This is a blog about business intelligence (BI). The idea of BI has been with us for some time, but the use of the term has only become popular since around the year 2000 or so. In this and the articles to follow we’ll define some terms, give a little background about how BI developed, and put BI in the larger context of the business by discussing the life cycle of BI data. In the fullness of time we’ll go into this life cycle in greater detail and lay out a strategy for implementing BI based on how human beings relate to data.
If you’ve come to this blog hoping to answer the question “what awesome tech tool should I use?” I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. The fact is that there are many tools in the marketplace and depending on your goals for business intelligence any of several of them could work for you. The purpose behind this blog is not to tell you what to buy, but to help you shape your goals and ask the right questions of potential employees, vendors, and consultants. Wherever I can I’ll try to give examples from my own experience to help you understand better. Of course the names will be changed to protect the innocent (namely me).
I am assuming that you, my reader, are not an information technology (IT) professional. I’m assuming you don’t know ETL from OLAP or ODS (fear not; we’ll get to those and other acronyms in due time). I hope that once we’re finished you’ll be, if not a card-carrying geek, at least knowledgeable enough to put BI to use in business, whether it’s your own or a business unit of your employer’s.
Next time, we'll give a definition of business intelligence that puts BI solidly in a business perspective.
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