alarms, key performance indicators and dashboards.
Business intelligence tools are a type of application software designed to help in making better business
decisions. These tools aid in the analysis and presentation of data in a more meaningful way and so play a
key role in the strategic planning process of an organization. They illustrate business intelligence in the
areas of market research and segmentation, customer profiling, customer support, profitability, and
inventory and distribution analysis to name a few.
Various types of BI systems are:-
a) Decision Support Systems
b) Executive Information Systems (EIS)
c) Multidimensional Analysis software or OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) tools
d) Data mining tools are there.

Whatever is the type, the Business Intelligence capabilities of the system is to let its users slice and dice
the information from their organization's numerous databases without having to wait for their IT
departments to develop complex queries and elicit answers. Although it is possible to build BI systems
without the benefit of a data warehouse, most of the systems are an integral part of the user-facing end of
the data warehouse in practice. In fact, we can never think of building a data warehouse without BI
Systems. That is the reason; sometimes, the words data warehousing and business intelligence are being
used interchangeably.
(b) Roles in Business Intelligence project:- A typical BI Project consists of the following roles and the
responsibilities:-

1) Project Manager:- Monitors the progress on continuum basis and is responsible for the success of the
project.

2) Technical Architect’s:- Develops and implements the overall technical architecture of the BI system,
from the backend hardware/software to the client desktop configurations.

3) Database Administrator (DBA):- Keeps the database available for the applications to run smoothly
and also involves in planning and executing a backup/recovery plan, as well as performance tuning.

4) ETL Developer:- Involves himself in planning, developing, and deploying the extraction,
transformation, and loading routine for the data warehouse from the legacy systems.

5) Front End Developer:- Develops the front-end, whether it be client-server or over the web.

6) OLAP Developer :- Develops the OLAP cubes.

7) Data Modeler :- Is responsible for taking the data structure that exists in the enterprise and model it
into a scheme that is suitable for OLAP analysis.

8) QA Group :- Ensures the correctness of the data in the data warehouse.

9) Trainer :- Works with the end users to make them familiar with how the front end is setup so that the
end users can get the most benefit out of the system

Q.2. Discuss enterprise data model in detail?

A.2. The Enterprise Data Model is an approach to develop a data warehouse model. An EDM is a consistent
definition of all the data elements common to the business, from a high level business view to a generic
logical data design. Using this model, you can derive the general scope and understanding of the business
requirements and the model also includes the links to the physical data designs of the individual applications.

A typical EDM can be any of the following types:

1) Phased Enterprise Data Modeling

2) A simple Enterprise Data Modeling

1) Phased Enterprise Data Modeling:-According to the worldwide Solution Design and Delivery Method
proposed by IBM, a phased enterprise data modeling includes the following tiers:

a) ISP :- Information System Planning b) BSI:-Business System Implementation

c) BAA:-Business Area Analysis d) BSM:-Business System Maintenance

e) BSD :-Business System Design

The methodology focuses on the phased or layer approach and the phases include the following tasks or
phases:
a) Information Planning Phase:-
It provides the highly consolidated view of the business wherein you can view the business concepts.
These business concept scan be categorized into business entity, super entity, or subject area and each of
these items maintain related data elements. This phase provides the scope and architecture of a data
warehouse and acts as a single, comprehensive view for the remaining phases.

b) Business Analyzing phase:-

It provides means for defining the concepts provided in the above phase. This phase is described in
business terms to make businesspeople understand the data details without any special training. The
purpose of this phase is to gather and arrange the business requirements and define the business terms.

c) Logical Data Modeling Phase:-

It is an organizational-wide in scope and generic to all applications located in next phases. This model
typically consists of several hundred entities and contains the identification and definition of all entities,
relationships and attributes. This phase can be divided into two types:-
i) Generic logical data model for the organizational level
ii) Logical application model for the application level of data view.

d) Physical Data Design Phase:-

It is to design for the actual physical implementation and applies physical constraints, such as space,
performance, and the physical distribution of the data.

2) A Simple Enterprise Data Model :-

A data model wherein some of the core components that are required for the data warehouse modeling can be
extracted and grouped to use in a phased approach. E.g. You can make a list of around 20 subjects areas and
then draw a subject area model of the organization by defining the business relationships among the subject
areas. Then you are required to define the contents of each of these subject areas. For E.g. When you define a
customer, you can also mention whether the customer is a prospective customer or and Ex-customer.

Q.3. Discuss the important phases involved in the process of knowledge discovery process?

A.3. Data mining is seen by experts as a knowledge discovery process. This process aims at uncovering
the hidden knowledge manifested in the data as relationships or patterns. Data mining techniques
discover the relationship between two or more different objects along with the time dimension.
Pattern discovery is another important outcome of the data mining tools. The important phases
involved in the process of knowledge discovery process are:

a) Determination of Business Objectives:-

This is the first phase where an attempt to understand the purpose of going for data mining techniques
are done. This is an important phase as rests of the phases are determined as per the objectives set in
this phase.
b) Selection and Preparation of Data:-
This phase consists of selection of the data, preprocessing of the data, and transformation of the data.
Based on the business objectives identified in the previous phase, select the appropriate data and
extract it from the data warehouse. Then the data is preprocessed by enriching the selected data with
the appropriate external data. Noisy data also need to be removed and have to make sure that entire
data is selected with the characteristics required to attempt the business objective detailed in the
previous phase.

c) Application of appropriate Mining techniques:-

This is a crucial phase wherein the knowledge discovery engine applies the selected algorithm to the
prepared data. The output of this phase is a set o relationships or patterns. But this phase and next
phase are to be performed in an iterative manner as you may have to adjust the data and redo the step
after an initial evaluation.

d) Evaluation of Data Mining Results:-

During this phase, all the resulting patterns are examined. You can see interesting patterns and
relationship between various parameters. Apply the filtering mechanism and come out with the
appropriate and realistic patterns of data.

e) Presentation of Data Discoveries:-

Data discoveries can be presented in the form of visual navigation, charts, graphs and text as well.
The presentation mainly deals with highlighting the important discoveries that are found and storing
them in the knowledge base for future use.

f) Incorporation of Usage of Discoveries:-

This is the phase where the results obtained in the earlier phases are applied into business actions.
You may assemble the results of the discovery in the best meaningful manner so that they can be
applied for the effective improvement of the business.

Graphical representation of phases in Knowledge Discovery Process