Get Smart
August 1, 2001 By Steven S. Ross
Business
intelligence—jokes and oxymora aside—is nothing to laugh at. One
of the more popular new types of data analysis software, business
intelligence is a critical technology that not only can unearth
the smallest details of a company's minute-to-minute operations
but also can give the inside scoop on the next potential windfall.
At the heart of business-intelligence programs are the reports—lots
of them—generated from corporate databases: everything from marketing
and advertising to customer relationship management (CRM) reports
and from quality control of incoming parts to inventory reports.
These days, a company can even determine how much electricity
is needed to manufacture and market just one widget.
Say you sell plastic items—knives, forks, plates, lamps, tables,
chairs—in different colors. If you're considering a sales promotion
to move the blue chairs by giving away matching plates, you could
be in trouble. Blue might be popular for chairs but not for plates,
and the popularity of any of these items might vary from store
to store. How do you make sure that the right colors go to the
right retailers and that promotions are attempted only where there
is the greatest chance of success?
We tested four business-intelligence programs geared toward small
to midsize companies to see which best provide answers to these
questions. We evaluated these applications on their ability to
get data out of an information warehouse, shape the data for analysis,
do the analyses, and publish the results for managers to view
or to use in further calculations.
Neatness counts in business-intelligence software. The front
end has to be a simple interactive guide that provides users with
alternatives to help shape their thinking, giving them the ability
to drill down into data or groups and analyze the data in various
ways. As well, the data engine has to categorize the information
received from the database carefully and then output it in a graphic
or at least easy-to-grasp format.
