"broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, providing access to, and analyzing data for the purpose of helping enterprise workers make better business decisions in areas such as: customers, competitors, business partners, economic environment and internal operations" wikipedia.org

• quality
• accesibility
• processing time

• law - because you need to show it in case a financial control occurs
• relations - helps you track your business partners and clients
• understanding - it allows you to control what is happening in your organisation
• optimisation - helps you discover opportunities of improving your administration
• decision-making - it helps you avoid erroneous decisions that lead to loss of money and it offers problem solving expertise to help you with your data

• might target a special activity within a company, a certain department, or the whole company.
• addresses organisational entities at any scale, but it is mostly used by medium and large-sized companies due to their increased need of control.
• is the answer for organisational entities in need of:
  • replacing paper with electronic documents
  • optimising information storage, access, flow and control
  • knowledge-driven advice in making decisions
  • a tool for signaling internal and external problems
  • better control

• managers who want to improve
  • their businesses
  • the way processes and resources are managed
• Business Intelligence consultants, trainers and implementators
• Business Intelligence software users
  • business analysts and experts - complex analysis and knowledge driven decision making
  • knowledge gatherers - dynamic interogation, simple analysis
  • data analysts - data entering, data correction, reports

• as a layered structure
  • Knowledge Management
  • Information Retrieval
  • Intelligent Data Analysis
• or as a package assembly
  • Financial Management
  • Manufacturing
  • Supplier Relationship Management - SRM
  • (Internal)Supply Chain Management - (I)SCM also known as Logistics
    • Fixed Assets
    • Warehouse Management
    • Transport
  • Customer Relationship Management - CRM
    • Sales
    • Marketing
    • Services
  • Human Resources

• how many and how deep are the changes in the internal work practices,
• how suitable is the chosen BI solution for the respective case,
• how responsive are people in your organization to change,
• money and other resources spent for the actual implementation.

Phases: