In the 1980s, traditional Business Intelligence (BI) systems focused on the delivery of reports that describe the state of business activities in the past, such as for questions like "How did our sales perform during the last quarter?" A decade later, there was a shift to more interactive content that presented how the business was performing at the present time, answering questions like "How are we doing right now?" Today the focus of BI users are looking into the future. "Given what I did before and how I am currently doing this quarter, how will I do next quarter?" Furthermore, fuelled by the demands of Big Data, BI systems are going through a time of incredible change. Predictive analytics, high volume data, unstructured data, social data, mobile, consumable analytics, and data visualization are all examples of demands and capabilities that have become critical within just the past few years, and are growing at an unprecedented pace. This book introduces research problems and solutions on various aspects central to next-generation BI systems. It begins with a chapter on an industry perspective on how BI has evolved, and discusses how game-changing trends have drastically reshaped the landscape of BI. One of the game changers is the shift toward the consumerization of BI tools. As a result, for BI tools to be successfully used by business users (rather than IT departments), the tools need a business model, rather than a data model. One chapter of the book surveys four different types of business modeling. However, even with the existence of a business model for users to express queries, the data that can meet the needs are still captured within a data model. The next chapter on vivification addresses the problem of closing the gap, which is often significant, between the business and the data models. Moreover, Big Data forces BI systems to integrate and consolidate multiple, and often wildly different, data sources. One chapter gives an overview of several integration architectures for dealing with the challenges that need to be overcome. While the book so far focuses on the usual structured relational data, the remaining chapters turn to unstructured data, an ever-increasing and important component of Big Data. One chapter on information extraction describes methods for dealing with the extraction of relations from free text and the web. Finally, BI users need tools to visualize and interpret new and complex types of information in a way that is compelling, intuitive, but accurate. The last chapter gives an overview of information visualization for decision support and text.

Modern businesses generate huge volumes of accounting data on a daily basis. The recent advancements in information technology have given organizations the ability to capture and store data in an efficient and effective manner. However, there is a widening gap between this data storage and usage of the data. Business intelligence techniques can help an organization obtain and process relevant accounting data quickly and cost efficiently. Such techniques include: query and reporting tools, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, text mining, data mining, and visualization. Business Intelligence Techniques is a compilation of chapters written by experts in the various areas. While these chapters stand on their own, taken together they provide a comprehensive overview of how to exploit accounting data in the business environment.

Business Intelligence Strategy and Big Data Analytics is written for business leaders, managers, and analysts - people who are involved with advancing the use of BI at their companies or who need to better understand what BI is and how it can be used to improve profitability. It is written from a general management perspective, and it draws on observations at 12 companies whose annual revenues range between $500 million and $20 billion. Over the past 15 years, my company has formulated vendor-neutral business-focused BI strategies and program execution plans in collaboration with manufacturers, distributors, retailers, logistics companies, insurers, investment companies, credit unions, and utilities, among others. It is through these experiences that we have validated business-driven BI strategy formulation methods and identified common enterprise BI program execution challenges. In recent years, terms like "big data and "big data analytics have been introduced into the business and technical lexicon. Upon close examination, the newer terminology is about the same thing that BI has always been about: analyzing the vast amounts of data that companies generate and/or purchase in the course of business as a means of improving profitability and competitiveness. Accordingly, we will use the terms BI and business intelligence throughout the book, and we will discuss the newer concepts like big data as appropriate. More broadly, the goal of this book is to share methods and observations that will help companies achieve BI success and thereby increase revenues, reduce costs, or both. - Provides ideas for improving the business performance of one's company or business functions - Emphasizes proven, practical, step-by-step methods that readers can readily apply in their companies - Includes exercises and case studies with road-tested advice about formulating BI strategies and program plans

For courses on Business Intelligence or Decision Support Systems. A managerial approach to understanding business intelligence systems. To help future managers use and understand analytics, Business Intelligence provides students with a solid foundation of BI that is reinforced with hands-on practice.

Business Intelligence: The Savvy Managers Guide, Second Edition, discusses the objectives and practices for designing and deploying a business intelligence (BI) program. It looks at the basics of a BI program, from the value of information and the mechanics of planning for success to data model infrastructure, data preparation, data analysis, integration, knowledge discovery, and the actual use of discovered knowledge. Organized into 21 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the kind of knowledge that can be exposed and exploited through the use of BI. It then proceeds with a discussion of information use in the context of how value is created within an organization, how BI can improve the ways of doing business, and organizational preparedness for exploiting the results of a BI program. It also looks at some of the critical factors to be taken into account in the planning and execution of a successful BI program. In addition, the reader is introduced to considerations for developing the BI roadmap, the platforms for analysis such as data warehouses, and the concepts of business metadata. Other chapters focus on data preparation and data discovery, the business rules approach, and data mining techniques and predictive analytics. Finally, emerging technologies such as text analytics and sentiment analysis are considered. This book will be valuable to data management and BI professionals, including senior and middle-level managers, Chief Information Officers and Chief Data Officers, senior business executives and business staff members, database or software engineers, and business analysts. - Guides managers through developing, administering, or simply understanding business intelligence technology - Keeps pace with the changes in best practices, tools, methods and processes used to transform an organization's data into actionable knowledge - Contains a handy, quick-reference to technologies and terminology

In his research, Martin Kowalczyk empirically investigates the challenges of designing and establishing successful decision support with Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A). The results from his work elucidate organizational and individual perspectives of BI&A support in decision processes. The organizational perspective considers the processual aspects of decision making and addresses process phases, roles and their interactions. The individual perspective reflects upon decision making of human individuals including their cognition and behaviors involved in decision making. The support of managerial decision making with BI&A gains increasing priority for many businesses in their desire to achieve better decision outcomes and improved organizational performance.

Big data, analytics, and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing work, management, and lifestyles and are becoming disruptive technologies for healthcare, e-commerce, and web services. However, many fundamental, technological, and managerial issues for developing and applying intelligent big data analytics in these fields have yet to be addressed. Managerial Perspectives on Intelligent Big Data Analytics is a collection of innovative research that discusses the integration and application of artificial intelligence, business intelligence, digital transformation, and intelligent big data analytics from a perspective of computing, service, and management. While highlighting topics including e-commerce, machine learning, and fuzzy logic, this book is ideally designed for students, government officials, data scientists, managers, consultants, analysts, IT specialists, academicians, researchers, and industry professionals in fields that include big data, artificial intelligence, computing, and commerce.