business intelligence

Business intelligence applications can be:

• Mission-critical and integral to an enterprise's operations or occasional to meet a special requirement
• Enterprise-wide or local to one division, department, or project
• Centrally initiated or driven by user demand

This term was used as early as September, 1996, when a Gartner Group report said:

By 2000, Information Democracy will emerge in forward-thinking enterprises, with Business Intelligence information and applications available broadly to employees, consultants, customers, suppliers, and the public. The key to thriving in a competitive marketplace is staying ahead of the competition. Making sound business decisions based on accurate and current information takes more than intuition. Data analysis, reporting, and query tools can help business users wade through a sea of data to synthesize valuable information from it - today these tools collectively fall into a category called "Business Intelligence."

Getting started with business intelligence

To explore how business intelligence is used in the enterprise, here are some additional resources:

Business intelligence tutorial: Business intelligence concepts and technologies can be complex. Use this guide to find all the BI information you need. This comprehensive tutorial includes strategic and technical advice from the experts, case studies, news analyses, podcasts, white papers and more.

Business intelligence basics: Trends, case studies and job advice: Use this quick-hit guide to get an overview of BI basics, trends, case studies and jobs -- or to train new employees on BI fundamentals. It's focused, to-the-point and contains all you need to know to get started with BI.

Howard Dresner predicts the future of business intelligence: Learn about the current state of the business intelligence market, where it may be headed in the future and more, from BI's "founding father," Howard Dresner. This podcast was recorded at Gartner's latest BI Summit.

Business intelligence software product purchasing criteria: To streamline the business intelligence software product and vendor selection process, learn what questions to ask internally and what questions to ask vendors. Get expert BI buying criteria and vendor selection advice in this BI software buying guide.

Read more about business intelligence: - Take this quiz on business intelligence from WhatIs.com to test your knowledge. - SearchSAP.com offers a transcript of an interview with Naeem Hashmi about "SAP Business Intelligence: what is it? How does it relate to Internet and 3rd party tool integration?" (Registration required.) - SearchCRM.com has information about the use of business intelligence in customer relationship management. - 2020 provides business analytics software demos.

Do you have something to add to this definition? Let us know. Send your comments to techterms@whatis.com

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