Business Decisions Inc - Business Intelligence

The cycle begins with the day-to-day operations of the business, which generate data from processes. Data such as orders, revenue, and customer contacts are usually created internally. Other data such as mailing lists, survey results, clickstream logs or demographic profiles might be acquired from external sources.

The next step is to identify the key measures that will tell you how well your business is doing. These will differ from company to company, but common examples are revenue, customer retention, and customer profitability.

Once the key measures are identified, a data warehouse or data mart can be built. This organizes the necessary data from its various sources into one integrated information base. See a more thorough description of this critical step in our Data Warehousing section.

From the information base, questions about the measures can be asked. The resultant answers allow business analysts, managers and executives to look for trends, top performers, bottom performers, segmentations, correlations, etc.

Decision makers would then be equipped with insights that they can use to strengthen weaknesses in the business. Solid information could support new or improved initiatives such as redefined goals, more efficient processes, targeted campaigns, and budget reallocations.

New initiatives change day-to-day operations, which in turn will generate different data. And, the cycle begins again allowing your business to continually monitor and assess its effectiveness.