Business Intelligence who are you?
Business Intelligence answers the questions
Imagine an account manager, on their way to a client visit, looks up past proposals, as well as the client’s ordering, payment, delivery, support, and marketing history. At a quick glance, they can tell that the client’s ordering volumes have dropped lately. A few queries later they understand that the client has a support issue with a given product. So the account manage places a call to the support department, and learns that the defective part will be replaced within 24 hours. In addition, the marketing records show that the client recently attended a user conference and expressed interest in the new product line. So now the account manager is now fully prepared for a constructive sales call. In once step the account manager masters all aspects of her client’s relationship with the firm, understands the client’s issues, and can confidently address new sales opportunities.
Business Intelligence solves the problem
Vast quantities of data...
As businesses increase their reliance on enterprise systems, they are rapidly accumulating vast amounts of data. Every interaction between departments or with the outside world, historical information on past transactions, as well as external market information, are entered into information systems for future use and access.
...Yet very few answers
With all this data available, it’s surprising how difficult it is for managers to get a clear picture of fundamental business information, such as inventory levels, orders in the pipeline, or client history. In most organizations, it would take the account manager, in the example above, hours or days to get answers to her questions. Many organizations contain disparate silos of information. Client orders and payment records are kept in the accounting system; installation and support information is stored in the customer service database; contact management software tracks the proposals and sales call history; and marketing contact history is kept by marketing. Rarely do these systems speak the same language, and there is no simple way for a non-technical user to get answers quickly.
And that is what business intelligence is, it is knowledge!