Oracle® Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Solutions

Chapter 2. Oracle's Transactional Business Intelligence

The use of the term business intelligence is a signpost for the evolution of technology in today's business climate. Many years ago, the use of computers was referred to as data processing, highlighting the core purpose of that technology — to collect, store, and manipulate data. This term was superceded by the term information technology, focusing on a higher-level use of data — not just raw data, but information that is more usable by humans. Business intelligence brings it all back home, zeroing in on the ultimate purpose of technology in a business environment — to help organizations increase efficiency, profits, and revenue, as well as using data to make intelligent decisions. Business intelligence is gained by the timely display of data to business analysts enabling them to make the best possible business decisions and helping organizations steer their ships of commerce, rather than simply acting as the fuel to run those boats.

This chapter looks at a number of offerings Oracle has created to deliver business intelligence from the data collected by and residing in Oracle's enterprise transactional applications. We'll also cover the role of Oracle's Balanced Scorecard and using Oracle's data hubs to create a master data reference in order to access data from a variety of transactional applications. All of these products are designed to deliver timely business intelligence to the less-technical user — from business analysts ...