Chapter 2: Making the Most of What You ve GotUsing Business Intelligence

Out of clutter find simplicity.
From discord find harmony.
—Albert Einstein's First Two Rules of Work

Overview

In the previous chapter, we discussed the importance of effective decision making to the success of any organization. We also learned that effective decision making depends on specific goals, concrete measures to evaluate our progress toward those goals, and foundation and feedback information based on those measures. The latter two items, concrete measures and foundation/feedback information, we referred to as business intelligence.

In this chapter, we take a look at the types of questions this business intelligence can help us answer. We also discuss the types of business intelligence that are needed at various levels of an organization. The chapter ends by talking about Maximum Miniatures, Incorporated, the company we are going to use for our examples throughout the book.