Business Intelligence

The term business intelligence (BI) refers to a set of business processes for collecting and analyzing mostly internal, structured data and business processes to support better business decision-making. This includes the technology used in these processes and the information obtained from these processes. While BI was already maturing at the time of the publication of the first edition in 2003, there have been significant changes in the perception, acceptance, integration, and technologies associated with BI. The first edition of this book had a robust shelf-life, and this revision not only brings the existing content up-to-date, it also provides insight into areas that have emerged as critical aspects of BI within the past few years. This revision keeps pace with the changes in best practices, tools, methods and processes used to transform an organization¿s data into actionable knowledge and provides the ability to anticipate additional concepts that will keep the reader ahead of the curve in this critical area. The first edition of the book sold ~7,500 copies and sales of this new edition should exceed that thanks to the heavy revision (~30%) through a consistent marketing effort, increased interest in BI practices, and the author¿s strong brand recognition in the target market. von Loshin, David (President, Knowledge Integrity Incorporated, Silver Spring, MD, USA)