Business intelligence is the technology and practice of applying information to make decisions. In this way, business intelligence is different than data warehousing, which is more about storing information. It is also more comprehensive than data mining. Information shows its real value when many people can use and share it. This is the goal of business intelligence.

For information to be this usable, it must be trusted, timely, relevant, easy-to-use, and in context. These are all necessary aspects of business intelligence technology. Different business intelligence tools address these factors in different ways. Reporting delivers regular, timely information, with the ability to author reports or queries to get specific details. OLAP analysis, with its multiple dimensions, allows you to compare and contrast information against time and other factors to uncover trends. Scorecarding presents your key performance metrics and whether you've cross pre-determined thresholds. Executive dashboards put information in context, and in an easy-to-understand format.

All of these business intelligence tools should integrate to present a coordinated view of your organization. In this way, people using different tools share the same answers to the same questions, gain more value from your information investment, and make better decisions.

For performance management expertise and business intelligence software, IBM, is the source of vendor-neutral solutions that combine reporting with enterprise risk management, planning, olap analysis, data integration, dashboards, and scorecards. Unrivaled performance management expertise goes into creating business intelligence tools that link data sources and protect investments in SAP, Oracle, and other vendors for superior performance. IBM Cognos Software

Most companies collect a large amount of data from their business operations. To keep track of that information, a business and would need to use a wide range of software programs , such as Excel, Access and different database applications for various departments throughout their organization. Using multiple software programs makes it difficult to retrieve information in a timely manner and to perform analysis of the data.

The term Business Intelligence (BI) represents the tools and systems that play a key role in the strategic planning process of the corporation. These systems allow a company to gather, store, access and analyze corporate data to aid in decision-making. Generally these systems will illustrate business intelligence in the areas of customer profiling, customer support, market research, market segmentation, product profitability, statistical analysis, and inventory and distribution analysis to name a few.