Business intelligence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, diggingout, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments or associated costs and incomes. [1] BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of Business Intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, and predictive analytics. Business Intelligence often aims to support better business decision-making.[2] Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS).[3] Though the term business intelligence is often used as a synonym for competitive intelligence, because they both support decision making, BI uses technologies, processes, and applications to analyze mostly internal, structured data and business processes while competitive intelligence is done by gathering, analyzing and disseminating information with or without support from technology and applications, and focuses on all-source information and data (unstructured or structured), mostly external, but also internal to a company, to support decision making. [citation needed]

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History
In a 1958 article, IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn used the term business intelligence. He defined intelligence as:[2] "the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal." In 1989 Howard Dresner (later a Gartner Group analyst) proposed BI as an umbrella term to describe "concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using factbased support systems."[3] It was not until the late 1990s that this usage was widespread.

Business intelligence and data warehousing

Often BI applications use data gathered from a data warehouse or a data mart. However, not all data warehouses are used for business intelligence, nor do all business intelligence applications require a data warehouse. In order to relate, but also separate the concepts of business intelligence and data warehouses, Forrester Research often defines Business Intelligence in one of two ways. Typically, Forrester uses the following broad definition: Business Intelligence is a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making. But when using this definition, business intelligence also includes technologies such as data integration, data quality, data warehousing, master data management, text and content analytics, and many others that the market sometimes lumps into the Information Management segment. Therefore, Forrester also refers to the data preparation and data usage, as two separate, but closely linked

segments of the business intelligence architectural stack. And Forrester defines the latter, narrower business intelligence market as: A set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that leverage the output of information management processes for analysis, reporting, performance management, and information delivery.

Business intelligence and business analytics

Thomas Davenport has argued that business intelligence should be divided into querying, reporting, OLAP, an "alerts" tool, and business analytics.

Where to apply Business Intelligence in an Enterprise

Business Intelligence can be applied to the following business purposes (MARCKM), in order to drive business value: Measurement program that creates a hierarchy of Performance metrics (see also Metrics Reference Model) and Benchmarking that informs business leaders about progress towards business goals (AKA Business process management). Analytics program that builds quantitative processes for a business to arrive at optimal decisions and to perform Business Knowledge Discovery. Frequently involves: data mining, statistical analysis, Predictive analytics, Predictive modeling, Business process modeling Reporting/Enterprise Reporting program that builds infrastructure for Strategic Reporting to serve the Strategic management of a business, NOT Operational Reporting. Frequently involves: Data visualization, Executive information system, OLAP Collaboration/Collaboration platform program that gets different areas (both inside and outside the business) to work together through Data sharing and Electronic Data Interchange. Knowledge Management program to make the company data driven through strategies and practices to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences that are true business knowledge. Knowledge Management leads to Learning Management and Regulatory

Getting Business Intelligence projects prioritized

Compliance/Compliance It is often difficult to provide a positive business case for Business Intelligence (BI) initiatives and often the projects will need to be prioritized through strategic initiatives. Here are some hints to increase the benefits for a BI project. As described by Kimball[4] you must determine the tangible benefits such as eliminated cost of producing legacy reports. Enforce access to data for the entire organization. In this way even a small benefit,

such as a few minutes saved, will make a difference when it is multiplied by the number of employees in the entire organization. As described by Ross, Weil & Roberson for Enterprise Architecture[5], consider letting the BI project be driven by other business initiatives with excellent business cases. To support this approach, the organization must have Enterprise Architects, which will be able to detect suitable business projects.

Critical Success Factors of Business Intelligence Implementation

Although there could be many factors that could affect the implementation process of a BI system, research by Naveen K. Vodapalli [6] shows that the following are the critical success factors for business intelligence implementation: Business-driven methodology and project management Clear vision and planning Committed management support & sponsorship Data management and quality Mapping solutions to user requirements Performance considerations of the BI system Robust and expandable framework

The future of business intelligence

A 2009 Gartner paper predicted[7] these developments in the business intelligence market. Because of lack of information, processes, and tools, through 2012, more than 35 percent of the top 5,000 global companies will regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets. By 2012, business units will control at least 40 percent of the total budget for business intelligence. By 2010, 20 percent of organizations will have an industry-specific analytic application delivered via software as a service as a standard component of their business intelligence portfolio. In 2009, collaborative decision making emerged as a new product category that combines social software with business intelligence platform capabilities. By 2012, one-third of analytic applications applied to business processes will be delivered through coarse-grained application mashups.

Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help enterprise users make better business decisions. BI applications include the activities of decision support systems, query and reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data mining. Business intelligence applications can be: Mission-critical and integral to an enterprise's operations or occasional to meet a special requirement Enterprise-wide or local to one division, department, or project Centrally initiated or driven by user demand

This term was used as early as September, 1996, when a Gartner Group report said: By 2000, Information Democracy will emerge in forward-thinking enterprises, with Business Intelligence information and applications available broadly to employees, consultants, customers, suppliers, and the public. The key to thriving in a competitive marketplace is staying ahead of the competition. Making sound business decisions based on accurate and current information takes more than intuition. Data analysis, reporting, and query tools can help business users wade through a sea of data to synthesize valuable information from it - today these tools collectively fall into a category called "Business Intelligence." Getting started with business intelligence

To explore how business intelligence is used in the enterprise, here are some additional resources: Business intelligence tutorial: Business intelligence concepts and technologies can be complex. Use this guide to find all the BI information you need. This comprehensive tutorial includes strategic and technical advice from the experts, case studies, news analyses, podcasts, white papers and more. Business intelligence basics: Trends, case studies and job advice: Use this quick-hit guide to get an overview of BI basics, trends, case studies and jobs -- or to train new employees on BI

fundamentals. It's focused, to-the-point and contains all you need to know to get started with BI. Howard Dresner predicts the future of business intelligence: Learn about the current state of the business intelligence market, where it may be headed in the future and more, from BI's "founding father," Howard Dresner. This podcast was recorded at Gartner's latest BI Summit. Business intelligence software product purchasing criteria: To streamline the business intelligence software product and vendor selection process, learn what questions to ask internally and what questions to ask vendors. Get expert BI buying criteria and vendor selection advice in this BI software buying guide.

SAS Business Intelligence gives you the information when you need it, in the format you need. By integrating data from across your enterprise and delivering self-service reporting and analysis, IT spends less time responding to requests and business users spend less time looking for information. SAS Business Intelligence also offers an integrated, robust and flexible presentation layer for the full breadth of SAS Analytics capabilities, including statistics, predictive analytics, data and text mining, forecasting, and optimization all integrated within the business context for better, faster decision making.

Components of Business Intelligence

Enterprise Business Intelligence Provides a complete portfolio of business intelligence capabilities and applies the power of SAS Analytics and Data Integration to create a complete and easy-to-use business intelligence solution. Delivers dynamic and interactive business visualization that lets business users visually explore ideas and information.

How SAS Is Different

Other vendors provide business intelligence solely in the form of historical reports that give you hindsight but limited insight.SAS Business Intelligence enables you to understand the past, monitor the present and predict outcomes as you move your business ahead. Only SAS Business Intelligence integrates data from across your enterprise and

provides self-service reporting and analysis at everyones fingertips, so decision makers spend less time looking for answers and more time driving strategic decisions. Only SAS presents a comprehensive, fully integrated business analytics framework that addresses users evolving needs across the organization. This makes it easier to share consistent, holistic views of the business and enhances decision-making abilities. SAS software, together with the SAS Business Intelligence Competency Center service offerings, provides the infrastructure and best practices to help you optimize and control your information assets.

Why business intelligence from IBM

Business intelligence connects people with information in an easy-to-use way so they can make better decisions. With BI software you can: Set targets, see results and understand what drives the numbers. Identify trends that may be benefits or threats. Take action with a common context for decision-making across every department. Identify and analyze opportunities and trends.

The best business intelligence software: Delivers trusted information for a single version of the truth. Lets you work with information the way you wantreports, dashboards, scorecards. Puts tools in your hands to author and share information

Business intelligence tools are a type of application software designed to report, analyze and present data. The tools generally read data that have been previously stored, often, though not necessarily, in a data warehouse or data mart. The key general categories of business intelligence tools are: SpreadsheetsHYPERLINK \l "cite_note-0"[1] - are tools that extract, sort, summarize, and present selected data

Except for spreadsheets, these tools are sold as standalone tools, suites of tools, components of ERP systems, or as components of software targeted to a specific industry. The tools are sometimes packaged into data warehouse appliances.