What is business intelligence (BI)?

Business intelligence (BI) has been referred to as the process of making better decisions through the use of people, processes, data and related tools and methodologies. The roots of business intelligence are found in relational databases, data warehouses and data marts that help organize historical information in the hands of business analysts to generate reporting that informs executives and senior departmental managers of strategic and tactical trends and opportunities. In recent years, business intelligence has also come to rely on near real-time operational data found in systems including enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain, marketing and other databases. “Operational” BI is meant to provision many more functions in the organization with role-specific dashboards and scorecards and is increasingly tied to the topics of performance management and business process management. Inherent to any form of BI is the notion of data quality, consistent and dependable data and the processes involved in its creation and maintenance.