What is Business Intelligence

In simplest terms, Business Intelligence is considered by experts as the next step in business and process management revolution – the revolution that is putting to human intelligence the never before available near real-time crucial information necessary for predictable, achievable, and sustainable growth in real-time through optimized management.

However, the term should not be limited in interpretation to business only. Broadly speaking, it can be applied to wherever reporting, process management, revenue cycle, and decision making comes into existence. Hence, even government bodies, PSUs, academic and research institutes, and management and manufacturing processes can benefit from BI.

Information is the lifeblood of any organization. However, their greatest concern remains to be of providing the right information to the right people at the right time, which can help them make the right decisions that are time bound. When correctly channelled, information not only improves decision-making; it becomes the means to communicate and align around organizational strategy. It allows users to track performance, understand business drivers, and manage the business; concisely, drive enterprise performance.

BI is an end-to-end process spanning Data Integration, Data Management, Data Analysis, and Reporting that collectively makeup a comprehensive BI environment. A standardized BI environment separates the non-technical user from the underlying technologies and complexities through a semantic user interface.

This abstract view or semantic layer allows the users to view, work with and otherwise maintain the data in a vernacular that is efficient and quick to use.

The value of data is in its representation. Complicated representation translates into poor value. People may just give up trying to use such data and would never tell you. Business Intelligence banks upon the data stored in the data warehousing.