This book examines the managerial dimensions of business intelligence (BI) systems. It develops a set of guidelines for value creation by implementing business intelligence systems and technologies. In particular the book looks at BI as a process – driven by a mix of human and technological capabilities – to serve complex information needs in building insights and providing aid in decision making. After an introduction to the key concepts of BI and neighboring areas of information processing, the book looks at the complexity and multidimensionality of BI. It tackles both data integration and information integration issues. Bodies of knowledge and other widely accepted collections of experience are presented and turned into lessons learned. Following a straightforward introduction to the processes and technologies of BI the book embarks on BI maturity and agility, the components, drivers and inhibitors of BI culture and soft BI factors like attention, sense and trust. Eventually the book attempts to provide a holistic view on business intelligence, possible structures and tradeoffs and embarks to provide an outlook on possible developments in BI and analytics.

Modern businesses generate huge volumes of accounting data on a daily basis. The recent advancements in information technology have given organizations the ability to capture and store data in an efficient and effective manner. However, there is a widening gap between this data storage and usage of the data. Business intelligence techniques can help an organization obtain and process relevant accounting data quickly and cost efficiently. Such techniques include: query and reporting tools, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, text mining, data mining, and visualization. Business Intelligence Techniques is a compilation of chapters written by experts in the various areas. While these chapters stand on their own, taken together they provide a comprehensive overview of how to exploit accounting data in the business environment.

Business Intelligence (BI) promises an organization the capability of collecting and analyzing internal and external data to generate knowledge and value, providing decision support at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Business Intelligence is now impacted by the Big Data phenomena and the evolution of society and users, and needs to take into account high-level semantics, reasoning about unstructured and structured data, and to provide a simplified access and better understanding of diverse BI tools accessible trough mobile devices. In particular, BI applications must cope with additional heterogeneous (often Web-based) sources, e.g., from social networks, blogs, competitors’, suppliers’, or distributors’ data, governmental or NGO-based analysis and papers, or from research publications. The lectures held at the First European Business Intelligence Summer School (eBISS), which are presented here in an extended and refined format, cover not only established BI technologies like data warehouses, OLAP query processing, or performance issues, but extend into new aspects that are important in this new environment and for novel applications, e.g., semantic technologies, social network analysis and graphs, services, large-scale management, or collaborative decision making. Combining papers by leading researchers in the field, this volume will equip the reader with the state-of-the-art background necessary for inventing the future of BI. It will also provide the reader with an excellent basis and many pointers for further research in this growing field.

This book is about using business intelligence as a management information system for supporting managerial decision making. It concentrates primarily on practical business issues and demonstrates how to apply data warehousing and data analytics to support business decision making. This book progresses through a logical sequence, starting with data model infrastructure, then data preparation, followed by data analysis, integration, knowledge discovery, and finally the actual use of discovered knowledge. All examples are based on the most recent achievements in business intelligence. Finally this book outlines an overview of a methodology that takes into account the complexity of developing applications in an integrated business intelligence environment. This book is written for managers, business consultants, and undergraduate and postgraduates students in business administration.

Business intelligence is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, providing access to, and analyzing data for the purpose of helping enterprise users make better business decisions. The term implies having a comprehensive knowledge of all factors that affect a business, such as customers, competitors, business partners, economic environment, and internal operations, therefore enabling optimal decisions to be made. Business Intelligence provides readers with an introduction and practical guide to the mathematical models and analysis methodologies vital to business intelligence. This book: Combines detailed coverage with a practical guide to the mathematical models and analysis methodologies of business intelligence. Covers all the hot topics such as data warehousing, data mining and its applications, machine learning, classification, supply optimization models, decision support systems, and analytical methods for performance evaluation. Is made accessible to readers through the careful definition and introduction of each concept, followed by the extensive use of examples and numerous real-life case studies. Explains how to utilise mathematical models and analysis models to make effective and good quality business decisions. This book is aimed at postgraduate students following data analysis and data mining courses. Researchers looking for a systematic and broad coverage of topics in operations research and mathematical models for decision-making will find this an invaluable guide.

Business organizations develop strategies and set targets which focus on maximizing profit, reduce cost, improving customer satisfaction & retention and operational performance. In order to achieve the set targets, organizations need to continuously monitor status of organizational performance. Organizations need to collect, store, organize, transform the data to know the current status of set targets. Business Intelligence tools help the organizations to draw meaningful and actionable insights from the raw data in achieving the set targets. Business Intelligence tools help the organizations to answer questions such as where the organization stands in terms of profitability, growth status, brand & market position and market segment. Business intelligence tools focuses mainly on the past or current data and try to explore the hidden insight from the data. Business intelligence tools include querying, reporting, online analytics and data visualization tools which help the business decision makers to arrive at informed decision about the impact and status of their strategies. This book starts with the introduction of business intelligence concepts, components of business intelligence system, business intelligence tools used for querying, reporting and visualization of data. It provides an overview of the data visualization and data mining methods like classification, clustering and regression methods using R open source software. Book also covers some of the basic descriptive and inferential statistical tools. It focuses on both managerial side and technological side of BI. Vinaitheerthan Renganathan www.vinatheerthan.com/book.php

Between the high-level concepts of business intelligence and the nitty-gritty instructions for using vendors’ tools lies the essential, yet poorly-understood layer of architecture, design and process. Without this knowledge, Big Data is belittled – projects flounder, are late and go over budget. Business Intelligence Guidebook: From Data Integration to Analytics shines a bright light on an often neglected topic, arming you with the knowledge you need to design rock-solid business intelligence and data integration processes. Practicing consultant and adjunct BI professor Rick Sherman takes the guesswork out of creating systems that are cost-effective, reusable and essential for transforming raw data into valuable information for business decision-makers. After reading this book, you will be able to design the overall architecture for functioning business intelligence systems with the supporting data warehousing and data-integration applications. You will have the information you need to get a project launched, developed, managed and delivered on time and on budget – turning the deluge of data into actionable information that fuels business knowledge. Finally, you’ll give your career a boost by demonstrating an essential knowledge that puts corporate BI projects on a fast-track to success. Provides practical guidelines for building successful BI, DW and data integration solutions. Explains underlying BI, DW and data integration design, architecture and processes in clear, accessible language. Includes the complete project development lifecycle that can be applied at large enterprises as well as at small to medium-sized businesses Describes best practices and pragmatic approaches so readers can put them into action. Companion website includes templates and examples, further discussion of key topics, instructor materials, and references to trusted industry sources.