In the nineties of the last century businesses hardly recognised the values of strategic business intelligence. Many organisations accumulate data that they neither understand, nor process, and therefore have no idea how to exploit. Many businesses have even problems with the meaning of the “right information at the right time”. However, this kind of information is the key to strategic business intelligence. Studies show, however, that the situation is improving and the understanding of the concept is growing. Managers are recognising that the tools available enable them to focus on key factors such as customer and product profitability. When used judiciously, strategic business intelligence, in conjunction with the right business disciplines, can help businesses determine which products to promote, decide what to manufacture, and focus customer management on the basis of profitability.

Crucial to the implementation of a business intelligence solution is a clear, common and shared understanding within a company of the strategic business intelligence objectives for that company. Business intelligence applications have undoubtedly been given a boost by the growing uptake of e-business. The recent rise in activity around the data warehousing and business intelligence solutions area is being driven by the development of e-business initiatives within organisations, and notably by customer relationship management (CRM) projects.

With the rising recognition of its benefits, the overall market for business intelligence and data warehouse tools is growing more strongly than ever before. Research by IDC suggests that this section of the industry will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 26%, with worldwide revenues rising from $5 billion in 1999 to reach $7 billion by 2004. By the year 2004, Western Europe is expected to account for 31% of the market, compared with North America at 50%.

Source: Excerpt from primesphere