A view of BI (part 1)

Investment in Business Intelligence, as for all other IT endeavours, is driven by one of three factors:
“Does knowing this information (at the right time) allow me to sell more?”
“Does knowing this information allow me to reduce my business costs (e.g. buy cheaper, reduce headcount)?” and
“Do I need to report this information to comply with regulation?”
Of course, all three of these reduce to MONEY – do the extra revenues I gain or costs I save by implementing BI exceed the cost of providing BI.
Historically, the provision of BI was seen as a ‘big ticket’ item, something that only the largest players could afford; there was the cost of hardware (especially storage), the cost of query tools, and costs of the specialist training for people to use the BI systems. Executives received small forests of reporting packs each month and, perhaps, may even have made decisions based on the data buried within. But things move on. Today BI is affordable; relative hardware costs decrease, systems become faster, BI query tools easier to use, and information can be sent to those that need it precisely when they need it.