The Business intelligence reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Business intelligence

Business intelligence is the process of gathering information in the field of business. Information is typically obtained about customer needs, customer decision making processes, the competition, conditions in the industry, and general economic, technological, and cultural trends. Business intelligence is carried out to gain sustainable competitive advantage, and is a valuable core competence in some instances.

The term was first used by Gartner and describes the process of turning data into information and then into knowledge. The intelligence is claimed to be more useful to the user as it passes through each step.

Industrial espionage is a type of business intelligence that uses covert techniques. There is a grey area between "normal" business intelligence and industrial espionage.

Business Performance Management is a software oriented business intelligence system that some see as the new generation of business intelligence.

Tools for Business Intelligence

People doing business intelligence have developed tools that ease the work, especially when the intelligence task involves gathering and analyzing large amounts of data. These are some tools commonly used for business intelligence:

• Data warehouses
• Data mining
• Business workflow analysis
• Business management systems p2p
• Document warehouses
• Text mining

See also

• List of management topics
• Industry or market research
• Industrial espionage
• Environmental scanning
• Marketing research
• Competitor analysis
• Reverse engineering
• Competitor analysis

Branche specific BI:

• Retail (dutch only)

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