Defining Business Intelligence

The term Business Intelligence

The term Business Intelligence was first proposed by the American scientist Hans Peter Loone ( 1896-1964). He was a specialist in the field of information science, that is, he was engaged in computer science in its original sense, since it was still in the pre-computer era, only electromechanical tabulators were available to him.

Before identifying the subject of his work, he identified its components, describing business as a set of various activities undertaken in science, technology, commerce, industry, legislative activities, defense, etc. He called the communication systems supporting these types of activities the intelligence system, that is, systems supporting intelligent activities. And by intelligence, Moon understood the ability to establish a relationship between the representations of individual facts in order to act in the interests of solving the tasks set and the goals set.

The birth of BI dates back to 1958, when Hans Peter Loon published an article in the IBM System Journal, "A Business Intelligence System." In it, he presented business as a set of different types of activities in science, technology, commerce, industry, and even in the legislative sphere, and the systems that provide it - systems that support intelligent activity (intelligence system).

In the word intelligence, Loong indicated the ability to establish the relationship between the representations of individual facts and actions in the interests of solving the tasks set and achieving the goals set. The moon is remarkable for its versatility: he worked for many years in the textile industry, made several inventions, including the lunometer meter, produced and used to this day. However, in the 1950s, he changed direction and gave much effort to developing methods of working with information; it is known that it was Loon who proposed hashing and full-text search algorithms.

In the BI view, Moon was clearly ahead of time, so in the future this part of his work was forgotten for 30 years, until it was rediscovered in 1989 by Howard Dresner', a well-known analyst at Gartner, and given BI an expansive interpretation, proposing to use BI as an umbrella term for various technologies, designed to support decision-making, nothing more, after that the divergence of opinions and the search for the meaning of BI began.

Twenty years after Dresner's publication, his point of view became generally accepted. BI support is still seen as a collection of poorly connected technologies. Among them, there is still a classic tool - spreadsheets, plus report generators, OLAP technologies, tools for managing business processes with digital dashboard, data and text development technologies, and much more.

Today's Business Intelligence Definitions

The uncertainty of the term under discussion was influenced by the ambiguity of the English word "intelligence": the ability to learn and understand; willingness to understand; Knowledge transferred or acquired through training, research or experience; action or state in the process of cognition; intelligence, intelligence.

• In the definition of Gartner analysts of the late 1980s,

  business intelligence is "a user-centric process that includes access and research of information, its analysis, the development of intuition and understanding that lead to improved and informal decision-making." Later in 1996, a clarification appeared - "tools for analyzing data, building reports and queries can help business users overcome the sea of ​ ​ data in order to synthesize meaningful information from them - today these tools collectively fall into the category called Business Intelligence."

According to the initial definitions, BI is the process of analyzing information, developing intuition and understanding for improved and informal decision-making by business users, as well as tools for extracting business-relevant information from data. It should be noted that most definitions interpret "business intelligence" as a process, technologies, methods and means of extracting and presenting knowledge.

• Jonathan Wu's article "Business Intelligence: What is Business Intelligence?" States:

"Business Intelligence is a process of collecting multidimensional information about the subject under investigation. Software applications have been developed that provide users with the ability to conduct such a process to answer business questions and to identify significant trends or templates in the information being investigated. "

• Here is the definition proposed by The Data Warehousing Institute:

"Business intelligence relates to the process of turning data into knowledge, and knowledge into business activities for profit. It is an end-user activity facilitated by various analytical and group tools and applications, as well as a data warehouse infrastructure. "

• The glossary www.sdgcomputing.com/glossary.htm avoids talking directly about business intelligence, and it deals with business intelligence tools, but in the context of data, information and knowledge:

intelligence tools are software that allows business users to see and use a large amount of complex data. Data-based knowledge is derived from data using business intelligence tools and the data warehousing process. "

Another part of the definitions considers business intelligence not as a process, but as a result of the knowledge extraction process - as the knowledge of business itself for decision-making.

• The following definition is taken from the glossary for Impossible Data Warehouse Situations: Solutions from the Experts:

"Business Intelligence (BI) usually describes the results of in-depth analysis of detailed business data, includes database and application technologies, as well as analysis practices. Sometimes used as a synonym for "decision support," although Business Intelligence is technically broader. "

• Another definition of this kind states:

"Business Intelligence - knowledge gained about business using various hardware and software technologies. Such technologies enable organizations to turn data into information and then information into knowledge. "

This definition clearly distinguishes between "data," "information" and "knowledge." Data is understood as the reality that a computer records, stores, and processes - it is "raw data." Information is what a person is able to understand about reality, and knowledge is what business uses to make decisions. In the process of organizing information for knowledge, data warehouses are often used, and business intelligence tools are used to present this knowledge to users. Every year, the amount of data in the world doubles, but there is little benefit from it, although it can be turned into useful information and knowledge - information itself is not very suitable for decision-making in view of its huge volume. Business intelligence tools and data warehouses are designed to find in the heaps of data and information what really adds to our useful knowledge. They do not try to completely replace a person, but use intuition based on his subconscious and personal experience to form hypotheses.

So, business intelligence in the broad sense of the word defines:

• The process of transforming data into business information and knowledge to support improved and informal decision-making;
• information technologies (methods and tools) for data collection, information consolidation and access of business users to knowledge;
• Business knowledge derived from in-depth analysis of detailed data and consolidated information.

See also

Business Intelligence, BI (Global Market)

Business Intelligence (Russian market)

Geography of BI projects

Main trends in the BI market in Russia

Russian BI: Industry Specific

What is BI and why does business need it?