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Business Intelligence History
The idea of business intelligence goes back to Sun Tzus Art of War. Tzu believed that in order to win a war, you must have complete knowledge of your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of your the enemy. This is the central idea in present-day business intelligence. Companies must know themselves better than their competitors, and they must know their competitors better. War and business are a lot alike considering that with BI, one must sift through heaps of data (both external and internal) for management to then make strategies for where to take the business and marketing. Warfare involves strategic plans as well. BI is the process of gaining information about every element of your market. Simply understanding the customer is not enough; a business must understand its competitors, and itself.
KPI, Key Performance Indicators
The present state of business is assed by the use of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in business intelligence. As more companies implement KPI, data is becoming available to business faster and more efficiently. Data used to be available for business only after one or two months. This untimely availability did not help business adjust their strategies. More recently, banks have tried to make data available sooner and with shorter intervals. Banks do this especially for businesses that have higher credit/operational risk loading. This allows many companies to get new data weekly, and adjust their strategies faster than ever before, leading to increased customer satisfaction and retention.
BI Tools
Business Intelligence 101
The goal of every business is to be successful by gaining new customers and retaining old customers. A crucial way of achieving this end is through Business Intelligence. Business intelligence is also known as simply BI. Business intelligence can be defined as a process of collecting information in the area of business. An essential idea of business is that data is enhanced into information and then into knowledge. Business use BI to gain an advantage in the marketplace by understanding their customers needs, customers decision-making processes, and economic, cultural, and technological ..
When using business intelligence, a company has to collect a vast amount of information. BI tools can help businesses store, organize, and even collect business data. Some data tools are data warehouses, data modeling, and data mining. Using data tools helps to improve the efficiency of business intelligence. While data tools are used for organization, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is used in the analyzing process. OLAP is commonly referred to as simple Analytics, which is based on the hypercube or cube dimensional analysis.
There are also vendors who help business with business intelligence. A vendor provides a company with the business intelligence tools and support needed for the successful implementation of a business process. Siebel Systems, Microsoft, Altius Consulting, Business-Soft, and SAS Institute are just a few of the companies offering business intelligence tools and support.
Conclusion
The better a business understands its market (everything from the customer to its competitors), the more effective that business can be. Businesses that have as complete, 360-degree understanding of what their customers need and want will be better able to devise successful strategies and implement successful processes to make their business thrive. Business intelligence is the path that businesses can take to achieve their goals, which can be either short-term or long-term. Some may wonder about the ROI of business intelligence. No doubt, if a company ends up gaining many customers, and retaining current customers as a result of business intelligence, then it will be a positive ROI. Business intelligence, if implemented correctly, and efficiently, can only help a company.
Emotional Intelligence vs. Cognitive IntelligenceDEFINITIONS Emotional Intelligence - Understanding your own emotions and those of others, and being able to use this information to bring about the best outcome for all concerned. Knowing where emotions come from and being able to manage your own and those of others. Knowing what emotions mean and what information they are providing. Being able to work well with others as well as alone. Being able to combine cognitive knowledge with emotional knowledge and use them in tandem. Cognitive Intelligence - Intellectual abilities such as logic, reason, reading, writing, analyzing and prioritizing. The ..
About the author:
David McKeegin writes about a variety of business topics. He writes for a business intelligence blog entitled Business Intelligence Lowdown ( http://www.businessintelligencelowdown.com).
David McKeeginWhat You Need to Know About Business Intelligence
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