BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

INTRODUCTION:

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques which are used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products or departments or associated costs and incomes.

FUNCTIONS OF BI:

Common functions of Business Intelligence technologies are:
1. Reporting.
2. Online analytical processing.
3. Analytics.
4. Data mining.
5. Business performance management.
6. Benchmarking.
7. Text mining.
8. Predictive analytics.

HISTORY OF BI:

In a 1958 article, IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn used the term business intelligence. He defined intelligence as: "the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal."

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND DATA WAREHOUSING:

BI applications oftenly uses data gathered from a data warehouse or a data mart. However, not all data warehouses are used for business intelligence, nor do all business intelligence applications require a data warehouse.