Business Intelligence through Analytics and Foresight

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Key Terms in this Chapter

Business Intelligence: the process of building the capacity for an organization to make informed decisions based on historical data of its operations and of its operating context in order to achieve greater competitiveness.

Business Intelligence Platform: a collection of software modules which provide analytic functions in integration, information delivery and analysis.

Cross Impact Analysis: a method of strategic foresight in which variables in a scenario are placed in a matrix and expert judgment is used to quantitatively estimate the strength of interaction between each variable.

Strategic Foresight: a discipline which seeks to develop an organizational understanding of possible future events affecting it, the factors contributing to those events and what steps the organization can take to best position itself.

Big Data: data which exceeds the processing capabilities of traditional database systems because of greater volume, velocity and variety of the data but which also has the potential to become a source of great value for the organization collecting it.

Critical Success Factors: for BI Implementations, these are aspects of the organization, its technology and the implementation process which are strongly correlated with a successful and impactful BI Implementation.

Business Analytics: The application of analytics methods to meet the needs of a business.

Competitive Intelligence: gathering information about competitors in order to better understand those competitors, suppliers, customers, technologies and other aspects of a company’s operating environment.

Software Analytics: the use of software methods to examine data sources for patterns with the aim of description, prediction or prescription. The word software is used to distinguish it from other methods (quantitative and qualitative) that may be analytical in nature but rely on human judgment.