Business intelligence combines business analytics, data mining, data visualization, data tools and infrastructure, and best practices to help organizations to make more data-driven decisions. In practice, you know you have got modern business intelligence when you have a comprehensive view of your organizations data and use that data to drive change, eliminate inefficiencies, and quickly adapt to market or supply changes.

Business intelligence can help companies make better decisions by showing present historical data within their business context. Analyst can leverage business intelligence to provide performance and competitor benchmarks to make the organization run smoother and more efficient. Analyst can also more easily spot market trends to increase sales or revenue. Used effectively, the right data can help with anything from compliance to hiring efforts.

Businesses and organizations have questions and goals. To answer these questions and track performance against these goals, they gather the necessary data, analyze it , and determine which actions to take to reach their goals. On the technical side, raw data is collected from the business activity. Data is processed and then stored in data warehouses. Once it's stored, users can then access the data, starting the analysis process to answer business questions.

Business intelligence includes data analytics and business analytics, but uses them only as part of the whole process. Business intelligence help users draw conclusions from data analysis. Data scientists dig into the specifics of data, using advanced statistics and predictive analytics to discover patterns and forecast future patterns.