Data is everywhere, but how can an organization leverage it for competitive advantage? The field of business intelligence studies how organizations can get the correct information into the hands of the right decision makers. This unit begins by giving you an overview of how decisions are made and how information technology plays a role. You will then review how information technology is used to help organizations make effective decisions: business intelligence, data warehousing, and data mining.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 5 hours.
Read this chapter for a discussion of how business organizations make decisions and the role information technology plays in decision making. What is the process that uses technology to make automated decisions? Consider system input, decision-making algorithms, and output. How does an organization track the decisions made by the system?
Read these sections on how information systems can enable better decision-making. Complete the exercises at the end of each section.
This chapter gives the practitioner's view of how business intelligence can be used. Can you think of at least one key business process/activity that is well-suited for a business intelligence application?
Read this article and focus on the diagram about how data warehouses are constructed. What is a data warehouse? How does it differ from a database? What are the key steps in constructing a data warehouse? Why would a business want to utilize a data warehouse?
Read this chapter and focus on how data warehousing allowed Google to become the giant search engine it is today. Think about the scope and scale of the server farm necessary for Google to support the collection and analysis of all the data it collects. What are the advantages of concentrating so much data in Google data farms? Disadvantages?
What is data mining? How is it different from a data warehouse? What is the difference between data mining and information collection? What are the advantages and possible disadvantages of data mining?
Many ways exist for producing many of the reports discussed, some are very efficient, and others are more cumbersome. As you read through this section, think about how data becomes information. How do you decide what information is needed for decision-making or analysis?
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.