Definition: Business Intelligence

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence (BI) is the collection, analysis and application of company-wide data to help organisations gain meaningful insights and support decision-making processes.

Key aspects of a BI strategy include data warehouses that store comprehensive historical data from multiple sources for in-depth, long-term analysis. Data visualisation tools facilitate the exploration of trends, patterns and correlations in the data, while predictive analytics use statistics to forecast potential outcomes based on past and current trends. In addition, BI involves the regular tracking of metrics in relation to organisational goals and the use of insights for resource planning and strategic development.

By thoroughly examining consolidated data, BI provides insights into trends, predictive capabilities and a quantitative overview that are important for continuous performance improvement and transformation across the organisation, delivering the information needed to make data-driven decisions at strategic and operational levels.