Business Intelligence (BI) is the process of turning raw data into actionable business insights. This overview covers the end-to-end BI process.
- Understand business objectives
- Identify key stakeholders
- Define KPIs and metrics
- Determine data needs
- Identify data sources
- Extract data (ETL/ELT)
- Clean and transform data
- Store in data warehouse/lake
- Design star/snowflake schemas
- Create dimensions and facts
- Establish relationships
- Define measures and calculations
- Choose appropriate chart types
- Design dashboard layouts
- Apply best practices for clarity
- Ensure accessibility
- Build in BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, etc.)
- Add interactivity (filters, drill-downs)
- Optimize performance
- Test and validate
- Publish dashboards
- Set up security and access
- Schedule refreshes
- Monitor usage and performance
- Dimensions vs Measures
- Data granularity
- Visualization principles (3-second rule)
- Data quality importance
- Power BI for dashboarding
- SQL (as example) for data manipulation
- Excel (as example) for initial analysis
- Various data sources
BI is iterative: insights lead to new questions, requiring refinement of the process. Practice with the prompts in this course to master each stage.