Business Intelligence is very broad, there is no one correct way to implement it nor is it one specific technology. It depends on the individual business needs and the needs of the individual staff that make decisions inside that business. It is a set of integrated technologies, processes and systems that provide timely, accurate and meaningful information and show trends.

Business Intelligence however is nothing without the human side, interpreting and understanding the meaning and significance of this information and engaging in action based in this insight. It allows business leaders, managers and staff to make informed decisions and affect strategic change and solve business problems. At the end of the day people make decisions, data does not.

It is Business and Technology together, turning information into insight.

Over the last month I have been focusing in on building a Business Intelligence Sales Dashboard for one of my clients. Dashboards are such handy tools as they give you a quick glance look at the activity going on and provide each in this case, Sales reps with their key metrics to help improve sales techniques and generally the ability to do their jobs (as well as add in a little healthy competition into the sales game!).

After a little research into various different metrics and ways of displaying metrics in a clean and simply way I came across the book "Information Dashboard Design" by Stephen Few, one of the real pioneers in effective data communication who created the "Bullet Graph" and who's work I have been following for a while now.

(Above: The humble Bullet Graph)