Business Intelligence as an indispensable tool for decision making in big companies

* What is Business intelligence exactly? (Bapt ou Greg)

Business intelligence, or BI for short, is a term that refers to competencies, processes, technologies, applications and practices used to support evidence-based decision making in organisations. In the widest sense it can be defined as a collection of approaches for gathering, storing, analysing and providing access to data that helps users to gain insights and make better fact-based business decisions.

The basic components of Business Intelligence are gathering, storing, analysing and providing access to data (see Figure).
Gathering Data
Gathering data is concerned with collecting or accessing data which can then be used to inform decision making. Gathering data can come in many formats and basically refers to the automated measurement and collection of performance data. For example, these can come from transactional systems that keep logs of past transactions, point-of-sale systems, web site software, production systems that measure and track quality, etc. A major challenge of gathering data is making sure that the relevant data is collected in the right way at the right time. If the data quality is not controlled at the data gathering stage then it can jeopardise the entire BI efforts that might follow - always remember the old adage - garbage in garbage out.
Storing Data
Storing Data is concerned with making sure the data is filed and stored in appropriate ways to ensure it can be found and used for analysis and reporting. When storing data the same basic principles apply that you would use to store physical goods - say books in a library - you are trying to find the most logical structure that will allow you to easily find and use the data. The advantages of modern data-bases (often called data warehouses