Page 372 - Using MIS

340 Chapter 9 Business Intelligence Systems
Q1 How Do Organizations Use Business Intelligence

(BI) Systems?

Business intelligence (BI) systems are information systems that process operational, social,
and other data to identify patterns, relationships, and trends for use by business profession-
als and other knowledge workers. These patterns, relationships, trends, and predictions are
referred to as business intelligence. As information systems, BI systems have the five standard
components: hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. The software component of a
BI system is called a BI application.
In the context of their day-to-day operations, organizations generate enormous amounts
of data. AT&T, for example, processes 1.9 trillion call records in its database of 323 terrabytes of
2
data. Business intelligence is buried in that data, and the function of a BI system is to extract it
and make it available to those who need it.
The boundaries of BI systems are blurry. In this text, we will take the broad view shown in
Figure 9-1. Source data for a BI system can be the organization’s own operational data, social
media data, data that the organization purchases from data vendors, or employee knowledge.
The BI application processes the data with reporting applications, data mining applications,

Operational
DBs

Business
Social Data Intelligence
Application Business
Intelligence
Analyze Data:
Purchased • Reporting Knowledge
Data • Data mining Workers
• BigData
• Knowledge
management

Figure 9-1
Components of a Business
Intelligence System Employee Knowledge

2 Neeraj Vishen, “Largest Databases of the World,” One Can Succeed at Almost Anything for Which He Has
Enthusiasm, April 20, 2013, accessed June 3, 2014, http://neeraj-dba.blogspot.com/2013/04/largest-databases-of-
world.html.