Assignment:
Read 4 good articles related to business intelligence. What qualifies as a good article? The article should be from an IT periodical or academic journal. It should not be a brief announcement about some new vendor release. It should not be a blog entry or opinion piece. It should have some depth to it. The collection of articles you choose can be focused in one topic area, or they can be from a variety of topics. This intent of this activity is to allow you to do some exploring within the realm of business intelligence literature and see what aspects of the subject you find most interesting.
See the associated Reading Journal Resources document for suggestions on finding articles.
For each article, provide.
- an APA style citation (include the URL)
- a statement describing the subject of the article (in your own words)
- a list of the main points made in the article (in your own words)
Example:
Jennings, C. (2008). For Best Results, Add Insight. Computer Weekly, 26-28. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from
https://search.ebscohost.com.xxproxy.smumn.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=keh&AN=31698203&site=ehost-live
Subject description: The article describes the state of typical status of BI in organizations as focused too much on reporting and analysis. More needs to be done to gain insight and use data with predictive analytics.
Main points:
- According to McKinsey consultancy, organizations, in order to remain competitive, need to leverage data to gain insights and make smarter decisions
- Challenges to leveraging existing data include - lack of knowledge about the data, poor data quality, inadequate access (sometimes due "information silos" or people not sharing information because they believe it gives them power to have it themselves)
- Most companies using BI do reporting and analysis based on past events, but do not use the information as a means of predicting the future.
- Intel is using predictive analytics to forecast product demand
- Understanding customer behavior can help with cross-selling and up-selling, store location, store layouts
- Understanding what the business is trying to do is a prerequisite to knowing what data is needed