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Q2 What Are the Three Primary Activities in the BI Process? 343
Predictive Policing

Many police departments are facing severe budget constraints that force them to reduce on-
duty police personnel and services. Given these budget cuts, police departments need to do
more with less, which means, in part, finding better ways of utilizing their personnel.
In response to this challenge, the Los Angeles Police Department and Police Chief William
J. Bratton used business intelligence, along with new business processes, to implement what
6
they termed predictive policing. Their program met with such success that it has been emulated
by numerous police departments nationwide.
With predictive policing, police departments analyze data on past crimes, including loca-
tion, date, time, day of week, type of crime, and related data, to predict where crimes are likely
to occur. They then station police personnel in the best locations for preventing those crimes.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, “The analytic methods used in the predictive-
policing model do not identify specific individuals. Rather, they surface particular times and
locations predicted to be associated with an increased likelihood for crime. 7
With the speed at which data is generated today and with the near-zero cost of processing,
we can be certain that many even more innovative applications of BI will occur. Watch for them;
they will present interesting career opportunities for you.
Given these examples, we next consider the process used to create business intelligence.

Q2 What Are the Three Primary Activities

in the BI Process?

Figure 9-3 shows the three primary activities in the BI process: acquire data, perform analysis,
and publish results. These activities directly correspond to the BI elements in Figure 9-1. Data
acquisition is the process of obtaining, cleaning, organizing, relating, and cataloging source
data. We will illustrate a simple data acquisition example for AllRoad Parts later in this question
and discuss data acquisition in greater detail in Q3.
BI analysis is the process of creating business intelligence. The four fundamental catego-
ries of BI analysis are reporting, data mining, BigData, and knowledge management. We will

Feedback Results

Push
Data Acquire Perform Publish
Sources Data Analysis Results Pull

• Operational databases • Obtain • Reporting • Print Knowledge
Figure 9-3 • Social data • Cleanse • Data mining • Web servers Workers
Three Primary • Purchased data • Organize & relate • BigData • Report servers
Activities in the BI • Employee knowledge • Catalog • Knowledge • Automation
Process management

6 Colleen McCue, Data Mining and Predictive Analysis: Intelligence Gathering and Crime Analysis (Burlington,
MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006).
7 Charlie Beck and Colleen McCue, “Predictive Policing: What Can We Learn from Wal-Mart and Amazon about
Fighting Crime in a Recession?,” Police Chief Magazine, last modified November 2009, www.policechiefmagazine.
org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=1942&issue_id=112009.