BI Business Intelligence Software Defined

BI or Business Intelligence Software describes the ability to extract meaningful (actionable) information from your business applications -- in a way that enables you to make better informed, intelligent business decisions. Business Intelligence Software (BI) requires organizing and analyzing historical business data to improve your ability to make forward-looking business decisions.

BI Business Intelligence Software Solutions
Business Intelligence Software requires that you do two things well: 1) Properly design and structure your business databases (capture and define the semantics, relationships and dependencies among the discrete bits of information); and 2) properly design your reports, so you can view the database information in ways that help you support the business planning process.

BI Business Intelligence software / SQL Server Reporting come in two flavors: the "What's Is Going On?" variety -- business intelligence software reports that show you quickly the status of actions and events that occurred in the past; and the "What Should I Do?" variety -- business intelligence software reports that show cause-and-effect relationships among a variety of discrete pieces of data, and allow you to determine how and when you can adjust the course of your business actions to achieve more desirable results. "What Should I Do?" reports have the most business value, but these are only possible after you've done a good job building "What Is Going On?" reports.

As your SQL database grows in size and complexity, the ability to derive Business Intelligence using traditional SQL Server Reporting Services queries becomes complex, time-consuming and sometimes nearly unmanageable. Many queries of business-critical nature are difficult to formulate in a query. For example, "Find all customer records that are similar to this customer's problem."
In fact, gathering and maintaining huge amounts of data without the ability to extract meaningful Business Intelligence will lead you further and further away from ROI. Knowledge discovery processes in the Business Intelligence Software (BI) space aid the business analysts in developing novel methods and put in place a scientific foundation for using historical business data to improve future decision making.

BI Business Intelligence Software Recipe For Success
The keys to successful Business Intelligence software are in the following:
• The scope of the business intelligence application is limited - tangible results are achievable within weeks or months
• The business intelligence application has a high likelihood of having a significant impact on the business
• Business Intelligence domain expertise is available and actively participates
• High quality relevant business data in sufficient quantities is available
• The business case for the Business Intelligence software is clearly understood and measurable, and the objectives are likely to be achieved with the resources available
• The right people - domain, database management and reporting experts - are managed within a well-defined project