Author_Institution :
Terry Coll. of Bus., Univ. of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
Abstract :
Business intelligence (BI) can be defined as a broad category of applications, technologies, and processes for gathering, storing, accessing, and analyzing data to help business users make better decisions. Organizations use BI in a variety of ways - as a single or a few related applications, an enterprise-wide capability, or an enabler of organizational transformation to support a new business model. BI continues to evolve and there are many new, interesting developments. One trend is the increased scalability of BI - more data, users, and complex queries.Another trend is pervasive BI, which gives BI to more employees, suppliers, and customers. There are many challenges to pervasive BI - time, cost, training, and the difficulty of using many BI tools - but progress is being made. One of the most interesting approaches is the use of "Google-like" natural language search.Until recently, decision support focused on the off line analysis of historical data. Now, realtime data is being used to affect current operations. The use of real time data reduces data, analysis, and decision latency, and represents a new generation in decision support data management. Companies are using BI as an integral component of how they compete in the marketplace.
Keywords :
competitive intelligence; data handling; decision support systems; natural languages; query processing; real-time systems; search engines; business intelligence; data accessing; data analysis; data gathering; data storing; decision support; enterprise-wide capability; increased scalability of BI; natural language search; operational BI; pervasive BI; real time data; Bismuth; Companies; Costs; Customer relationship management; Data analysis; Decision support systems; Educational institutions; Information systems; Insurance; Pricing;