Business Intelligence (BI)

Business Intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help corporate executives, business managers and other end users make more informed business decisions.

Reasons for Business Intelligence

BI enables organizations to make well-informed business decisions and thus can be the source of competitive advantages.

Once business intelligence is gathered effectively and used proactively, we can make decisions that benefit our organization before the competition does.

The ultimate objective of business intelligence is to improve the timeliness and quality of information. Business intelligence reveals to us –

• The position of the firm in comparison to its competitors
• Changes in customer behavior and spending patterns
• The capabilities of the firm
• Market conditions future trends, demographic and economic information
• The social, regulatory and political environment
• What the other firms in the market are doing

• The potential benefits of business intelligence programs include
  • accelerating and improving decision making;
  • optimizing internal business processes;
  • increasing operational efficiency;
  • driving new revenues; and
  • gaining competitive advantages over business rivals.

BI systems can also help companies identify market trends and spot business problems that need to be addressed.

Business Intelligence data typically is stored in a data warehouse or smaller data marts that hold subsets of a company’s information