Chapter 1. Introduction to Business Intelligence

"Study the past if you would divine the future"

——Confucius

Business intelligence is a way of exploring data to improve business performance, whether to drive profitability or to manage costs. It is not a technology you implement and then put in maintenance mode; it is an approach that evolves, morphs, and starts over again as the business climate changes, the users discover new opportunities to leverage information, and technology changes. When you implement business intelligence tools, the focus of the project is not to finish, but rather to deliver a certain amount of value and functionality within a predefined period. Never has this been more true than now with BusinessObjects XI, as a broader set of functionality, serving diverse user needs, has been brought onto a common platform. As you implement XI, you will need to prioritize which applications and interfaces you will leverage most. Will your project be bottom up: sort out the infrastructure to lower BI costs? Or top down: deliver scorecards to align and measure business performance?