The term business intelligence (BI) has become an umbrella for those applications and technologies that are deployed to gather, store, analyse and report data to ensure businesses make more informed decisions. Unfortunately, BI has yet to become mission-critical or an integral part of an enterprise's operations, despite increasing competition in the general marketplace.
The central concept of BI is to aid users in understanding data quickly, enabling faster and more informed decisions and, ultimately, assessing opportunities and risks more effectively.
Accordingly, while technology is important, it is the company's business and information strategy that should take top spot when considering BI. The setting of a clear BI or information strategy and a managed process of implementation should remain the top priority for companies, aligned and tightly coupled with the business and IT strategy.
Despite growing awareness of BI as an enabler of corporate performance management (CPM) and business strategy, organisations have yet to embrace its ability to solve information management requirements, thereby establishing business wealth and health.
When complemented with a CPM solution, BI allows for data to be pulled from disparate sources, presenting information in different ways and allowing for real-time analysis and 90-second dashboard views for the entire organisation.
It is, however, important to realise that quality of data is one of the biggest influencers in successful BI projects and companies need to take responsibility, becoming custodians for their data rather than having IT 'fix' problems. It is only then that BI can actually provide the framework for managing, harvesting and sharing business knowledge across the entire organisation.
Traditionally seen as only a management information tool, BI is increasingly being used to enable business strategy and help with day-to-day operational issues. As the awareness of BI as an enabler grows, it will play a more vital role in the assessment of the health of a business. Typically assessed by the triple bottom line, the health of the business will incorporate BI into the assessment by looking at the aptness by which decisions are made based on information collected around clients, productivity or on how streamlined internal processes are being run.
In essence, BI looks at data to create information and reports that drive the future of business by providing insight into trends and target market preferences. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that information needs to be collected as it occurs, allowing for stream-orientated analysis.
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