The core value of business intelligence solutions is to convert data into insights. This enables businesses to use a clear decision making process and ultimately make better decisions faster. The benefits can be equally as valuable for executives making strategic decisions as it can be for middle management, business analysts or operations staff making tactical decisions.

The most common bottleneck to making good decisions is the ability to quickly and routinely measure business results and perform complex analysis. This bottleneck can be the result of information being too slow to obtain, too complicated to access, or too much to analyze.

Ø  Too slow. Standard business reports are typically dependent on operational cycles and may not be produced for days or weeks after the close of a period. Manual intervention may also be required to produce final formatted reports.

Ø  Too complicated. Data from multiple corporate database systems is often not integrated and usually only specialized technicians know how to get to the data.

Ø  Too much. The sheer volume of data can make analysis overwhelming. Data often requires organization to make sense of the data and apply its relevancy.

Business Intelligence Solution Components

A business intelligence solution must be able to integrate historical business data from multiple business applications into a single database which is optimized for responsive querying and analysis. To ensure that the solution is utilized long-term, desktop applications must provide users with flexibility and the ability to perform complex analysis without a steep learning curve.

Microsoft provides a robust Business Intelligence Solution that is designed to improve decision making and insight into the business.