Making actionable decisions aimed at fulfilling a strategic goal.Turning it into meaningful information through analysis.Gathering data and organizing it through reporting.The general process of business intelligence is as follows: Reporting and analysis are the central building blocks of business intelligence, and the arena in which most BI vendors compete by adding and refining features to their solutions.
Predictive analysis: a branch of data mining, it attempts to predict probabilities and trends.Data quality and interpretation: the greater or lesser correlation between data and the real-world objects they represent.Data mining: the extraction of original information from data.Analysis: identifying patterns and establishing relationships in a group of data.Reporting: the process of accessing data, formatting it and delivering it inside and outside the organization.While it might not sound like it, BI is different from analytics.īusiness intelligence encompasses the following elements: Or put even more simply, BI is the effective use of data and information to make sound business decisions. By the earliest definition (1958), business intelligence was explained as “the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal.”Ī broader and perhaps more current definition of this discipline is this: business intelligence is the process of collecting business data and turning it into information that is meaningful and actionable towards a strategic goal. What is business intelligence (BI)? It has been defined in many ways.