MOBILE BUSINESS INTELLIGENT

What is Mobile Business Intelligence (Mobile BI)?

Mobile Business Intelligence (Mobile BI or Mobile Intelligence) refers to the distribution of business data to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and departments. Mobile BI has shown a growth only very recently. This change has been partly encouraged by a change from the ‘wired world’ to a wireless world with the advantage of smartphones which has led to a new era of mobile computing, especially in the field of BI.

:: Information delivery to mobile devices

The predominant method for accessing BI information is using proprietary software or a Web browser on a personal computer to connect to BI applications. These BI applications request data from databases.

:: Mobile client application

Wireless e-mail of Blackberry proved to be the “killer applications” that enhanced the popularity of the smartphone market. The BlackBerry smartphones reduced the difficulties to mobile business intelligence. BI vendors re-entered the market with offerings spanning different mobile operating systems (BlackBerry, Windows, and Symbian) and data access methods. The two most popular data access options are:

   () To use the mobile browser to access data, similar to desktop computer.

      () To create a native application designed specifically for the mobile device.

:: Development

Developing a natural mobile BI application poses challenges, especially concerning data display rendering and user interactivity. Mobile BI App development has traditionally been a time-consuming and expensive effort requiring businesses to explain worth investment for the mobile workforce. They do not only require texting and alerts, they need information customized for their line of work which they can interact with and analyze to gain deeper information.

1)    Custom-coded Mobile BI Apps

Mobile BI applications are often custom coded apps specific to the underlying mobile operating system. In addition to the user functionality of the app, the app must be coded to work with the backup server infrastructure required to serve data to the mobile BI app. While custom coded apps offer near limitless options, the specialized software coding expertise and infrastructure can be expensive to development, modify, and maintain.

2)    Fixed-formed Mobile BI Apps

Business data can be displayed in a mobile BI client that serves as a user interface to existing BI platforms, eliminating the need for specialized server infrastructure since it is provided by the BI platform. This option offer fixed-formed data visualizations such as charts and tables

3)    Graphical Tool-developed Mobile BI Apps

Mobile BI apps can also be developed using the graphical, drag-and-drop development environments of BI platforms. The advantages of using graphical tool are can be developed without coding, can be easily modified using BI platform, can use any range of data conceptions and can incorporate specific business workflows.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_business_intelligence)