Business Intelligence, the new buzz word?

Lately, I have been approached to conduct programs on Business Intelligence.  During the interviews with two of my clients in order to help me to prepare my proposal, I found that they had a misplaced interpretation of the term used, just like some would think that 'marketing' is 'selling'.

So, let me re-cap ... what is Business Intelligence?

The term business intelligence (BI) represents the tools and systems that play a key role in the strategic planning process of the corporation. These systems allow a company to gather, store, access and analyze corporate data to aid in decision-making.

Generally these systems will illustrate business intelligence in the areas of customer profiling, customer support, market research, market segmentation, product profitability, statistical analysis, and inventory and distribution analysis to name a few.

Most companies collect a large amount of data from their business operations. To keep track of that information, a business and would need to use a wide range of software programs, such as Excel, Access and different database applications for various departments throughout their organization. Using multiple software programs makes it difficult to retrieve information in a timely manner and to perform analysis of the data.

Indeed, Business Intelligence is not Market Research which is the initial phase of BI.  It must complete by the usage of the data obtained to formulate strategies for the business.