How Business Intelligence Has Evolved Over the Last Few Decades

By Dan McCarthy, Event Manager and Freelance Marketing Consultant

It’s unprecedented the way business intelligence (BI) has evolved over the course of several decades. In your parents’ and grandparents’ generation, data was limited to sales numbers and a few other broad metrics. Today, that has all changed due to the breakout of new key performance indicators made possible through advancements in BI.

The Evolution of BI Tools

The term “business intelligence” wasn’t invented with the rise of the Internet. In fact, the term goes much further back with the first usage dating all the way back to 1865 to a work called Cyclopaedia of Commercial and Business Anecdotes. It was used to describe Sir Henry Furnese, an 18^th-century banker and politician.

The term really took off in the early 20^th-century, though data at that point was relegated to physical copies of data reports secured in filing cabinets.

From Dard Disk to Database to Data Warehouses

By 1956, the hard disk drive was invented by IBM. It became a driving force for the evolution of BI tools. Two years later, the term “business intelligence” rose to prominence when it was coined by IBM researcher Peter Luhn, who was given the nickname “the Father of Business Intelligence.” The credit for the modern definition of the term should go to Howard Dresner.

1950 hard disk drive, photo credit: Pingdom

By the 70s, various business applications were developed. Names like JD Edwards and SAP released innovated data tools for storing information in databases. While this represented a pivotal point for BI, these early databases produced very siloed and one-dimensional data points. This made it difficult to draft cohesive reports outlining specific demographic patterns.

This was followed by data warehouses by the 80s, allowing data from a diverse array to sources to be stored in a single, easy-to-access location. This was a huge improvement that brought order and structure to big data.

Enter the 90s. By this time, more vendors began introducing their own data storage solutions. Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of these tools, SMBs had to rely on internal or third-party IT vendors to handle the day-to-day data recordkeeping and analyses.

As recent as the early 2000s, data visualization tools were handled almost exclusively by IT departments. Nowadays, thanks to self-service data visualization tools and software as a service, SMBs can manage their own big data through an easy-to-disseminate dashboard. This enabled laypeople, from the higher-ups down to the entry level staffer, to make use of the data without an intermediary.

Data Visualization (DV)

Photo credit: Digital Telepathy

The emergence of DV played an instrumental role in making BI tools accessible to everyone. DV took complex data and presented the information in an easy-to-interpret visual format. Basic bar graphs and pie charts are prime examples of DV. More relevant to this era is the advent of infographics.

Modern BI tools also enable DV that extends across multiple devices, allowing multiple people across different devices to look at the same information in real time.

Upcoming Trends

So, what can SMBs look forward to as we move along in 2017 and beyond? More data visualization is expected, hence why it was given its own section. The Business Application Research Center (BARC) released its own report outlining the 21 top predicted trends in BI for 2017. Here are a few of these trends at a glance:

– Advanced Predictive Analysis – While the majority of the current BI tools are already capable of drawing conclusions from the assessed data and make assumptions accordingly, predictive analysis is an ever-evolving sub-field of BI. In the upcoming years, niche specific BI tools will be able to work with niche-specific presets, drawing multiple possible outcome scenarios, based on the data fed to them.

– Master Data – This is the sum findings comprising of various separate data combined into a single easy-to-decipher report. This makes data sharing easier across multiple channels. It’s essentially your business-critical data that serves as the go-to point of reference for a particular project or department.

– Self-Service BI – This was mentioned briefly, citing the emergence of self-service BI companies. This can also save small companies the expense of having to hire and bring in IT-literate staff.

– Mobile BI – BI initiatives through mobile devices is only going to get bigger. This is especially true in the workplace that is increasingly adopting bring-your-own-device (BYOD) guidelines. According to a 2013 survey, 79% of respondents indicated that a mobile presence played an essential role in generating revenue.

– Collaboration – staff members must be in sync and communicate across different devices. This is even more important now that more work teams are comprising of remote staff. Everyone needs to be on the same page and be able to see the data that their coworkers are seeing, even as the information is updated in real time.

– Data storytelling – data reveals something about your demographic. It tells a very meaningful story regarding consumer behavioral patterns. BI tools help you decipher that story, so you can make educated business decisions moving forward.

BI Is Everywhere

Business intelligence insights make up an integral part of every business, from that small online etsy shop to the headquarters of Apple. It’s only going to expand as our personal and professional lives become more integrated with the digitized era. Despite the lengthy history of BI, its evolution has really only just begun.

Dan McCarthy is an Event Manager and freelance marketing consultant. Dan has been featured by lots of great media outlets and has contributed extensively to blogs both big and small, writing about marketing techniques, event management and social media. Follow him on Twitter @DanCarthy2.