Business intelligence has (finally) become essential

There hasn't been a whole lot of earth-shattering news in business intelligence lately.  Mostly what does appear is along the lines of this article from CW.  It's your basic article about how businesses are using business intelligence.  But the truth is, the real news is that BI has finally come into it's own.

As the article points out, companies are making the shift from using BI as a reactive tool to using it for a proactive tool.  Instead of looking at historical reports, more and more companies are realizing the value in using business intelligence to be predictive as well as responsive.  It's become an essential organizational tool. 

It's about time.

There's no longer any doubt that business intelligence is one of the top applications for improving business efficiency.  In fact, on page two of the article mentioned above, there's a small sidebar with some statistics from Gartner.  The first statistic quoted is:

"Gartner's 2006 survey of 1,400 CIOs found that BI was the most highly ranked technology priority this year."

It's just another indicator that BI has finally sunk in.  Companies have realized the value of business intelligence, and all that remains is the implementation (or improvement, as the case may be).  It's also likely that BI is finally built into nearly every budget, and the few that it's not already built into will be scrambling to find a way to squeeze it in, in the coming year, because without a good BI tool, companies will be left behind.  Without the intelligence that comes from using the right tools there's just no way to stay at the front of the pack.

So, it's time. If you don't already have a business intelligence package in place or at the very least in the planning stages, you're going to get left behind.  It's not about being at the front of the curve, now.  It's all about keeping up with the masses.