Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence is the name for a group of practices, technologies, applications, and methods that provide an actionable data pool for companies. Thanks to BI, you can adjust your business activities, plans, or goals to reflect the current state. In other words, you will be closer to what we call a data-driven company.

With proper usage of data, you can achieve your goals faster and easier while spending less money. You can also filter which goals are relevant or even achievable. Proper implementation of BI in your company will automate your information process, which lets you focus on execution.

Getting started with BI involves four steps: identifying the data sources and KPIs that matter to your business, designing the data model and warehouse that brings those sources together, building the dashboards and reports that surface insights for decision-makers, and training your team to use and extend the system. Rare Crew handles all four. Our process begins with an analysis and evaluation workshop — we work with your stakeholders to define critical KPIs, assess existing data sources, and design the architecture before any development begins. We also provide end-user training as a standard component of every BI delivery.

Business Intelligence tools help you visualize data, automate reporting, and surface insights through dashboards and alerts. Rare Crew works primarily with Microsoft Power BI — we are a certified Microsoft Solutions Partner with dedicated Power BI specialists. We also build solutions on Tableau and SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services), and design fully custom analytics dashboards for clients whose requirements exceed what standard platforms offer. On the data infrastructure side we work with Azure Synapse, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and Snowflake for data warehousing, and build ETL pipelines using Azure Data Factory and SSIS. Tool recommendation is always based on your existing Microsoft ecosystem, data volumes, and reporting complexity.

Business Intelligence focuses on descriptive analytics — what has happened and what is happening now. It uses historical data to generate reports, dashboards, and KPIs that reflect current business performance. Business Analytics covers predictive and prescriptive analytics — what is likely to happen and what action you should take. In practice, Rare Crew's BI implementations cover both: we build the data infrastructure, ETL pipelines, and reporting layer (BI), and can extend into trend analysis, forecasting models, and automated alerting (BA). The right scope depends on your data maturity and decision-making needs.

Timeline depends on data source complexity, the number of dashboards required, and the state of your existing data infrastructure. A focused implementation — connecting 2 to 3 data sources and delivering 10 to 15 dashboards — typically takes 2 to 4 months. A full enterprise BI platform covering multiple business units, a central data warehouse, and real-time reporting typically takes 6 to 12 months. Rare Crew delivers in phases, so you receive working dashboards within the first 6 to 8 weeks of the engagement — not only at the end.

Yes. Rare Crew connects Power BI and other BI platforms to virtually any data source: Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, SAP, custom-built databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle), cloud data sources (Azure, AWS), flat file exports, and REST APIs. We design and build the ETL or ELT integration layer that ensures data reaching your dashboards is clean, consistent, and refreshed at the cadence your business requires — from daily batch updates to near-real-time streaming.

Yes. Training is a standard component of every Rare Crew BI delivery. We train report authors and dashboard builders on Power BI or your chosen platform, data teams on the data model and ETL processes, and end users on navigating and interpreting the dashboards. We also deliver written documentation covering the data model, report logic, and maintenance procedures — so your team can extend and modify the solution independently after handover. We have 15+ dedicated BI specialists with experience across entertainment, sports, and media sectors.