Chapter 18. Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) is an interesting term. You could ask ten people within ten different organizations what it means in practice, and you’d probably get ten completely different answers. That’s probably a good thing though, because by its very nature, BI is specific to a particular business. One organization may see BI as the analysis of sales and manufacturing data for a range of products being produced, whereas another organization—and this is particularly true in the public sector—may see BI as the analysis of social and demographic data.

Although at a practical level, implementations of BI are usually quite different, most organizations agree that as a general concept, BI is an important part of day-to-day management. Without appropriate data, modern scientific management principles are impossible. Of course, that’s not to say that BI is the be-all and end-all of management information; in fact, BI as a concept has gained widespread acceptance only in the past 20 years or so. But when it comes to building and maintaining a competitive market position, organizations need a crystal ball, and BI as a concept is all about building the intelligence required to make confident predictions.