Business Intelligence:

• Business intelligence or BI is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data.
• BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting.
• BI uses information systems and transaction databases to provide decision-making support and transform data into intelligence within a rational management framework.
• Example: The Balanced Scorecard
• The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a framework for managing business performance.
• BSC provides a framework for designing a set of measures for business activities as being the key drivers of the business or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
• KPIs are collected from CRM, ERP, Accounting, Personnel, inventory, and so on.
• BSC provides executives and managers with a method for reporting and analyzing key performance indicators to determine if operational activities are aligned with the company’s overall strategy and vision.
• The BSC methodology is a management technique for structuring these scorecards and displays financial, internal process, customer and learning/growth data.

Decision Support system:

• A decision support system (DSS) is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities.
• DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization and help people make decisions about problems that may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance –i.e. Unstructured and Semi-Structured decision problems.

• Decision support systems can be either fully computerized, human-powered or a combination of both.

  • Example:
  • A national on-line book seller wants to begin selling its products internationally but first needs to determine if that will be a wise business decision.
  • The vendor can use a DSS to gather information from its own resources (using a tool such as OLAP) to determine if the company has the ability or potential ability to expand its business and also from external resources, such as industry data, to determine if there is indeed a demand to meet.
  • The DSS will collect and analyze the data and then present it in a way that can be interpreted by humans.