Business Intelligence

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According to IBM's Cognos website:

Business intelligence connects people with information in an easy-to-use way so they can make better decisions.

Pretty simple and straightforward. Business intelligence is all about connecting all the different islands of information within your company. Right now there is an incredible amount of useful information inside your business. If you can get timely access to that information, you will be able to make good decisions.

Unfortunately, most business intelligence software packages can cost you a small fortune. The software itself isn't the largest investment. Equipment, implementation, training and maintenance are where the real costs hide.

Therefore, your goal should be to find ways to derive the benefits without the costs. Once again, let's refer back to IBM's site:

The best business intelligence software:

• Delivers trusted information for a single version of the truth.
• Lets you work with information the way you want—reports, dashboards, scorecards
• Puts tools in your hands to author and share information as you require.

Over the next few weeks, I will spend time discussing how you can achieve all those goals for nearly free.

If you have any ideas how to meet those goals, let me know in the comments below.