Glossary

The words on the dashboard, explained.

Every term you will meet when you set up business intelligence — defined in a sentence, then explained with an example from a real kind of business. No jargon to decode the jargon.

Basics

Business intelligence (BI)

Business intelligence (BI) is the practice of turning the data a business already collects into dashboards, reports and answers people can act on.

Dimension

A dimension is a descriptive attribute you group or filter numbers by — region, product, month, salesperson — as opposed to a measure, the number itself.

Embedded analytics

Embedded analytics puts dashboards and charts inside your own product or customer portal, so your customers see their data without opening a separate BI tool.

Measure

A measure is a number that can be added up or averaged — revenue, units, hours, cost — and is what a chart plots; a dimension is the category it is grouped by.

Single source of truth

A single source of truth is one agreed place and definition for each business number, so every dashboard, report and person quotes the same figure.

MIS report

An MIS report is the periodic management pack — sales, collections, expenses, profit and stock — that finance teams in India and the Gulf prepare for owners.

Management reporting

Management reporting is the regular set of figures and dashboards owners and managers use to run the business, distinct from statutory reports for regulators.

Self-service analytics

Self-service analytics lets business people explore data, filter dashboards and build their own charts without asking an analyst or writing code.

Ad hoc reporting

Ad hoc reporting is answering a one-off business question with a quick chart or table, built when it is needed rather than kept as a scheduled report.

Dashboards & charts

Cross-filter

Cross-filtering lets a click on one chart filter every other chart on the dashboard — click a region on a map and the sales, margin and stock charts follow.

Dashboard

A dashboard is a single page of charts, numbers and tables that answers a recurring business question at a glance, updated from live data rather than pasted in.

Data visualization

Data visualization is showing numbers as charts, maps and tables so patterns, comparisons and exceptions are seen at a glance rather than read from a list.

Drill-down

Drill-down is clicking a figure or chart to see the detail beneath it — region to country to store, or a total down to the individual rows behind it.

KPI dashboard

A KPI dashboard is one page of the five to seven key numbers a team is judged on, each with a target or comparison, so anyone can see if things are on track.

Data storytelling

Data storytelling is presenting numbers as a short explained sequence — what changed, why, and what to do next — instead of a page of charts left to decode.

Executive dashboard

An executive dashboard gives owners and leaders the whole business on one page: revenue, margin, cash, customers and the biggest current risk, against plan.

Sales dashboard

A sales dashboard tracks bookings against target, pipeline, win rate and deal size by rep, region and product, so leaders see where to act before month end.

Financial dashboard

A financial dashboard shows revenue, margin, costs, cash and receivables on one page, refreshed from the accounts instead of rebuilt in a spreadsheet.

Data & connections

Connector

A connector is the ready-made link between a BI tool and a specific system — PostgreSQL, Shopify, Salesforce, Excel — so data can be read without custom work.

Data freshness

Data freshness is how recently the numbers on a dashboard were updated from their source — live means right now, imported means as of the last refresh.

Data import

A data import copies a table or file into the BI tool on a schedule or on demand, so charts run on the copy — fast and independent of the source system.

Data model

A data model is the map of how a business’s tables relate — customers to orders to products — so one question can draw on several sources at once.

Data source

A data source is any system, database, file or app a BI tool reads data from — an ERP, a CRM, a spreadsheet, a warehouse — connected once and reused everywhere.

Data warehouse

A data warehouse is a central database built for analysis, where copies of data from many systems are collected, cleaned and kept as history for reporting.

Live connection

A live connection reads the source database each time a dashboard opens, so charts show the data as it is right now and nothing is copied out of your systems.

Relationship (between tables)

A relationship is the link between two tables on a shared column — orders to customers by customer ID — that lets one chart combine data from both.

ERP reporting

ERP reporting is producing management reports and dashboards from the data an ERP holds, in a reporting layer on top, because native reports stop at one module.

Semantic layer

A semantic layer is the shared set of business definitions — metrics, relationships, synonyms — used by every dashboard, report and AI answer.

Metrics

Calculated field

A calculated field is a new value created with a formula from existing data — such as margin from revenue and cost — rather than stored in the source system.

Churn rate

Churn rate is the share of customers (or revenue) lost over a period, usually a month or a year, and the counterpart to growth in any subscription business.

Cohort analysis

Cohort analysis groups customers by when they started and follows each group over time, so you can see whether newer customers stay longer than older ones.

Gross margin

Gross margin is revenue minus the direct cost of what was sold, expressed as a percentage of revenue — the first test of whether sales are actually profitable.

KPI (key performance indicator)

A KPI (key performance indicator) is one of the few numbers a business watches to judge whether it is on track — revenue vs plan, churn, on-time delivery.

Metric

A metric is a business number with an agreed definition — net revenue, conversion rate, average order value — calculated the same way wherever it appears.

MRR (monthly recurring revenue)

MRR (monthly recurring revenue) is the predictable subscription revenue a business expects each month, one-off fees excluded and annual plans spread evenly.

Period-over-period comparison

A period-over-period comparison sets a figure against the same figure for an earlier period — this month vs last month, or vs the same month last year.

Accounts receivable ageing

Accounts receivable ageing groups unpaid customer invoices by how overdue they are — 0–30, 31–60, 61–90 and 90+ days — to show where cash is stuck.

Budget vs actual

Budget vs actual compares what a business planned to spend or earn in a period with what it actually did, and shows the variance by line, department and month.

Security & governance

Column-level security

Column-level security hides or masks specific columns — salaries, margins, personal details — from people who should not see them, on the same shared dashboard.

Row-level security

Row-level security limits which records each person sees on a shared dashboard — a rep sees their territory, a manager their store — without separate copies.

Self-hosted BI

Self-hosted BI is business intelligence software you run on your own servers or cloud account, so data, dashboards and access stay inside your own boundary.

Data governance

Data governance is the set of rules for who owns, defines, can see and can change a company’s data, so reports stay accurate, consistent and safe.

AI & automation

Conversational analytics

Conversational analytics lets people explore data by asking questions in plain words and following up, getting charts back instead of building them.

Generative BI

Generative BI is business intelligence where AI drafts the work, such as charts, dashboards, formulas, queries and summaries, for a person to review and keep.

Natural-language query

A natural-language query is a question typed in plain words — “which products fell last month?” — that a BI tool turns into a chart or answer from your data.

Scheduled report

A scheduled report is a dashboard sent automatically at set times — the Monday pack by email, the daily figures to Slack or WhatsApp — with no manual export.

Text to SQL

Text to SQL is AI that turns a plain-language request, such as “total sales per month”, into a database query a person can review and run.

Automated insights

Automated insights are facts a BI tool finds for you on a dashboard, such as the biggest change, top movers and unusual values, plus a plain-language summary.

AI data analyst

An AI data analyst is a BI assistant that answers business questions with charts, drafts dashboards and explains changes, for a person to check and keep.

Go deeper

Guides that put the terms to work.

The glossary defines. The guides show how the pieces fit: what business intelligence is, how to choose a tool, how to design a dashboard people read.

All guides

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