Business intelligence (BI) is defined as the ability for an organization to take all its capabilities and convert them

into knowledge, ultimately, getting the right information to the right people, at the right time, via the right channel.

BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations.

Business intelligence aims to support better business decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS).

 Data management Data warehouse, data mart, ETL Analytics Query, OLAP, statistics, data mining Delivery Reporting, user interface, dashboards, information visualization, portal

Application domains Performance management, CRM, Portfolio management, etc.

 OLAP allows drill-up/down any dimension: the level of data

grouping
Time: hour, AM/PM, day, week, month, quarter, year,

holidays, weekends, etc.

Location: store, city, big city, small city, county, state,

country, etc.
Product: product model, product line, product category,

etc.

Business intelligence and data warehousing

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.

 Traditional database facilitates data management and transaction processing Two limitations with such databases: Performance Heterogeneity

 Having access to timely and accurate information is an important resource for a company, which can expedite decision-making and improve customers' experience. In the competitive customer-service sector, companies need to have accurate, up-to-date information on customer preferences, so that the company can quickly adapt to their changing demands. BI enables companies to gather information on the trends in the marketplace and come up with innovative products or services in anticipation of customer's changing demands.

 BI can help companies share selected strategic information with business partners. Some businesses use BI systems to share information with their suppliers like.. inventory levels performance metrics other supply chain data

 BI applications can also help managers to be better informed about actions that a company's competitors are taking. BI systems can also be designed to provide managers with information on the state of economic trends or marketplace factors, or to provide managers with in depth knowledge about the internal operations of a business.

Distinguish between concepts of business intelligence

Broad term
"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."

Narrow term
BI refers to just the top layers of the BI architectural stack such as reporting, analytics and dashboards."

BI applications and technologies can help companies analyze:

changing trends in market share

changes in customer behavior and spending patterns

customers' preferences
company capabilities

market conditions

 Reliant on non Real-time data Reactive rather than proactive Summarizing past rather than looking forward Esoteric Employees with necessary business and technical skills are rare

"Business users

don't want to wait for information. Information needs to be always on and never out of date.
This is the way we live our lives today.

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 2012, one-third of analytic applications applied to business processes will be delivered through application.

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