Companies use BI to improve decision making, cut costs and identify new business opportunities. BI is more than just corporate reporting and more than a set of tools to coax data out of enterprise system s. CIO s use BI to identify inefficient business processes that are ripe for re-engineering.
With today‘s BI tools, business folks can jump in and start analyzing data them selves, rather than wait for IT to run complex reports. This democratization of information access helps users back up – with hard numbers – business decisions that would otherwise be based only on gut feelings and anecdotes.
Although BI holds great promise, implementations require overcoming technical and cultural challenges. Executives have to ensure that the data feeding BI applications is clean and consistent so that users trust it.
