Why BI? Brief Intro to Business Intelligence (for Finance)
Famous "Chicken and egg" question is actually easy to answer: eggs were "used" by dinosaurs long before any chicken existed. One tougher question is whether it's Business Intelligence that's changing the role of Finance, or Finance are using BI tools more and more because their role is changing dramatically. One thing is true: for me BI is one of the most useful tools, and it does change my role as Finance professional.
So, BI it... What's BI?
But first things first. As all BI definitions I found are extremely relevant, but very hard to understand for those not (yet) using BI, let's agree that BI toolkit is any system that helps you turn raw data into actionable insight. The system must be able to take your data from several different sources, turn it into a model (sometimes a sophisticated one), and communicate it to your business partners. As simple as that, it doesn't have to be an advanced ready-made super-system; if your Excel spreadsheet does the job - you're good to go. In my case, I'm using a lot of Excel, Powerpivot, PowerView and, of course, PowerBI.
So, how does a bunch of dynamic charts in your browser impact the business and Finance?
Knowing every number in the company... Finance job of waste of time?
First and most important, Finance stops being the ultimate data keeper. I get less and less questions like "how much is our revenue budget?", and that's great as me and my people can have more time to provide information, not just data. Communication gets extremely easy - no more need to make sure, for instance, that everybody is using the same version of Excel, all I need to do is share the link and access. Once, not daily.
Security... Security? Security!
Access is another big deal. Whenever you send some spreadsheet or chart away, you're typically no longer in control over where it goes. BI helps you prevent unintentional data loss at least.
Single version of truth
But more importantly, your business partners get the "single version of truth" - remember those meetings and calls when you had to send your report many times and that "nice" challenge to make sure the charts all your business partners are using are the same and the latest ones?
Charts, charts, charts...
Speaking about the charts. Obviously, those are easy to use. It might be hard to confess if you're Finance, but for your business partners spreadsheet is surprisingly not the best format! But what charts really do is turning your discussions from you telling the business your conclusions to all of you analyzing the business together and agree on the outcomes. And, per my observations, this sort of analysis really allows you to come to the right conclusion much faster than "classical" step-by-step drilldown, as you literally see the anomalies right away - if your report is well-designed.
Heterogeneous? no problem!
One of my "special favorites" is heterogeneous environment. Sounds scary, but what it means is that BI stands between multiple data systems - and I've never seen any big company using only one data system, or even one vendor like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, etc. for storing all data. BI, for instance, can take your revenue actuals from billing system like SQL and your upcoming deals from CRM system, and after some modelling form your deal-based forecast and compare it to your budget taken from yet another system. And, of course, in perfect world this system can regularly update without your interference, saving you and your people in Finance a great deal of time and making you a little bit more independent from your IT department.
There's a lot of various BI systems you can use. Some of them are tailored for you by vendor, others are more like Lego you can customize yourself for your organization. Some of them are installed on your PC, some using browser; some of them use your servers for calculations, some are Cloud solutions. But there's one thing in common: when you start using BI in your company, it changes Finance role from "number guys" to reliable business partners.
(To BI continued...)