Artificial intelligence in business analytics is not new. In fact, IDC’s North American Business Intelligence/Analytics Survey (August 2024) highlighted that nearly 80% of respondents were already using or integrating generative AI capabilities into their BI/analytics solutions. The aim? To make insights faster, easier, and accessible to everyone across the business. But despite its promise, AI often falls short when applied without a strategic and responsible approach. Many users still struggle to extract meaningful, actionable insights from their data.

Today, many BI tools use large language models to translate user queries into SQL in real time, often drawing only from visible dashboards or loosely defined metadata. No context. No consistency. No visibility into where the answer came from.

Generative BI raises a critical question, can you trust BI insights when the process is a black box?

Without transparency into how queries are constructed or which data is used, businesses face significant risks: data drift, bias, and hallucinated results—all of which can lead to poor decision-making.

For data stewards and analysts, the consequences are all too familiar:

• Business users receive inconsistent, biased, or incorrect answers
• There is no visibility into how insights are generated
• Data teams become overwhelmed with support requests

The outcome? Trust in the BI environment erodes, and user adoption stagnates.

Introducing IBM watsonx BI: A trustworthy AI-powered business insights agent

Unlike traditional BI tools that simply use generative AI for querying and visualization, watsonx BI introduces a fundamentally different approach: combining the power of generative AI with a robust, governed semantic model. IBM watsonx BI taps into all your data, enabling users—regardless of technical expertise—to ask questions in natural language and receive comprehensive, transparent insights aligned with their needs

With watsonx BI, users can confidently explore critical business questions such as:

• Why is it happening?
• What trends are emerging?
• What actions can influence outcomes?

By integrating descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive analytics, watsonx BI delivers a unified and intelligent decision-making experience.

More than an assistant, an intelligent agent

watsonx BI empowers users to ask business questions in plain language—no dashboards to build, no SQL to write, and no need to know where the data resides. Users can instantly query across all accessible data without manually selecting sources, tables, or reports. The intelligent agent interprets each question, dynamically identifies the most relevant assets, reasons over the available data, and delivers accurate answers as text, visualizations, or both—automatically selecting the right tools and data sources behind the scenes. Every response includes built-in transparency, allowing users to review how the answer was generated: the data sources consulted, columns used, filters applied, and even the full SQL query executed.

How it works?

Semantic Layer

At its core, watsonx BI leverages a semantic layer that connects business concepts to raw data in a governed, reusable way. It translates complex technical data into business-logical, user-friendly assets—ensuring consistency, clarity, and alignment with organizational logic.

Data Onboarding

Organizations can connect to a wide range of data sources using built-in connectors. For IBM Cognos Analytics users, importing Framework Manager models into watsonx BI’s metrics catalog is simple—no need to recreate models from scratch.

Automated Enrichment

watsonx BI uses generative AI to automatically enrich datasets with readable display names, clear descriptions, and business terms. For example, a column named prod_price might become “Product Price” with a description like “Defines the price of each product.” The AI detects data types and categories, reducing manual effort and improving clarity and accuracy in responses. Stewards retain full control and can accept, reject, or modify suggestions.

Metric definition and automation:

After connecting the data, stewards begin the modeling experience, where they define metrics, business concepts that encapsulate the logic, calculations, and relationships needed to generate accurate, context-aware insights. Metrics can be:

• Manually defined, following traditional modeling workflows
• Automatically suggested by AI, based on schema analysis and data patterns

In both cases, the data team maintains full control, using AI suggestions as a starting point or refining them as needed

Metrics catalog: A governed single source of truth

To ensure consistency across the organization, watsonx BI introduces a metrics catalog, a central repository where certified metrics are published and governed. When a user asks a question, watsonx BI consults their available data in metrics catalog to ensure answers are aligned with business logic and domain-specific rules. This eliminates metric drift and guarantees that all users speak the same data language.

Custom visualizations and alerts

Beyond metrics, watsonx BI allows users to create custom visualization instances based on metrics and filters. For example, a metric called “Sales” may represent country-wide data. A business user may want to monitor a specific store’s sales daily. A data analyst can create this visualization, apply filters, and publish it to the user’s metrics carousel, a persistent display area for critical KPIs. Users can also create and pin their own visualizations (subject to permissions), and receive alerts when thresholds are met or exceeded.

Flexible AI model integration

watsonx BI gives organizations flexibility in their AI strategy by supporting a predefined selection of large language models, including IBM’s own models and other leading providers. The catalog of supported models will continue to expand over time as new models are validated and added, ensuring companies can adapt as the AI scenario evolves.

Available on Cloud and On-Premises

watsonx BI is currently available as a cloud service, making it easy to deploy, scale, and integrate into modern data environments. For organizations with specific data residency, compliance, or infrastructure requirements, watsonx BI is already available for on-premises deployment, giving you the freedom to run it where it makes the most sense for your business. watsonx BI as a cloud service will also be available very soon, making it easy to deploy, scale, and integrate into modern data environments.

Integrate and extend

IBM watsonx BI is built to integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure, connecting to your data Lakehouse, automation workflows, and reporting tools. It delivers contextual insights directly within the platforms your teams already use, creating a unified experience, reducing adoption barriers, and maximizing ROI on your data and technology investments. It also plugs into other IBM solutions, enhancing its capabilities and providing a unified experience for users across the data and AI lifecycle. These integrations help organizations unlock more value from their existing investments and scale insights across teams. Below are key integrations that expand the power and reach of watsonx BI, with additional applications to be integrated progressively. This evolving ecosystem ensures watsonx BI will continue to grow as a central intelligence layer across IBM’s AI and analytics portfolio.

Cognos Analytics integration: A unified BI experience

The integration between IBM watsonx BI and Cognos Analytics creates a seamless, end-to-end BI environment. It combines watsonx BI’s intuitive, conversational interface with the enterprise-grade reporting and governance of Cognos, enabling users to access fast, trusted insights while leveraging existing investments in governed data.

Key Benefits:

• Ask, do not search: Business users can ask natural language questions on data modeled in Cognos, eliminating the need to navigate dashboards or interpret complex reports. watsonx BI delivers instant insights to accelerate decision-making.
• Reuse trusted assets: watsonx BI connects directly to Cognos Framework Manager and in the near future with Data Modules, allowing teams to build on established, governed models without duplication.
• Ensure consistency: Maintain a single source of truth across self-service exploration and operational reporting, reinforcing trust and alignment across the business.

watsonx.data Integration: Scalable, governed access to enterprise data

watsonx BI’s integration with IBM watsonx.data — IBM’s hybrid, open data lakehouse — enables organizations to connect to a wide range of structured and unstructured data, while benefiting from built-in governance, access control, and metadata management that ensure data quality and regulatory compliance. This integration allows data stewards to seamlessly connect watsonx BI to a broader and more diverse set of enterprise data assets, empowering business users to uncover deeper more comprehensive insights. And thanks to watsonx.data’s scalable lakehouse architecture, users can analyze growing volumes and varieties of data with the performance and flexibility required for modern AI-driven decision-making.

watsonx Orchestrate Integration: Action to Data and seamless collaboration between agents, applications, and data

Soon, watsonx BI will integrate with watsonx Orchestrate, becoming part of a coordinated network of AI agents. This integration will support seamless collaboration across tools—such as Workday, Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce, and Slack—and with people, using intelligent reasoning and contextual planning. watsonx Orchestrate will dynamically select the most appropriate agent or tool for each task, ensuring timely and accurate actions. As an orchestrated BI agent, watsonx BI will deliver trusted business insights directly within the same interface users will use to manage their daily work, eliminating the need to switch between applications or agents. This integration also bridges the gap between data and action, enabling users to take immediate next steps—such as sending messages, creating tickets, or triggering follow-up actions—directly from watsonx BI outputs. This unified experience will streamline workflows by combining data-driven decision-making with task execution in a personalized, intelligent environment.

watsonx BI: AI that works the way your business thinks

IBM watsonx BI sets a new standard for business intelligence in the AI era. It bridges the gap between ease of use and enterprise rigor, delivering insights that are context-aware, governed, and explainable. Whether you are modeling data or consuming insights, watsonx BI enables everyone to interact with data in an intelligent, scalable, and most importantly, trustworthy way. By combining a conversational interface with enterprise-grade data modeling and governance, it empowers data teams to scale analytics without compromising control or quality.

With watsonx BI:

• Data stewards enforce consistency and transparency
• Data analysts accelerate modeling and insight delivery
• Business users receive reliable, explainable answers in natural language—and can automate actions
• The entire organization gains confidence in data-driven decisions

Empower your teams to stop searching for data and start acting on it. Explore how watsonx BI can transform your data into actionable insights.

Rodrigo de Andrade
Product Management Team

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#watsonx.data