This article talks about three aspects viz., introduction to business intelligence, role of business intelligence in any firm and then the need for a CEO to possess business intelligence. It also introduces the various business intelligence solutions available in the present day corporate world. It is a known fact that every firm relies on its mission critical information. And handling this mission critical information is the crux to any and every business firm. This article introduces the role of business intelligence in tuning the data obtained to information and then to knowledge therein.

Gartner, a renowned information technology research firm defines the word business intelligence as "the process of transforming raw data that the company collects from various operations into usable information". This process or definition seems to be simple at first sight but in reality it is not.

The flow presented here depicts the transformation that takes places in data to information and then to knowledge. For a common man, these terms seem no different. But they carry significant difference in the context of business and its needs. Data is very simple in nature and requires less human intervention. But to transform data to information involves some human effort. This clearly shows the fact that information is relatively complex when compared to data. Information may not have that level of redundancy that data carries. But information may not be usable when time dimension is introduced. What we call as information today may not be information tomorrow, and might just be a piece of data. Hence further transforming it to knowledge requires more human involvement and time dimension into consideration. Knowledge is "well formed".

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