Khanyisa Mabasa on BI Tools For Startups
Hello Entrepreneurs, My name is Khanyisa Mabasa, an inspiring Junior Business Analyst part of Geekulcha crew, I have a keen interest in working in the bank sector. With all the skills and experience I'm acquiring at Geekulcha, I strive to take my career into the next level to gain more experience and exposure.
We live in a digitally-enabled world, where business moves fast and people are well connected, everywhere in the world, competition is very high and customers are demanding, so as much as digital technology is moving fast, in order to succeed, we need to master digital transformation. On such a complex journey, it is better to partner up in every stage to co-create a strategy to realize a digital vision, so it is very important for organizations to be data-centric.
Data science has been selected as one of the top 5 jobs in the future because most companies are in need of data scientists, data is never clean so most companies need people to spend their time analyzing and extract meaning from data because data is everything.
Information Systems (computer) can be seen as a system used to organize and analyze data, the group of components that interact to produce specific information, this is the way in which people interact with technology to support and control the performance of business processes. It focusses on business organizations such as people, business processes, information and technology.
Information Systems shape the enterprise architecture in a very big way as many organizations work with a large amount of data, data is a value or a fact, organized in a database.
Many people think that data and information are the same but information is the data that has been organized. Information systems will help enterprises turn raw data into useful information that can help organizations make better business decisions.
Information systems can help or shape business process in an effective way because information system can help organization to ensure that the output it produces, matches the requirements of quality standards, this will simplify business processes and removes unnecessary activities. It makes sure that only users with applicable rights can perform specific tasks, also removes all the tasks that are repeating and increase accuracy and can lead to better project planning.
Business Intelligence is a technology driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help executives and managers make business decisions, BI is needed in all organizations.
Some notes about Business Intelliegence
- It is a descriptive analytics
- BI describes a past or current state
- Offers a way for people to examine data to understand trends
- In a supply chain, BI is needed to determine where delays are happening
Business analysts need to keep their focus in business intelligence because as much as both BA and BI analyses data for change, Business Analysts need to focus on the current data to make sure that the business improves, not only for better future only but for the current state of business.
There is a need to focus on BI because if ever you work in a specific company and they want to improve operations and increase efficiency, BA with BI skills can be able to do to this. One needs to equip themeselves with these skills.
Business intelligence goes with the following components
- OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)
This component of BI allows executives to sort and select aggregates of data for strategic monitoring.
2. Advanced Analytics or Corporate Performance Management (CPM)
This set of tools allows business leaders to look at the statistics of certain products or services.
3. Real-time BI
Business can respond to real-time trends in email, messaging systems or even digital displays.
4. Data Warehousing
This component business leaders sift through subsets of data and examine interrelated components that can help drive business.
5. Data Sources
This component of BI involves various forms of stored data. It's about taking the raw data and using software applications to create meaningful data sources that each division can use to positively impact business.
There are many tools for startups that entrepreneurs can use to accelerate their businesses
Fbstart.com by Facebook
Young and startup entrepreneurs can use the fbstart.com platform as a way to get ahead in their businesses, they can get all the necessary information and partner up with the right people, as a way of making their businesses big, this can help them learn more about other apps and be able to use other peoples skills to get things done because this program is all about doing it for young developers and helping each other.
Audience centered Ad campaign
Getting your word out and making sure people know about your business is a very good way to start, there more people know about your business makes business to grow.
Instant article distribution management
Articles are also very important, different people are reached in different ways, getting different people read an articles in different platforms about your business makes business to be noticed and it that way, people will be very interested to know more about business and that takes your business to another level and grow.
You can checkout the Facebook Instant Articles API
Web analytics
Entrepreneur need to understand that in order to make it or survive in business, they need to measure their own data. They need to know how many people are visiting their website and what channels are these people coming from and in that way, they can make more people visit their website.
Video Marketing
Sometimes a video makes it very easy for people to understand what a certain business is all about, a video will bring traffic to business site, build lead and increase conversion rates for the business.
Tableau
Helps entrepreneurs make their data readable and presentable in graphic way.
Search Engine Optimization is also important for small businesses in future because it can make entrepreneur understand that in order to stand out and be discovered out there. Acquiring some SEO skills/telent will help business stay on top and implement a strategy to attract customers and make business grow because if your company’s website isn’t on the face page of the results, its practically invisible.
The future of Business Intellegence
One of the key trends many experts are predicting is a growth of the digital BI world into a more “cooperative space", where tools and platforms will become more broad-spectrum and eventually, more collaborative. BI was focused on small devices but now it will be shifted to touchy devices and this will make colleagues to work and make decision based on real time data.
Big Data will help small and big businesses to have a clear
understanding on how to make business decisions, with big data, they can be able to analyze data and figure out more value for customers.
I am so excited about the future because there is just a lot coming and I want to be part of it, there are many improvements coming up from now going forward and will make life easier than it is now, technologies that will transform the world and human welfare. Self-driving cars exist today that are safer than human-driven cars in most driving conditions. Over the next 3-5 years, they will get even safer and will begin to go mainstream.