Oracle Analytics: Business Intelligence and Analytic Applications - The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions - page 47

involve using web services as part of service-oriented architecture as
a means of integration.
7. Educating the end user : Gartner suggests that it is as important to
train users how to analyze the data as how to use the business intel-
ligence tool sets.
8. Master data management : Master or reference data defines core enti-
ties, such as customers, products, and suppliers. Because enterprise
data is frequently siloed throughout the organization, master data
has become scattered across the enterprise. In addition, different
domains may define customer in different ways. Organizational and
political issues, such as who “owns” the master data, often get in the
way of developing an enterprise-wide repository. It should be noted
that this problem is similar to the one experienced in the 1980s, when
databases were first being integrated within the organization and the
debate was about centralized versus decentralized IT departments.
9. Powerful adjuncts to the business intelligence and data warehousing
market : ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) vendors such as SAP and Oracle see a
profitable opportunity in providing what was missing from their
original solutions.
10. Actionable business intelligence : Organizations want more than
strategy from their business intelligence. They want to be able to use
the information for more tactical decision-making purposes. For
example, if they see a problem in their supply chain, they want to
know how they can fix the problem.
Using Information Technology to Gather Intelligence
he term competitive intelligence is very much on the tip of the tongue in
today's economic maelstrom. The majority, if not all, of American com-
panies collect some sort of information about the direction that their
competitors are taking. What few realize, though, is that competitive
intelligence is really only part of a larger view of the business world we live
in. This view is called business intelligence .
Competitive intelligence is a subset of business intelligence and, as
a subset, it is not the complete picture. Herbert E. Meyer (1987), noted
author and consultant, as well as past vice chairman of the US National
Intelligence Council, calls business intelligence the corporate equivalent
of radar. As with radar, the business environment must be continually