Article Preview
TopEis And Business Intelligence
Over the last decade, the global business environment and its accompanying complexities has necessitated the use of BI tools. Comprehensive and timely information is a must for new product development and improving business operations. BI plays a crucial role in providing a sound DSS for operative and strategic decision making (Hannula & Pirttimaki, 2003).
Business intelligence can be defined as a process of acquiring, interpreting, collating, analyzing and exploiting information for business competitiveness (Chung, Chen, & Nunamaker Jr, 2005). Some of the tools used for business intelligence purpose and are discussed in this paper are: OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), and data mining.
Business intelligence (BI) has benefitted from the EIS and utilizes it to analyze huge amounts of data for making better decisions regarding customers, suppliers, supply chain, and infrastructure. Whereas EIS lays the technological platform to integrate various systems and coordinate business processes, BI is a data driven decision support system (DSS) that combines data gathering, data storage, and knowledge management with analysis for better managerial decision making. The primary objective of both is to support sound decision making.