Business Intelligence from a Tester’s Eye

Abstract: Today, business is mostly capitalistic in nature. Countries that have traditionally been conservative are slowly opening up to reap the benefits of globalization. This will only mean increased opportunities and competitions for businesses across the globe. Given the same, an entrepreneur or business manager of a company always thinks about three important aspects for a successful business.

i. How can I avoid unnecessary costs and avoid underutilization of resources?
ii. How can I maximize my profits and look for more ways of improving the business?
iii. How can I understand the needs of my customers and delight them?

These objectives stand in common across all businesses, no matter what the region, time and nature of the business is. For ages, we have struggled to find solutions to the above questions. There are a lot of tools, processes and practices that can help one achieve the above. Various studies have also been conducted by experts on the same. All of them aim at helping the person-in-charge of the business to understand its current status, trends and patterns, and the ever changing customers.

What if we could have a single tool that can help us achieve the answer to all the three questions above? The idea is exciting, isn't it? The magic wand that can help us simultaneously address all three questions is Business Intelligence (BI).
Businesses across the world have widely been appreciating what BI can do for them. As with any other technology, this technology also provides a whole lot of opportunities for the IT industry in general, and for professionals in this arena, in particular. This paper provides an insight into Business Intelligence applications from the perspective of a tester. The focus is mainly around understanding Business Intelligence from scratch and the approach to test BI applications.