Balkan Services presented the latest trends in the segment of Business Intelligence solutions in an online discussion. The Business Intelligence software provides a new type of business management in a dynamic environment - this is one of the main conclusions of the webinar "BI and BA systems - not only technology but an overall business strategy." The event was held today at: http://discussions.idg.bg/, in cooperation with the consulting company Balkan Services - one of the first implementers of BI systems in the country.
The systems for business analysis of the type Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) are software solutions that use available data on the activities of a company to bring out a variety of trends and indicators of performance in useful time. This makes them especially valuable for managers, most of all in times of economic crisis, when BI solutions increase the flexibility of companies and their ability to respond quickly and effectively to market changes. "Recently there has been an interest in the BI systems, but for a country like Bulgaria they must be hundreds and thousands," said Vladimir Rashev, Managing Partner of Balkan Services during the online discussion, commenting on the pace of development of the BI segment in Bulgaria. One positive trend, according to him, is that companies in the country already have a variety of systems that generate business data and thus understand the need for a variety of solutions to analyze this data. Vladimir Rashev commented on the difference between Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA), stressing that the two concepts overlap to a great extent. "It is not important to distinguish between the two terms. BI and BA are a collection of different technologies for extracting data from databases and analyzing it. They give practical analyzes and other reports that help us to use the data in the most effective ways. BI is not just for making reports and analyzes; it tries to concentrate all the know-how of the customer. Some companies want to make profit, not to grow. Priorities are different and they have to be implemented in the company’s system," he said. When asked if BA software is recognizable in Bulgaria, the Balkan Services manager replied that it is a variety of the BI technology.
Boyana Likomanova, Head of Business Intelligence in Balkan Services, explained about the challenges facing the development of the BI systems in the country. "Unlike with other more operative systems, with BI programs it is very important that they be implemented as quickly as possible, and to react to changes immediately. If the time-to-value cycle is too long, it becomes expensive and inadequate to the current dynamics of occurrence of changes." She pointed out that the first challenge is the speed of implementation, and the second is connected to the interface, which should enable users to think and make decisions, not to deal with software specifics. "We all work with smartphones, laptops, and we make decisions at any time" - she said, adding that it is important for consumers to have BI practically in the pocket, and to be able to use it on their tablet or smartphone. According to her, the importance of access through different web interfaces and architectures of the type "cloud" is also significant, but still, the keywords with a good BA system remain "security and reliability”.
