Definition of Business Intelligence: Every year organizations gather and store increasing amounts of data. Mid-size organizations tell us that, on average, they have a minimum of 7 operational data sources. These sources contain data the business users often want to tap into, in order to make the best decisions to steer the business in the right direction.

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What is Business Intelligence and How Can it Help Me?

Every year organizations gather and store increasing amounts of data. Mid-size organizations tell us that, on average, they have a minimum of 7 operational data sources. These sources contain data the business users often want to tap into, in order to make the best decisions to steer the business in the right direction. But for IT to respond to the escalating requests and really help the business use that data can be a huge drain on time and resources. And the requests are piling up. Requests such as:

Can you give me a report that combines sales and forecast data?

Can you provide a spreadsheet that shows our top 100 customers by product type—what and when they bought, and where they are located?

Can you provide us a dashboard that shows the executives our key performance indicators such as sales, costs, and profits, so they can have up-to-the minute access to this information?

Sound familiar? You want to help, but are limited in time and resources. And you often don’t want to give them access to the data directly for control and security purposes. That’s where Business Intelligence (BI) comes in.