PARTI
Business Intelligence
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CHAPTER 1
The Case for
Business Intelligence
IN THIS CHAPTER
What Is Business Intelligence?
The Consumers of Business Intelligence
Delivering Data to Business Intelligence Consumers
Real World Examples
Summary
4 B u s i n e s s I n t e l l i g e n c e w i t h M i c r o s o f t O f f i c e P e r f o r m a n c e P o i n t S e r v e r 2 0 0 7
Business intelligence is a concept that can cover many technologies. A business
intelligence solution usually covers a wide range of processes, software, and
techniques, from retrieving the data from source systems to delivering business
value to end users. In order to help deliver end-to-end business intelligence, Microsoft
has created a suite of products that covers the entire gamut, of which PerformancePoint
Server 2007 is an important part. This chapter, however, will focus on business
intelligence in general, including the users of business intelligence and the kinds of
tasks they??™ll perform in their daily jobs. In this chapter, I??™ll first describe business
intelligence from a high level, and then define what it is and why it??™s important. Next
I??™ll describe the various consumers of business intelligence, and as you??™ll see, it can
encompass virtually everyone in an organization. Finally, I??™ll conclude the chapter with
a variety of ways to deliver data to the various classes of users.
What Is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) is more of a concept than a single technology.
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