Business intelligence (BI) was first coined in 1958 by IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn, using Webster’s dictionary definition of intelligence: ‘the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way to guide action towards a desired goal’. Simply put business intelligence is the use of raw data to improve business operations.
Almost 60 years later technologies and business strategies have improved tremendously and as such the potential of using the raw data available to develop business operations need to be utilised. Some current global trends in business intelligence show that businesses have not let this opportunities to improve operations pass them by.
The global trends in business intelligence reporting are:
Adam Binnie, global vice president and general manager of the Business Intelligence Solutions division at SAP once said that: ‘While we talk a lot about the data and the impact of that data, at the end of the day … analytics is about giving people information so that those people can have an impact on the success of an organization’. Which is exactly what I would say sums up business intelligence reporting.
Although you could gain even more out of business intelligence reporting by putting the best possible data in front of the finest analysts to make your business one of the best.