In daily work, when business develops to a relatively large scale, we will all face variable management problems. Among these problems, one is that the third-party data analysis platform on the market or enterprises’ own platforms have been unable to meet the needs of business development. So it is the proper time for us to start building a powerful business intelligence(BI) system, aiming to make accurate business analysis and forward-looking corporate decisions.

With the advancement of information construction, enterprises have accumulated massive data base. Hoewever, it can be a double-edged sword for enterprises. Because the greater the amount of data, the greater the value of the data that can be obtained. However, without strong data analysis ability, the massive data will also become an obstacle to the efficient decision-making of enterprises. Therefore, BI system arises at the historic moment and plays an increasingly prominent role today.

Aspects related to business intelligence
BI INTELLIGENCE (from google)

Note: The reports and 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.



What is BI System?

Business intelligence system is a set of complete solutions using technologies, processes and applications. In addition, it can extract useful data from different business systems of an enterprise for storing, analyzing, and managing internal data. In general, business intelligence (BI) system consists of three main parts: complete collection of data, reasonable arrangement and presentation of data, and delivery of data to those who need it in a convenient and efficient manner.
Companies employ BI systems to deliver right information to right person at the right time with a right format. In such way, BI supports business decision maker to develop strategic and operational insights more effectively.
When we talk about business intelligence system, it normally includes the following components:

  • data warehouse
  • BI software
  • Users with appropriate analytical

Data analysis and processing can be carried out while ensuring the correctness of data. BI software integrates useful BI tools to present clear and informative interfaces by easy dragging and dropping. Besides, using the appropriate query and analysis tools can quickly and accurately provide statements and analysis for enterprises. Through this way, it can support current corporate analysis and future decision or strategy making.

An interface of dashboard made by FineReport
INTERFACE OF BI SYSTEM


Features of BI systems

Data Warehouse

Data warehouse includes the process of collecting all the data needed. In addition, data warehouse provides a data storage environment where data onto 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.

Data Analysis

You need the ability of data analysis to aid in enterprise modeling. OLAP is a data analysis tool based on data warehouse environment. Moreover, it solves the shortcoming of low efficiency of multi-dimensional analysis based on OLTP analysis.
Business intelligence (BI) leverages data analysis to form actionable insights that inform an organization’s strategic and tactical business decisions.

Data Mining

In practical applications, data mining is also used to mine the past and predict the future. Data mining is a deeper level of active design and analysis of business data. It is a process of using knowledge discovery tools to mine previously unknown and potentially useful knowledge. It is an active method of automatic discovery. 

Data Visualization

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

An interface of dashboard reporting made by FineReport
DASHBOARD REPORTING (by FineReport)

Note: The reports and 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.



What Kind of Companies Use BI system?

Of course, not all companies need to build BI systems. The business intelligence system itself is built on the basis of enterprise informatization. If the enterprise does not establish a complete database, then even if it invests ten times or a hundred times more energy and funds in BI, it will be a waste. Data is the basis of BI system, so the establishment of a database is an important prerequisite.

If the company has reached a high degree of informatization, the success rate of importing the BI system will definitely be greatly improved. Not only will it not waste costs, but it will increase the work efficiency of employees and bring more work convenience to employees.

When the amount of data onto an enterprise is getting larger, the data analysis requires deeper insights and interactivity. In this occasion, BI can solve many things that cannot be solved by manual reports.



Practice of BI system

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

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.

Previous dilemma

With the gradual expansion of the company and the increase in the number of employees, how to rationally manage and plan the company’s organizational structure has become more and more important. This problem has also become a major problem for the company. In addition, the company lacks a clear tool, which can greatly save employees’ energy and shorten working hours, to show the company’s operations.

How BI system solve the problem?

Greentown China turns to FineReport for help.

scope dashboard of Greentown China made by FineReport
Scope dashboard (by FineReport)

The scope dashboard clearly shows the company’s organizational hierarchy, which not only makes it easy for employees to view the relevant part of the person in charge, but also helps the management to evaluate the positions of related personnel, and further optimize the organization’s management level.

Marketing dashboard (by FineReport)

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.

Target completion rate (by FineReport)
Target completion rate (by FineReport)

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.



BI system 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.

FineReport

FineReport, of Fanruan Software Limited Company, is a pure JAVA report software. Moreover, it can design complex reports and build a data decision analysis system by simple drag-and-drop operations.
Software companies using FineReport report can accelerate the development speed and improve the stability of software. In addition, after the software is delivered, it can greatly reduce the maintenance difficulty and improve the satisfaction of end users.
What’s more, enterprises and institutions are the end users of FineReport. With the software, 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.

bi system tool
FANRUAN

Significant Advantages

  • Fully functional and professional.

FineReport has a safe and perfect authority control scheme. So it can support relational database, 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 has its own unique insights into various industries, providing solutions and implementation solutions for a range of topics, including strategy, operations, organization, finance, marketing and so on, from top to bottom and from 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 query, 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.

A GIF showing the example of using FineReport.
USING OF FINEREPORT


FineBI

FineBI is a modern big data analytics & BI software designed for everyone who has need of 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 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 in a flexible way.

  • Smart data visualization

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

  • Enterprise-level permission management.

FineBI supports multi-layer administrator, and it is easier to synchronize permissions and organization structure. FineBI’s rich permission authentication methods and meticulous permission granularity control schemes make it easier to realize single sign-on, makeing enterprise-level data management easy and convenient.

  • 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.



The Differences and Relation Between FineBI and FineReport

Finereport and FineBI are both data analysis tools developped by FanRuan Software Co., Ltd. 

FineBI is a self-service BI tool designed for all employees in the company and especially the data analysts. The operation of FineBI is very simple and clear, focusing on allowing every employee to achieve self-service data analysis. The final reports and data analysis results of are for leaders and management team to make decisions through the analysis results.

FineReport is a reporting tool, suitable for IT staffs or report developers specially set by some enterprises. Other departments can view the reports produced by IT staffs or update the data. The speed of  report production depends on the reporting tool you are using. For example, FineReport uses an excel-like design interface to greatly improve production efficiency and save IT staff a lot of time.

The differences between Finereport and FineBI are as follows:

Differences between Finereport and FineBI

It should be emphasized that these two types of BI have their own advantages, they are not alternatives and they are suitable in different working scenarios, and . They will coexist for a long time for enterprises to choose according to their needs until the basic conditions of informatization change fundamentally. Referring to Gartner’s dual-mode IT model, it is recommended that enterprises should judge which type of BI is more suitable for them, or whether FineReport and FineBI need to be used in combination according to their own data processing maturity and demands.  

A great number of enterprises choose to employ Finereport and FineBI at the same time. Through the perfect combination and complementarity of Finereport and FineBI, it is way more easier to meet enterprises’ needs of complex reports and real-time data analysis.

If you want 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!



Conclusion

Business intelligence system is now getting more and more importance. Once enterprises fully exert the role of BI system, they have taken the advantage to take the lead in the competition. The tools in BI software platforms will make each function more powerful individually and more valuable to the business people using them. Therefore, FineReport will help your business follow the future trend, download and use it now!

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