Business Intelligence Applied: Implementing an Effective Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure

ICT and Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) is a set of techniques that takes business data and creates information from those data so that managers can make decisions. In that way, organizations create business intelligence. We see many vendors offering BI solutions, which come in many varieties, including stand-alone solutions and solutions that are additions to larger suites of business applications. What is common across all BI solutions is that they utilize business data to support ad hoc and planned reporting and thus managerial decision making. Analyzing sales trends and customer buying patterns are just two examples of analysis that can be done using BI software. Another defining attribute of all BI software solutions is that they need ICT to enable them.

It is difficult for organizations to determine when and why ICT infrastructure should be built, and creating BI is just one reason to do so. The ICT value proposition is elusive, and, ironically, an organization needs to create business intelligence in order to understand when and why ICT infrastructure should be built. This book offers tools for organizations to use to determine ICT value to support the organizational value proposition. These tools include methods for creating BI.

When deciding when and why to build an ICT infrastructure, an organization should proceed in a planned way. Personnel with skills in a number of areas are required, and in fact the chief information officer (CIO), chief marketing ...