Business Intelligence Systems
Business Intelligence (BI) is a set of systems for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to information to assist in the process of decision making at strategic and local levels. This is crucial to Liverpool John Moores University now more than ever as the sector moves into a very different and more competitive market place. A robust BI system helps to keep us ahead of the market allowing LJMU to be proactive as well as reactive.
BI systems should have several attributes depending on its maturity, attributes such as:-
• Accessibility when needed
• Concise, pictorial or graphical
• Up to date, current
• Known update times and intervals
• Can select data for [any, or defined] time period
• Good, reliable quality and integrity of data items
• Drill-down and roll-up capabilities (zoom in or zoom out; allowing broader or narrower views, s the user requires)
• Easy to understand
• Easy to export to a presentation or document
• Easy to add new information sources (internal or external)
• Allows the user to ask "What if... ?" questions
LJMU has had a BI system in place for several years now putting us ahead of much of the higher education sector, this system is the Web Hub. The Web Hub has been a large success providing access to data in a dynamic user friendly way bringing together many different sources of information. However, the first iteration of the Web Hub does not meet all of the attributes for high maturity. With this in mind the Web Hub is being redeveloped in time for the go live of the new student information system (SIS) go live, 1st August 2011. This second iteration of the Web Hub will entail several improvements which will increase the ‘BI maturity’ to the highest level.
