Business intelligence (MET) is a set of methodologies, processen, architecturen, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information.

Business intelligence, or BI, is een overkoepelende term die verwijst naar een verscheidenheid aan software-applicaties gebruikt om ruwe data van een organisatie te analyseren. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting.

Companies use BI to improve decision making, cut costs and identify new business opportunities. BI is more than just corporate reporting and more than a set of tools to coax data out of enterprise systems. Executives use BI to identify inefficient business processes that are ripe for re-engineering, FTE savings or process inefficiencies.

BI can handle large amounts of information to help identify and develop new opportunities. Making use of new opportunities and implementing an effective strategy can provide a competitive market advantage and long-term stability.

BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of business intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, datamining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics.

The goal of modern business intelligence deployments is to support better business decision-making.

Business intelligence applications can be:

• Mission-critical and integral to an enterprise’s operations or occasional to meet a special requirement
• Enterprise-wide or local to one division, department, or project
• Centrally initiated or driven by user demand