The goal is
to gain insight into the business by bringing together data, formatting it in a way that
enables better analysis, and then providing tools that give users power??”not just to
examine and explore the data, but to quickly understand it. Many in the information
technology field are familiar with the saying, ???Data is not information.??? This phrase
underscores the idea that data points by themselves fail to impart much useful
information and that data must be put into context to be meaningful. A list of sales
numbers is not helpful unless it includes the products sold, when they were sold,
where they were sold, and so on. It is important to include context when looking at
data in order to turn it into information.
While obtaining information is important, information is only useful if it is easy
to grasp so that people can use it to make decisions. There is much information in
books on nuclear physics or Cycladic statuary and burial rites, but without the proper
context and training such information can be hard to comprehend. It is therefore the
goal to make data easy to comprehend; a quick grasp of the trends, relationships, and
relative strengths and weaknesses is essential to delivering a usable system that truly
delivers business value.
Building a system that allows users to easily grasp what is presented and turn it
into easily comprehended, actionable business information requires a number of
steps. First, the business problems to be solved must be identified.
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