Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) refers to the coordinated deployment of technologies, applications and business processes to support the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. The purpose of business intelligence is to help managers and others responsible for business strategy better understand their organization’s operations, make wiser, more informed business decisions, and manage operational performance.

BI systems use data that has been gathered into a data warehouse or a data mart to present historical, current, and predictive views of business operations. Operational data may also be used. The software components of a BI system support the extraction, analysis, and reporting of information, providing detailed sales, production, financial and other business data. This information may be compared to historical data, or data related to comparable companies in order to provide valuable benchmarks.