Business intelligence (BI) is the collection, analysis, and reporting of business information for the purpose of informing decision-making.
The needs of decision-makers drive all of the activities of business intelligence, from choosing what information to collect, to what kind of analysis is required, to what is included in the reports.
Dashboards are a popular way of presenting summary results of multiple reports together and updating the display while the user is viewing it, especially with alerts for critical information.
Data mining is the exploration and analysis of data that has already been collected.
Process mining is the exploration and analysis of event data that has been collected from business processes. This is used to identify bottlenecks, for example by comparing start and stop time for various steps of a process.
Other business intelligence activities might include business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, and predictive analytics.
Using automation, a business intelligence team can incrementally build more and more data flows for collection, analysis, and reporting for ongoing business concerns, while focusing on the current needs of executives.
A closely-related field is information management, which uses information systems to store and manage information so it’s available for business intelligence and other business functions.
Compass
Return to information activities.