Business Intelligence

Today’s organizations can collect and store tremendous amounts of data. Some companies use data warehousing, which refers to the use of a huge database that combines all of a company’s data and allows business users to access the data directly, create reports, and obtain answers to what-if questions. Others have data stored in multiple sources. In addition, companies have access to numerous sources of outside data.

Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications that analyze a company’s data and extract useful insights to help managers make better strategic decisions. Business intelligence includes activities such as data mining, which searches out and analyzes data from multiple sources across the enterprise, and sometimes from outside sources, to identify patterns and relationships that might be significant, as well as online statistical analysis, querying, and reporting. Many managers like getting BI information via a business performance dashboard because it provides a user-friendly way to view and navigate through information.