What is business intelligence (BI)?

At a glance

• transforms raw data into actionable insights
• presents results in a visual and easy-to-understand way – in dashboards, reports, and KPI overviews
• saves time, identifies trends at an early stage, and enables in-depth comparisons and analyses
• modern BI solutions increasingly use automation, self-service capabilities, and artificial intelligence

Business intelligence definition

As data volumes continue to grow, Business intelligence (BI) has become an almost indispensable tool for companies. Business intelligence encompasses all technologies, methods, and strategies that companies use to systematically collect, structure, analyze, and transform their internal and external data into actionable information. BI tools transform this information into meaningful reports, dashboards, and key figures.

The goal is not merely to process data technically, but above all to create a transparent basis for decision-making. Business intelligence aims to identify trends at an early stage and turn complex and unstructured volumes of data into clear, reliable insights that help executives, controllers, analysts, and operational teams act more quickly and make better-informed decisions. Modern BI solutions increasingly make use of automated analyses, self-service capabilities, and artificial intelligence.

How does business intelligence work?

BI is a multi-stage process that transforms raw data into actionable insights to support companies in their decision-making.

• Data acquisition and integration (ETL): BI tools extract structured and unstructured data from various sources, transform it, and load it into a central system – a process known as ETL (Extract, Transform, Load).
• Data storage (data warehouse): The processed data is stored in a Data Warehouse, which serves as a central repository. Data warehouses often use OLAP engines to enable complex, multidimensional queries and in-depth analyses.
• Analysis and pattern recognition: Data Mining and statistical analyses are used to uncover trends, patterns, and anomalies. BI tools such as DeltaMaster perform both descriptive and predictive analyses to understand the current state and forecast future developments.
• Visualization and reporting: The results of the analyses are converted into easy-to-understand formats: interactive dashboards, charts, graphical tables, and KPI overviews. These visualizations enable decision-makers to quickly grasp the most important insights.
• Decision support: Based on the processed information, data-driven decisions can be made, changes can be identified in real time, and strategic adjustments can be implemented.

What does business intelligence do?

Business Intelligence fulfills three key functions within a company: analysis, planning, and reporting. These three areas are interlinked—from evaluating past data to deriving target values and presenting the information in a way that decision-makers can easily understand.

Analysis

BI systems analyze historical and current business data to identify patterns, trends, and variances. This includes ad hoc analyses as well as drill-downs into key performance indicators by dimensions such as region, product, or customer. Modern BI solutions are increasingly able to detect variances automatically and provide not only the number but also an explanation of what caused it.

Planning

BI provides the data foundation and tools for budgeting, forecasting, and scenario analysis. Based on this, companies create actual-versus-plan comparisons, continuously adjust forecasts to reflect current figures, and assess—before making a decision—how different scenarios will impact earnings, liquidity, and other key performance indicators. Planning is thus not a one-time process but rather a continuous activity that proceeds in tandem with analysis.

Reporting

In reporting, Business Intelligence presents the results of analysis and planning in reports, dashboards, and key metric overviews. What matters here is not merely the presentation of the numbers, but a format that makes anomalies recognizable at a glance—for example, through graphical tables rather than simple columns of numbers. In addition to regular standard reports such as monthly or P&L reports, this also includes ad hoc reports for specific questions.

At Bissantz, DeltaMaster combines these three tasks into a single system: Instead of managing analysis, planning, and reporting in separate tools, business units and the controlling department work with a unified key performance indicator (KPI) framework—variances are automatically detected, plan values are consistently updated, and reports are kept current without any additional manual effort. In practice, these core business intelligence tasks are complemented by trending topics such as AI and modern data platforms like Microsoft Fabric.

Benefits of business intelligence: What are the advantages of BI?

Business Intelligence offers numerous benefits to companies by optimizing the use of data across various business areas. Some of the key benefits of BI include:

• Efficient decision-making: Business Intelligence solutions help companies quickly and easily integrate, analyze, and visualize data from different sources in order to make informed decisions.
• Accessibility for all users: Business Intelligence systems also enable non-technical users to access a wide range of reports and analyses.
• Trend and issue detection: Intelligent BI systems and data visualization methods make trends, anomalies, and problems immediately apparent. This allows new business opportunities to be identified quickly.
• Customer satisfaction and retention: BI tools provide a quick overview of customer behavior and purchasing patterns, enabling companies to better understand customer needs and create more targeted offers to increase customer satisfaction and retention.
• Performance measurement and benchmarking: BI enables companies to continuously measure and track performance and to establish benchmarks based on data.
• Competitive advantages and growth: The insights gained through BI can contribute to significant performance improvements, thereby helping companies secure competitive advantages and achieve long-term growth.
• Time and effort savings: By automating processes with BI tools, employees can focus on strategic initiatives instead of manual routine work.
• Clarity regarding performance indicators: Business Intelligence software provides a clear overview of all key performance indicators (KPIs) of the company.

These diverse benefits of Business intelligence can be achieved with Business Intelligence software such as DeltaMaster. The automated and standardized tool for analysis, planning, and reporting helps companies immediately grasp important insights at a glance through intelligent data visualization. This enables companies to respond quickly to changes and make informed decisions. In addition, the intuitive user interface allows both beginners and experienced users to work efficiently with the software.

What is business intelligence software?

Business intelligence software is an application that enables companies to consolidate business data from various sources, analyze it, and present it in reports or dashboards. It forms the technical foundation for business intelligence and provides functions for data integration, analysis, planning, and reporting within a single system.

Typical Functions

BI software typically performs several tasks along the data value chain:

• Data integration: Connecting to source systems such as ERP, CRM, or Excel files, often via ETL processes
• Data modeling: Structuring data in a data warehouse or an OLAP database for multidimensional queries
• Analysis: Evaluation of key performance indicators (KPIs), drill-down by dimensions, identification of variances and trends
• Reporting: Presentation of results in dashboards, charts, and reports
• Planning: Creation and updating of budgets, forecasts, and scenarios

Distinction from general-purpose software

Unlike spreadsheets such as Excel, BI software is designed for large, multidimensional data sets, consistently maps key performance indicator logic, and automates recurring analysis and reporting processes. This reduces the need for manual maintenance and ensures consistent figures across departments—an area where many Excel-based solutions reach their limits. But which software is right for your company? We’ve compiled the most important criteria in a checklist for business intelligence software.

Typical use cases

Business intelligence is applied in virtually all areas of a company:

Summary

Business intelligence is now an indispensable instrument for modern business management: it transforms raw data into clear, decision-relevant insights – quickly, transparently, and at scale. From data integration and analysis to visualization, BI provides the foundation for informed decisions at all levels. With DeltaMaster, Bissantz offers a BI platform that consistently delivers on this promise – integrated, automated, and AI-supported.