When it comes to Business Intelligence, or BI, there are generally two meanings.

The less popular meaning is the capacity of human intelligence directly applied in business activities.  A new field of the investigation of human cognitive faculties and artificial intelligence, the intelligence of business supports various systems for different business-related problems. 

The more popular meaning of BI identifies with intelligence as the information valued for relevance and currency.  This usually entails knowledge, expert information and technologies for the gathering, supplying access to and analyzing data for the purpose of assisting enterprise users to make better decisions in business.

An in-depth knowledge of your customers, business partners, competitors, internal operations and of course, economic environment make the most suitable business decisions.  In short, business intelligence affords you to make quality decisions consistently.

BI allows business organizations to make the most well-informed decisions in business strategies, thus it can be the basis of competitive advantages.  Accurate forecasts regarding future trends or even economic conditions can be made for information from predictions in the external environment.  As business intelligence is gathered efficiently and used proficiently, decisions can be made to benefit your own business organization, prior to the competition.

The chief objective of BI is to improve the quality—as well as the timeliness—of vital information.  Business intelligence constantly reveals the preferences of customers, the position of your firm compared to the competition, capabilities of your firm, changes in behavior of the customer, future trends, market conditions, economic and demographic information, political, social and regulatory environment and what the competition is doing

Even with these basic BI guidelines, a customized business strategy can still be achieved.  In the highly competitive, continuously changing and quick-paced business environment, a significant competitive quality is the adaptiveness to change and quickness in response. BI allows one to use information gathered to constantly and rapidly respond to changes. 

When it comes to benefits, BI provides a plethora of benefits to companies taking advantage of the opportunity.  All the guesswork within a particular organization can be eliminated, as it enhances communication among departments while it coordinates activities, as well as enables companies to respond quickly to changes in customer preferences, supply chain operations and financial conditions.  BI actually improves the overall performance of the particular company utilizing the benefits.

Often regarded as the second most vital resource of a company (first being its people), information incurred from accurate and timely decisions can help a company generate success.  Business intelligence also expedites the process of decision-making, acting correctly and quickly on information before the competition.  This can often result in the most viable performance of the company, which can also improve customer service and experience.

Robin C. Trehan is an expert in the filed of mergers and acquisitions and private equity capital. He can be reached at robin@tafunds.com. Jerry Cedicci is renowned real estate developer and business visionary. He is also associated with Beaux Arts.