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Why Good Business Intelligence Requires Exceptional Reporting Solutions

by Marlon Escalat

The idea of "business intelligence," or "BI," emerged in the business world in the1960's, and reporting solutions for businesses have been growing and evolving ever since. Some believe the origins of business intelligence can be traced back to a specific article written in 1958 by IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn. In this article Luhn described "intelligence" as an ability to find relationships among the facts presented in a way that would guide action toward a specific goal.

This ethos began to spread and take hold in the business world, but it wasn't until the late 1980's that the term "business intelligence" was coined and began to be used more widely in the marketplace. It was in 1989 that soon-to-be Gartner Group analyst Howard Dresner proposed the term in order to describe the process of using existing facts about a business to improve business decision making. The ultimate goal was better business performance and better results. By the 1990's, the term "business intelligence" was being used in a widespread way.

Business intelligence can be used in a broad and general way, but ad hoc reporting can also be quite powerful and useful. This means the user can drill down to specific business performance issues that require further examination. Finding targeted answers and solutions can improve business performance dramatically.

These days, few companies can afford not to stay on top of current, critical data and statistics about their business. However, sometimes the idea of gathering and sorting through this data in-house can seem somewhat overwhelming. Fortunately, there are now automated systems available via companies you can connect with via the internet to help make collecting and analyzing business intelligence much more manageable.

What should you look for in a business intelligence management solution? For one thing, how easy the solution is to use has to be a major component. If you are employing an outside company to do this work for you, there should be as small of a "learning curve" as possible on your end. Drilling down to the bottom line numbers you want efficiently and quickly, even from lots of raw data is essential. You should be able to easily generate the format you need on the spot, whether it's a graph, pie-chart or spreadsheet. You'll also want 24/7, real time access to your data.

Efficiency, accuracy and ease of use in business reporting sets some data software solutions apart from the rest. With the help of a software solutions company, business intelligence can help to maximize your business' performance, leading to better results and higher profits.

By finding the best ad hoc reporting solutions, businesses can not only collect data, they can collect the right data. Marlon Escalat knows the importance of collecting the right data for business reporting and prefers Windward enterprise data solutions.

Article submitted Monday, June 18, 2012 & read 45 times.

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