Business Intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications and
technologies for gathering, providing access to, and analyzing data for
the purpose of helping enterprise users make better business decisions.
The term implies having a comprehensive knowledge of all of the factors
that affect your business. It is imperative that you have an in depth
knowledge about factors such as your customers, competitors, business
partners, economic environment, and internal operations to make
effective and good quality business decisions. Business intelligence
enables you to make these kinds of decisions. BI technology allows
organizations to track, understand, and manage vital business
information. BI is assuming an increasingly strategic role as more
organizations look for ways to tap into the valuable data stored in
their operational systems. In today's economy the requirements for
Business Intelligence environments are changing, and quite dramatically.
Consequent to this paradigm, the contents of this book examines the
developments which have taken place with Business Intelligence Software.