Successful Business Intelligence solutions enable a business to gain insight into its business results and its customers to quickly realize a return on investment. A key ingredient for that success is turning operational data into information that is timely, accurate, and easy to understand.

Intelligence is defined as: The process of solving business problems through the discovery of information and insight from data. This is accomplished through data management and the analysis of relationships among data and then using derived information to drive timely and effective business decisions. Daily transactional information is collected from an existing e-commerce or CRM website and is known as operational data. Businesses collect large quantities of information in day-to-day operations such as data about orders, accounts payable, e-commerce transactions, inventory, and customers. In addition, businesses often acquire data, such as demographics and mailing lists, from outside sources.

To build this database, tools are needed to extract, cleanse, and transform data from source data, which may be on a variety of hardware platforms, using a variety of databases. Once the data is prepared for Business Intelligence analysis, the data is stored in a subject-oriented database and must be refreshed and managed. This database is called a data mart or data warehouse.

Business Intelligence refers to the ability to make better business decisions through intelligent use of this data warehouse. It is about giving access to the right data, analyzing the data for insights, and using the insights to make better decisions.

• Respond to customers' needs quickly and efficiently
• Realize additional sales opportunities by cross-selling and up-selling
• Shorten sales cycles
• Enhance asset and liability management
• Promote and increase customer loyalty
• Gain a competitive edge with data consolidation and analysis