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Unit 12: Business Intelligence

 Organisations use intelligence to make strategic business decisions: With this intelligence, Notes
organisations can make effective decisions, and create strategies and programs for
competitive advantage.
 The system is regulated by an overall corporate security policy: Information in a data
warehouse is typically confidential and critical to a company’s business operations.
Consequently, access to all functions and contents of a data warehouse environment must
be secure from both external as well as internal threats and should be regulated by an
overall, corporate security policy.
 Business performance management applications track results : A well-run BIDW operation
also includes Business Performance Management (BPM) applications, which help track the
results of the decisions made and the performance of the programs created.

12.2.2 Business Intelligence Data Warehouse (BIDW) Trends

The world is changing and the need for accurate and timely business intelligence is ever more
pressing.
Key trends that are making BIDW solutions mission critical include:
 Rapid increase in “information democracy” — that is, business is putting BI tools and data
in the hands of large numbers and types of users, not just an elite few. More people are
getting more information in more detail on more devices.

 Businesses are required to make more decisions, more frequently and more accurately in
shorter time periods. The amount of time between when a decision is made and when
feedback is received (requiring a new decision) is becoming shorter and shorter. The
ability to make intelligent business decisions quickly is imperative to remain competitive.
 Data is being customised on a mass scale. Personalised information such as portals, digital
domains, recommendations, and news feeds are commonplace – all of these require that
data warehouses be flexible enough to provide different views to different people.

 New legislation and compliance regulations have made BIDW mission critical. Regulatory
requirements (such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, etc., and non-U.S.
equivalents) put greater demands on determining and maintaining business intelligence
and have made access to and analysis of information critical.

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Caution Data must be captured, retained, and managed in a way that will satisfy courts and
regulators.

 The diversity of data is enormous. Organisations must store and manage data from multiple
different sources such as ERP and CRM systems, and in a variety of formats such as text,
images, voice, video, unstructured data, and more.

 The increased need for better security due to wider data access availability and a larger
number of users. Organisations around the world are looking for ways to reduce the risk
associated with managing growing and disparate forms of data.
In addition, there are a number of industry-specific drivers (listed in figure 12.2). Taken all
together, it’s clear that the need for timely business intelligence has become critical in today’s
business world.

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