How Would You Describe BI in One Sentence?

Each single activity in the company pertains to one of two huge areas: operations and control. Operations is “what� is done, control is “knowing how and why� it is done.

Business Intelligence is the sum of all the things (applications, data, activities) required to support control. If BI should be opposed to ERP, we could say that ERPs support operations.

My 2 cents

BI is the domain focused on improving the visibility of the business, uncovering insights from the corporation's data.

Business Intelligence is the art and science of figuring out where you were before, where you are now and where you want to go, based on data.

BI is about applying "intelligence" to the business - either strategic control or tactical operations, and mostly involving its processes.

What is more interesting is what it is not - ie reports on how the business has been performing may be useful for managers involved in intelligent control, but do not manifestly provide intelligence in their own right.

I think "BI" in the wider sense is growing. Technology areas such as analytics, statistics, CEP etc are all driving towards adding intelligence to our business processes.

Business intelligence is getting the right information to the right people at the right time so that the decision makers may take action to improve the organization's performance.

Business Intelligence is a process that provides the necessary tools (reports, dashboards etc.) to the business manager to understand the business operations from a historical, current and future perspective, in a succinct and visually understandable format, with options to explore and analyze the information and underlying data, as needed.

An idea: Providing better enterprise visualizations to make better decisions.

A reality: Providing weapons for political battles by allowing users to arbitrarily slice and dice facts.

A biz sensor - for past, present and future...

Seeing around corners.

Turning data into information which facilitates decision-making and action-taking.

To faciliate easier tactical and strategic decison making

Right information to right people just in right time.

BI is like looking at the manure the horse leaves behind, when you should be looking at where it is going and what it is eating. (Quoting Ian Gots)

The BI illusion is that past data predict the future, but that is not the case because correlation is hardly ever causation. BI does NEVER produce ACTIONABLE knowledge. There is no such concept in statistics!

Human decision-making does not need more data. It actually needs less. What it needs it information in the context of the current situation in REAL-TIME. And then one has to empower the decisionmaker to ACT. BI does neither.

BI privides no more 'intelligence' than the CIA possesses!

SOrry ... need to add a few points to my previous post:

BI is like looking at the manure the horse leaves behind, when you should be looking at where it is going and what it is eating. (Quoting Ian Gots)

Statistical illusions: Recommended reading 'The Drunkard' Walk' by L. Mlodinow and 'The Flaw Of Averages' by S. Savage, and certainly 'The Black Swan' by N. Taleb.

Human decisions aren't rational but emotional and more data don't help. Hvard Business Review: 'When EQ Trumps IQ'

Business Intelligence is a system (Tools, Processes, Methodologies etc.) that helps various stakeholders in an organization to 'connect the dots' with the goal to optimize business decisions in their own sphere of work.

Whew! One sentence constraint was always going to be difficult :-)