The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence

The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence presents an A-to-Z approach for getting the most business intelligence (BI) from a company's data assets or data warehouse.

BI is not just a technology or methodology, it is a powerful new management approach that – when done right – can deliver knowledge, efficiency, better decisions, and profit to almost any organization that uses it. When BI first came on the scene, it promised a lot but often failed to deliver.

The missing element was the business-centric focus explained in this book. It shows how you can achieve the promise of BI by connecting it to your organization’s strategic goals, culture, and strengths while correcting your BI weaknesses. It provides a practical, process-oriented guide to achieve the full promise of BI; shows how world-class companies used BI to become leaders in their industries; helps senior business and IT executives understand the strategic impact of BI and how they can ensure a strong payoff from their BI investments; and identifies the most common mistakes organizations make in implementing BI.

The book also includes a helpful glossary of BI terms; a BI readiness assessment for your organization; and Web links and extensive references for more information.

• A practical, process-oriented book that will help organizations realize the promise of BI
• Written by Nancy and Steve Williams, veteran consultants and instructors with hands-on, "in the trenches" experience in government and corporate business intelligence applications
• Will help senior business and IT executives understand the strategic impact of BI and how they can help ensure a strong payoff on BI investments

BI is the key benefit of strategic use of a company's data warehouse. As such, some of the same people that work in data warehouse and data mining are the audience for this book. So, the book's target audience includes both technical and non-technical professionals and decision makers in organizations that are considering business intelligence or who are intent on improving their existing business intelligence capability. This includes IT management, IT data architects, data warehouse professionals, database designers, business intelligence consultants, and technical professionals. We expect that there will be some handoff of book information to non-technical management as an argument for investing in BI.

Chapter 1: The business value of business intelligence

Chapter 2: Identifying and prioritizing business intelligence -driven opportunities for your organization

Chapter 3: Business intelligence readiness

Chapter 4: Business-centric business intelligence development with the BI pathway method

Chapter 5: Leading and managing a business intelligence-driven profit improvement program

Chapter 6: Business intelligence in the broader information technology context

Chapter 7: Important ways business intelligence can drive profit improvement

Chapter 8: Common mistakes companies make on business intelligence initiatives

Chapter 9: A view over the horizon

A business intelligence glossary

A business intelligence

Bibliography

Index

About the Authors