Business Intelligence

"Simply Necessary"

Business Intelligence (BI) is not a single product or technology. Rather it is a set of old and new technologies that can be utilized to enhance the quality of management decisions by leveraging the best information available.

BI's mantra is "The right information, to the right person,at the right time, so it can be used for a decision"

BI's three core skills are:

• Data Organization -- Includes Relational and Dimensional modelling, as well as ETL to relate and prepare data
• Data Analysis -- Includes statistics, data-mining, and OLAP methods such as data cubes to summarize information
• Data Presentation -- Includes statistical and business charting and report formatting, to put information in a format that supports decision making by knowledgeable managers.

BI has a "0th" skill, which is the ability to translate between the technical framework of IT, and the process and performance framework of executive decision makers. In that sense, BI relies on soft skills to a greater extent than other areas of IT. In particularly, it relies on the ability to communicate clearly, and leverage expertise within a corporation to provide the best information available.

White Papers and Presentations

The goal of the papers and presentations contained herein, is to provide:

• A vendor neutral perspective of BI by focussing on the key skills involved as well as the underlying technologies
• Provide open-source tools that bring BI capabilities avalable to a larger group of prospective users (see XAYAXaYa, "Modules for Business Intelligence")and that emphasize the 3 key BI skills.

• BIAt1000Feet_V09_20060518.pdf: BI at 1000 Feet. Version 0.9. A high level overview of the BI field for CIOs. It will be updated as needed, to reflect changes in the scope of BI. White papers on each of the 3 core skills, and "0th" BI skill will be added soon.
• BusinessIntelligenceAt1000Feet_V09_20060525.ppt: Powerpoint Presentation to accompany BI at 1000 Feet. Can be used to introduce HR staff to the BI field, and its core skills.

Open Source Software

Check XAYAXaYa page's, "Modules for Business Intelligence" for software, and tutorials that support BI's three core skills. (The 0th skill only applies to wetware, not software!).

Please send comments, queries and suggestions for future articles to mishtu_banerjee@shaw.ca.

-- MishtuB - 12 Jul 2006

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