Business Intelligence (BI) platforms have traditionally relied on data warehouses as their primary source of information. Data warehouses consolidate data from multiple sources into a centralized system, making it easier to conduct analytics and generate reports. BI tools then present this data to users through interactive dashboards, charts, reports, and maps.

Many data warehouses include an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) engine, which supports multidimensional queries. For example, a business might compare sales in the eastern and western regions over the past two years. OLAP enables deep data exploration, complex calculations, and predictive analytics, offering consistent and reliable outputs that can improve product quality, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

Data lakehouses are also becoming a key part of modern BI. They combine the strengths of both data lakes and data warehouses, offering a unified platform for structured and unstructured data, with improved performance and flexibility for advanced analytics.

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The typical BI process follows these steps:

• Data Sources: Identify relevant data, which may come from data warehouses, data lakes, cloud platforms, CRM systems, sales tools, supply chain data, social media, or external industry sources.

• Data Collection: Gather and clean data from these sources, using manual methods like spreadsheets or automated tools such as ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipelines.

• Analysis: Explore the data to identify patterns, trends, or anomalies using techniques such as data mining, modeling, or discovery tools.

• Visualization: Present insights through visual tools like dashboards, graphs, and charts using platforms such as Tableau, Power BI, SAP, or Excel. Features like drill-down, drill-through, and drill-up allow for deeper exploration of data layers.

• Action Planning: Translate insights into actionable strategies by comparing historical performance with key performance indicators (KPIs). This might include improving processes, refining marketing strategies, addressing supply chain inefficiencies, or enhancing customer experiences.