In large-scale business operations, variable management issues often arise. Current third-party data analysis platforms or in-house solutions may fall short of meeting the evolving needs of business development. Now is the opportune moment to establish a robust Business Intelligence (BI) system to facilitate precise business analysis and enable forward-thinking corporate decisions.

As information technology progresses, enterprises amass extensive databases, presenting both opportunities and challenges. While larger data volumes offer increased potential value, insufficient data analysis capabilities can hinder efficient decision-making. Hence, the emergence of Business Intelligence (BI) systems becomes crucial, playing an increasingly pivotal role in addressing these challenges.

Note: The report and dashboard examples in this article are all built-in templates made by FineReport, the leading BI reporting tool in the Asian-Pacific region.

1. What are Business Intelligence Systems?

A Business Intelligence system comprises technology, processes, and applications, offering comprehensive solutions. BI systems extract valuable data from various enterprise systems, facilitating storage, analysis, and internal data management. Generally, BI systems consist of three main components: data collection, organized presentation, and efficient delivery to those in need. These systems enable companies to provide timely and relevant information to the right individuals in the right format, supporting the effective development of strategic and operational insights for decision-makers.

• data warehouse
• BI software
• Users with appropriate analytical

BI software ensures accurate data analysis and processing. It integrates user-friendly tools for clear interfaces through easy drag-and-drop actions. With the use of appropriate query and analysis tools, it swiftly delivers precise statements and analyses for enterprises. This capability supports current corporate analysis and informs future decision-making and strategy development.

FineReport is a standard Business Intelligence system as we mentioned with an Excel-like interface for easy report generation, export, and printing. This professional BI system simplifies batch data import from Excel and uniquely enables users to write data back to the database. Its intuitive drag-and-drop functionality empowers users to quickly create visually appealing and practical reports for various business needs.

2. Features of Business Intelligence Systems

2.1 Data Warehouse

Data warehouse includes the process of collecting all the data needed. In addition, a data warehouse provides a data storage environment where data from multiple data sources will be ETLed(Extracted, Transformed, Dunked), cleaned up, and stored on a specific topic, indicating powerful data integration and maintenance capabilities of BI.

2.2 Data Analysis

You need the ability of data analysis to aid in enterprise modelling. OLAP is a data analysis tool based on a data warehouse environment. Moreover, it solves the shortcoming of low efficiency of multi-dimensional analysis based on OLTP analysis.

Business intelligence (BI) uses data analysis to derive actionable insights for strategic and tactical decision-making.

2.3 Data Mining

In practical applications, data mining delves into the past to predict the future, involving active design and analysis of business data. It utilizes knowledge discovery tools for uncovering previously unknown and potentially valuable information, representing an automated and active discovery process.

2.4 Data Visualization

Data visualization can reflect business operations intuitively. Enterprises could conduct purposeful analysis of those abnormal data and explore the possible causes. Then further make business decisions and strategies based on previous moves.

Note: The reports and BI dashboard examples in this article are all built-in templates made by reporting software FineReport, the leading BI reporting tool in the Asian-Pacific region.

3. What Kind of Companies Use Business Intelligence Systems？

Not every company requires a BI system; its necessity hinges on enterprise informatization. Without a complete database, substantial investment in BI is futile. Data is the foundation of BI, and establishing a comprehensive database is crucial. Highly informalized companies benefit significantly from the implementation of Business Intelligence systems, enhancing employee efficiency and providing work convenience. As data volume grows, BI becomes essential for deeper insights and interactivity, addressing challenges beyond manual reporting capabilities.

4. Best Practices of Business Intelligence Systems

The case of Greentown China could be an awesome practice of using the BI system software of Fanruan.

4.1 Company Introduction

Greentown China Real Estate Group Co., Ltd., one of China’s well-known real estate companies, focuses on the development of a series of urban high-quality housing products. The company has the national first-level development qualification. Greentown China pays attention to the development of high-quality properties. The types of residential products of the company continue to be enriched and improved, and Greentown China ranks among the top 10 real estate companies in China for brand value throughout the year.

4.2 Previous Dilemma

As the company grows and employee numbers increase, effective management and planning of the organizational structure become crucial. This challenge presents a major concern for the company. Furthermore, a clear tool is lacking, which, if available, could significantly save employees’ energy, reduce working hours, and better illustrate the company’s operations.

4.3 How Business Intelligence Systems Solve the Problem?

Greentown China turns to FineReport for help.

The scope dashboard displays the company’s organizational hierarchy, facilitating employee access to relevant leadership information. It also aids management in evaluating personnel positions and optimizing the organizational management structure.

The marketing dashboard uses charts to display important market indicators in the form of data visualization. It greatly saves employees’ time to filter data, and at the same time saves employees’ energy and helps employees maintain their work enthusiasm.

In addition to solving the above problems, the development of FineReport’s mobile terminal has also provided great convenience for the company. Employees can view work-related information at any time without being restricted by time and location.

5. Business Intelligence Systems Software

There are tons of vendors and offerings in the BI system space, and wading through them can get overwhelming. Among these software, I’d especially like to recommend FineReport and FineBI.

5.1 FineReport

FineReport, of Fanruan Software Limited Company, is a pure JAVA BI reporting software. Moreover, this BI system can design complex reports and build a data decision analysis system by simple drag-and-drop operations.

FineReport accelerates software development and enhances stability for software companies. Post-delivery significantly reduces maintenance challenges and improves end-user satisfaction.

What’s more, enterprises and institutions are the end users of FineReport. With the Business Intelligence system, they can simply apply multi-business system data and centralize data into a single report. As a result, business analysis and business control can apply more data. Through the FineReport data decision system, users can build a report center, achieve unified access and management of reports, and realize financial, sales, customer, inventory and other business topic analysis, data filling and so on.

Significant Advantages

• Fully functional and professional

FineReport has a safe and perfect authority control scheme. So it can support relational databases, BI multi-dimensional database connection fetch, complex report processing, offline filling, multi-level reporting and data filling.

• Simple and efficient design, with low learning cost

Excel-like interface allows users to develop reports without any additional learning costs. With zero coding, just by easy dragging and dropping of data, report-making can be completed within one or two minutes. Moreover, FineReport can quickly develop the report, achieve all kinds of systems seamless integration, speed up the development of the project, and save the development of manpower and cost.

• Rich industry solutions.

FineReport offers industry-specific insights and comprehensive solutions across various areas, including strategy, operations, organization, finance, and marketing, addressing needs from top to bottom and inside out.

• Various built-in templates.

There are many templates in the software in FineReport Demo, and you can download them and apply them directly. Relying on the expansion of the cell and the parent-child relationship to achieve the template effect, it can be easy to carry out parameter queries, report filling, chart design and so on, such as cross reports, row reports, group reports, and so on.

• Price advantage

FineReport is free for personal use, with no time or feature limits. For enterprises, it offers a quote-based plan that charges according to the function module and concurrent users. In a word, FineReport is price-friendly to customers.

FineReport provides localized services and technical support across various regions, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, the Middle East, and more. Click the button above to experience FineReport with a free trial download. For technical assistance, reach out to our support engineers.

5.2 FineBI

FineBI is a modern big data analytics & BI system designed for everyone who needs data analysis. Everyone of any level can use FineBI to easily establish professional BI dashboards, perform self-service data analysis, gain useful insights and thus drive your business forward.

Through simple operations like drag-and-drop, you can create professional BI dashboards without difficulty!

Significant Advantages

• Explorative data analysis

FineBI allows business personnel/data analysts to independently create dashboards for exploratory analysis. The data is taken from the business and used for the business so that those who need to analyze the data can process and analyze the data themselves.

• Simple, efficient and flexible design

With zero coding, just by easy dragging and dropping of data, report-making can be completed within one or two minutes. Moreover, FineBI uses self-service datasets to select, rank and summarize data to get expected results flexibly.

• Smart data visualization

FineBI self-developed 15 chart types, and 50+ chart styles, releasing a diversity of visualization. FineBI’s intelligent chart recommendation can automatically recommend suitable chart types based on current types and numbers of fields, making your data analysis simple and efficient.

• Enterprise-level permission management

FineBI supports multi-layer administrators, facilitating synchronized permissions and organizational structure. Its robust permission authentication methods and meticulous granularity control enable seamless single sign-on, streamlining enterprise-level data management.

• Price advantage

Same as FineReport, FineBI is free without time or feature limits for personal use. For enterprises, it offers a quote-based plan that charges according to different situations.

FineBI provides localized services and technical support across various regions, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, the Middle East, and more. Click the button above to experience FineBI with a free trial download. For technical assistance, reach out to our support engineers.

5.3 The Differences and Relation Between FineBI and FineReport, Two BI Systems

Finereport and FineBI are both BI systems developed by FanRuan Software Co., Ltd. 

FineBI, a user-friendly self-service BI tool, is designed for all employees, with a particular emphasis on data analysts. Its simple and clear operation aims to enable every employee to conduct self-service data analysis. The resulting reports and analysis are intended for leaders and the management team to make informed decisions.

FineReport, a reporting-centric BI system, caters to IT staff or designated report developers in enterprises. Other departments can view or update reports. The reporting tool, such as FineReport with its Excel-like design interface, significantly enhances production efficiency, saving IT staff considerable time.

The detailed differences between Finereport and FineBI can be seen as follows:

Both types of BI—FineReport and FineBI—have distinct advantages, catering to different working scenarios. They are not mutually exclusive and can coexist for enterprises to choose based on their needs until fundamental changes in informatization occur. Following Gartner’s dual-mode IT model, enterprises should assess the suitability of each BI type or consider using FineReport and FineBI in combination based on their data processing maturity and requirements.

Many enterprises opt for the simultaneous use of FineReport and FineBI. The seamless combination and complementarity of these two tools make it easier to fulfil complex reporting and real-time data analysis needs.

If you want to know more about the differences between Finereport and FineBI, you can refer to the article: Difference between Finereport and FineBI.

If you want to know more about FineBI and how Finereport and/or FineBI can best suit your needs, you can click the button below and talk to our professional team to get your personalized plan!

6. A Conclusion of Business Intelligence Systems

Business intelligence systems are increasingly crucial for gaining a competitive edge. Leveraging the full potential of BI systems allows enterprises to lead in competition. BI software platforms, such as FineReport, enhance individual functions, adding significant value to businesses. Embrace the future trend by downloading and using FineReport now!