All businesses, big or small need to focus on enhancing their processes and determine critical plans to generate higher value. Business intelligence will enable these processes to happen more effectively, allowing people to gather the right information, in the correct format and at the right time. Alongside this necessity, the improvements in technology mean cloud computing is accelerating its position from being a business feature to a necessity.

Cloud-based services have accelerated their position within many industries with SaaS tools such as Salesforce and Hubspot providing integrated software options for marketing and sales teams. Other file hosting providers like Dropbox and Google Drive have transformed how people share and work together on various projects. In the earlier days, cloud-based business knowledge was utilised by smaller businesses that lacked the financial support to manage costly BI services. However, cloud BI has begun to emerge as a standard for organisations of all sizes looking to embrace cloud computing for their own individual business intelligence plans.

Cloud BI tools transform how businesses approach data analysis. With a large number of analytical tools now available, businesses can become more information-focused in terms of the strategy and decision-making process. The BI and Data Management in the Cloud Issues and Trends study states that the use of Cloud BI has increased from 29% to 43% between 2013 and 2016 and approximately half of the businesses in the study are moving towards public cloud systems for cloud BI, analytics and data management.

Cloud-based BI combines two effective technologies for businesses. Cloud computing provides an ideal platform to support BI services when organisations need to generate a wide range of information from a number of sources at any time and from anywhere. With the potential to adapt and scale on the cloud, it provides an ideal solution for business intelligence plans. The 2020 Cloud Computing and BI Market Study by Dresner Advisory Services shows a significant uptake of Cloud BI and expects the adoption of these services to continue improving.

The study showed that nearly 90% of R&D offices believe Cloud BI to be an important tool for current and future activities. Most senior and executive management teams perceive Cloud BI as a critical part of delivering their ongoing plans and strategies. The rise of Covid-19 has accelerated the uptake of cloud-based platforms to a level beyond expectation. With distancing and remote work measures in place, Cloud BI has become an important element in a number of services. Business Intelligence focuses on determining better choices for individuals, information, processes and strategies. BI generates intelligent reports, improves business efficiency, lower operational overheads and enhances the delivery of intelligent business insights.