BI Fundamentals

Business intelligence; the term is bandied about so frequently today that it might seem like everyone except you already understands it. The truth is that like its partner “Big Data”, business intelligence is actually not well understood at all. Most people who talk about business intelligence have at best a general notion of what it means and almost no experience with actually using BI in a meaningful way. However, BI is an important new tool for modern business. Advances in computing power can now give businesses ways to analyze data that they never could before. With these advances, firms can make decisions about pricing, marketing, new products, and resource allocation more effectively than they have ever been able to in the past. Major corporations like Kroger are starting to use BI to help determine what products they should advertise to specific customers. General Electric is using BI to more efficiently run its industrial maintenance schedules. Citi is using BI to help proactively figure out the maximum interest rates various customers are willing to pay. BI is useful in all of these settings and a lot more.