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Business Intelligence

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Definition

Business intelligence is a business management term that indicates the capability of adding more intelligence to the way business is done by companies. More precisely, it refers to a set of tools and techniques that enable a company to transform its business data into timely and accurate information for the decisional process, to be made available to the right persons in the most suitable form. Business intelligence systems are used by decision makers to get a comprehensive knowledge of the business and of the factors that affect it, as well as to define and support their business strategies. The goal is to enable data-based decisions aimed at gaining competitive advantage, improving operative performance, responding more quickly to changes, increasing profitability and, in general, creating added value for the company.

Key Points

Though business intelligence has its roots in reporting systems, it was born as a term within the industrial world in the early 1990’s, to...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Eckerson W. Performance dashboards: Measuring, monitoring, and managing your business. Wiley, 2005.

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  2. Golfarelli M., Rizzi S., Cella I. Beyond data warehousing: What’s next in business intelligence? In Proc. ACM 7th Int. Workshop on Data Warehousing and OLAP, 2004, pp. 1–6.

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  3. Moss L.T. and Atre S. Business Intelligence Roadmap: The complete project lifecycle for decision-support applications. Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series, 2003.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Stefano Rizzi

Authors
  1. Stefano Rizzi
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Rizzi, S. (2009). Business Intelligence. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_881

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