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Business Intelligence acts as the eyes and ears of a corporation. If effective, BI is preventive medicine that insures senior decision-makers are not blindsided by activities and events in their competitive environment. It should be considered as a way to organize the flow of critical information and knowledge, focusing on important strategic and operational issues. The primary goals of BI are:
1. Avoid surprises, 
2. Identify threats, vulnerabilities and opportunities, 
3. Decrease reaction time, 
4. Understand your customers better and, 
5. Out-think the competition.

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Business intelligence (BI) provides timely and accurate information to better understand your business and to make more informed, real-time business decisions. Full utilization of BI solutions can optimize business processes and resources, improve proactive decision-making and maximize profits/minimize costs.

These solutions can create an infinite number of possible applications for finance, competition monitoring, accounting, marketing, product comparison or a combination of a number of business areas. The most agile BI solutions can be used in any industry and provide an infinite number of value-increasing possibilities for any organization.

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Business intelligence software falls into the following categories,
1. Technologies - Databases optimized for frequent, high volume, multidimensional queries. 
2. Analytic Applications - Pre-built applications with defined metrics, methodologies and processes for addressing business problems associated with specific vertical markets or functional areas of a company. 
3. Analysis Tools - Applications that are not vertical-market or business-function specific, but provide essential functions such as data visualization, reporting and querying. 
4. Development Platform - These building blocks allow for the customized development of analytic applications to meet any business requirements. Platforms may include a programming language such as Java, Visual Basic or C and/or pre-built templates or objects. More advanced platforms provide a user-friendly interface to manipulate these elements without coding. 
 

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These systems are operational, transactional systems designed to collect and manage data associated with business interactions. They usually provide minimal reporting and analysis functionality. Business intelligence complements these systems by providing more robust reporting and analysis and a more aggregated or summary view of the data.

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Obviously in order for a BI application to be successful, it needs to exhibit the key features focused on during the evaluation stage when deployed. You can successfully develop and deploy a fancy new system, but if your information consumers don't use it, then it is still a failure. The simple truth is that your end users want a desirable system that appeals to them on both a practical and emotional level. They want a solution that: 
1. Lets them be in control, 
2. Respects their approach and their perspective, 
3. Is intuitive to use, 
4. Provides comprehensive data and brings them real value, 
5. Is free of constraints of time, place, data origin or structure. 
The most advanced BI solutions focus on the end user to help ensure use by information consumers. 

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Initially, business intelligence applications were 2-tier technology architecture based composed of desktop clients and servers. The move toward web-based architectures has resulted in 3-tier architectures composed of multiple information delivery clients - win32 desktops, thin browser, fat browser, multiple mid-tier servers focused on specific functions - content, analysis, mail, web, etc. and a data tier composed of multiple database servers.

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BI by itself has little value; it must be used (actionable) to have real value. BI should be coupled with strategic planning, business development, market planning or Sales force win-loss analysis and used in the decision making process. If BI, like all management tools, is not used it should be discarded. There is always a tendency to attempt to measure the value of BI in terms of how much money it has saved the company. This can be a valid measurement tool until you attempt to measure the value that has no price tag. When the BI process determines there are no real competitive threats and thus no need for action it has value that can not be measured in dollars. BI also can help prevent the loss of proprietary data. How do you measure the non-loss of intellectual capital? 

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Many times the BI function is placed as a part of the Market Research department in the mistaken belief they are both the same. Not so! The basic difference is that Market Research focuses on the current market based on past behaviors. BI looks at historical information only for the purpose of understanding a competitor's culture and to provide leads for their likely future direction. BI's mission is to be predictive, to look for future direction and likely courses-of-action. BI looks for a competitor's strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities for the purpose of identifying future opportunities and/or threats. There is a need for both BI and Market Research and the two disciplines can and oft times do work well together. However, decision-makers that make futuristic decisions based on market research alone are looking in the rearview mirror as opposed to the future.

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Intelligence, like most decision-making, is the boss's responsibility. Ideally the Business Intelligence function should report directly to the CEO. It rarely does. More often then not the BI function reports to the VP for Strategy or Marketing. Either can and does work well because intelligence is often coupled with strategy or market planning to become actionable.

The BI function should be managed by an Intelligence Professional who has experience in all aspects of intelligence. The individual should have experience in the following,
1. The confidence and poise to work with the executive team 
2. Know how to conduct secondary and primary collection and the development of source networks, internal and external. 
3. Develop an Intelligence Knowledge Base. 
4. Perform analysis which is coupled with the ability to express thoughts clearly orally and in writing. 
5. Know how to educate and communicate to the sales force and most other employees.
The director of BI must know how to manage people. The ability to manage is too often neglected. Additionally, BI requires highly ethical practices and the strength and courage to tell it like it is and give the boss bad news when necessary. 

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Business Intelligence is primarily for the decision-makers but it should be used at every level of an organization. Sales representatives need to know their customers as well as understand the competition and the threats and opportunities they are likely to find in the marketplace. Product development personnel need to know when a new competitive product will hit the market and the process and system behind that product. Corporate development personnel use BI to identify potential merger and acquisition or joint venture partners and their strengths and weaknesses. The strategy group must use BI to develop strategy that takes into account the competitive environment. How can a strategy be developed unless there is full knowledge of the competition? The R&D Group need BI to know when a competitor is developing a new product or has filed for a new patent.

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There is no correct answer to this question because a great deal depends on the starting point. Generally, we believe it takes six months to establish an intelligence organization from scratch where there is no existing intelligence capability. Not only does the BI process require implementation, but also the right people must be brought on board or current employees trained. Certainly if fully trained personnel were available and on board the development of an operational CI organization could take as little as one month. Effective utilization of a BI Team may take much longer depending on the CEO and the Executive Team.

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The public at large has the naive belief that information printed in magazines, newspapers and journals or on the Internet is in fact truthful or valid. Certainly some sources of secondary information must be assumed to be valid. For example, we assume that information filed with government entities is valid simply because there are criminal penalties for falsifying government documents. We assume that speeches and interviews granted by competitor decision-makers are probably true even though we recognize that all the spinmeisters are not in Washington DC. Generally we believe the only real way to validate information is through the use of reliable primary sources or government filings. We maintain a database of information by source and use our own system to evaluate source reliability. The determination of the validity of information takes patience and organization.

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We always begin the Collection Process by developing a Collection Plan. We start by attempting to determine who has access to the information we seek. Our next step is to ethically collect that information by looking in the right places. We always start with secondary information and then move to primary information. Our job is not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to gather the information necessary to fully understand the competitive environment. Secondary information is what I would call historical information and, generally speaking raw or unevaluated information. It is information that exists in some form, oft times the real talent is in finding that information. We have on staff experts in finding the hard to find secondary sources. Primary information is that information obtained from human sources whether it is observed by the collector or a photograph taken by a reliable source or simply a document expressly written to answer a BI question.

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It is the responsibility of every employee to protect a firm's Intellectual Capital; in fact most sensitive information is lost through word of mouth. Locks and bars and fences and badges are necessary but will not stop the sophisticated intelligence operative. Certainly the Business Intelligence Team must work closely with Corporate Security as well as the Legal Team. Counter-Intelligence is defensive in nature and is designed to educate employees concerning how they may be vulnerable to the wiles of Intelligence professionals.

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Corporate America gives Consultants greater credibility than they do employees. Thirdly, Consultants often are able to present the intelligence finding and recommendations to decision-makers at a higher level. Having said that, Consultants can often collect information unavailable to employees because of the ethical requirement to disclose affiliation. Consultants do not and cannot disclose who are their clients. Although not always the case, a BI Consultant should have a greater level of expertise in the various BI processes.

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