Business Management Studies

The term Business Intelligence (BI) refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. The purpose of Business Intelligence is to support better business decision making. Essentially, Business Intelligence systems are data-driven Decision Support Systems (DSS). Business Intelligence is sometimes used interchangeably with briefing books, report and query tools and executive information systems. Business Intelligence systems provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations, most often using data that has been gathered into a data warehouse or a data mart and occasionally working from operational data. Business intelligence analysts use data to figure out market and business trends for companies to increase profits and efficiency. They may work directly for a company or as a consultant. Business intelligence analysts gather this data through a number of ways, from mining a company's computer data through software, looking at competitor data and industry trends to help develop a picture of where the company stands in the industry, where they can improve and where they can reduce costs. Business intelligence analysts spend most of their time analyzing data, Past trends, current conditions, etc. They are able to look at large chunks of data and understand trends and then communicate those trends to the company for efficient decisions.