What is Business Intelligence?
The term Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the practice of transforming large amounts of data into information. It can be said that the purpose of Business Intelligence is to present data in a new, easy-to-understand way so that it can be used to support critical business decisions.
Business Intelligence in financial institutions
Appropriate aggregation and understanding of the large amount of data available in the banking and financial sector is complex. It would be highly tedious, overwhelming, and time-consuming if it had to be done manually. Given the amount of information that most companies have scattered across different applications and services, achieving a 360-degree view of customers and business is challenging for any business.
For this purpose, tools such as Microsoft Power BI are used to understand, analyse and find value in large datasets quickly. They also give a better insight not only into historical but also current data and thus enable a better understanding of trends as well as the implementation of forecast analyses.
Microsoft Power BI effectively combines data from different business applications to create a single source of information that any financial institution employee can use. What’s more, Power BI provides the following:
– Better insight into all the activities of a bank or other financial institution,
– Quick access to information in easy-to-understand formats,
– reduction of business risk.
How can the financial industry use the knowledge gained in this way?
First of all, to:
– a better understanding of customers’ purchasing behaviour,
– adjusting the offer to the actual needs of customers,
– supporting budgeting and planning processes,
– measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns,
– making sales forecasts and financial estimates,
– analysis and improvement of operational efficiency,
– to create reports,
– risk assessment,
– the elimination of fraud,
– examination of the compliance of activities with the binding legal regulations.
The scope of BI use in financial institutions is enormous. The industry’s challenge is adopting banking systems to handle large data sets. Implementing Business Intelligence class systems, such as Microsoft Power BI, should always be supported by a needs analysis and adjusted to the short and long-term goals of a given bank or financial institution.
