Business intelligence systems and applications

Business Intelligence Software

The complexity of the business environment that affects companies' activity requires business intelligence solutions that are able to address problems that emerge because of the changes produced within the environment. Companies' activity becomes more and more complex, and business intelligence tools must help managers and their subordinates to adapt their schedule by reducing the time allocated to performing certain tasks, and increasing the time allocated to the decision-making process.

Although the economic and financial crisis has significantly affected most business sectors, it seems that the business intelligence industry is one of the sectors that prosper due to the crisis. The reason behind this situation relies on the fact that companies are more interested in new cost-cutting and sales opportunities, which means that they need suitable business intelligence software.

Companies that develop business intelligence software have diversified the areas addressed by their products. Therefore, such products are not only used in order to determine sales or to analyze wages, but they are also able to identify the number of employees that the company will require in accordance with several aspects.

The advantages that these software products have consist in the fact that they are designed in order to bring together information from diverse parts of the company (King, 2009). Several surveys have revealed the fact that business intelligence software represents a priority for many companies, even if their budget for the IT department is reduced.

Presentation and Discussion of Information

It is recommended that the company purchases a product developed by Oracle. This is because of the numerous advantages provided by the company's products in comparison with competitors. The high quality of the company's products is revealed by the fact that Oracle is the world's third software company, after Microsoft and IBM.

The company's tradition and success on the international market guarantee the abilities provided by the company's products in helping their users to improve the decision-making process within their companies. The innovations that Oracle is well-known for support the company's suitability for addressing several issues that interfere with companies' activity.

The most important product that Oracle provides is represented by the Oracle Database. The company also provides a series of other databases, adapted in order to suit the needs of most companies. Oracle also provides the Fusion Middleware, the Enterprise manager, the Secure Enterprise Search, the Beehive, the Collaboration Suite, and other products and services.

The Oracle Business Intelligence consists in a series of analytical products that are intended to provide users with the information required in order to make the best decisions in accordance with their needs.

The company's products regarding business intelligence include:

Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition

Oracle Essbase

Oracle BI Publisher

Oracle Real-Time Decisions

The Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition is a comprehensive query and analysis server.

The Oracle Essbase is an online analytical processing server.

The Oracle BI Publisher is a half-service production and operation reporting tool.

The Oracle Real-time Decisions is a real-time data classification and optimization solution (Oracle, 2010).

There are several advantages that customers can benefit from if purchasing Oracle's business intelligence tools. The company products that address this area are designed in order to connect strategic objectives established by the company's top managers, owners, and other stakeholders with the operational decisions that are intended to help the company reach these objectives.

Another advantage provided by Oracle business intelligence software is represented by the fact that such products are built in order to transform financial management processes. This is useful in order help companies adapt faster to the financial challenges that the business environment provides.

Also, the company's business intelligence products are guaranteed to deliver consistent and reliable insights, as characterized by the company. This is intended to facilitate the actions taken by companies that use these products and to improve them.

However, the main benefits of Oracle's business intelligence products consist in the fact that it helps companies to lower their costs. In addition to this, such products reduce the complexity of the company's systems, which further leads to improved efficiency.

Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management system is a very complex one that addresses Financial Performance Management, Transactional Systems, and Operational Business Intelligence Systems.

The company's business intelligence products are intended to help companies become insight-driven enterprises, which is expected to create value and competitive advantage in manners that the competition does not address.

The company's products address a series of issues that other products from competitors are unable to solve. For example, given the fact that the company's products rely on, multiple application product lines, companies that use these products are therefore able to provide their customers better insight in order to suite their multi-application environments.

Oracle's products provide comprehensive solutions like:

a) fast deployment

b) fast time-to-value

c) low TCO

d) enterprise-wide, cross-value chain intelligence

These products also provide pervasive intelligence that is further translated into:

a) embedded fast practices by function and role

b) guided analytics and best practice analytic workflows

The products also provide integrated and hot pluggable, like:

a) integrated with Oracle applications

b) built on open, leading BI platform

c) easy to adapt and extend

d) leverages existing IT investments

Recommendations

The challenges provided by the business environment that must be addressed by companies raise serious problems for these companies, given the fact that they require assistance in order to solve them. This assistance is represented by business intelligence software.