It usually refers to the technology used to analyze and provide strategic information about a company's business. Larger companies have large amounts of data. Given today's competitive pressures, companies need to use company data to understand their business and stay competitive. There are so many companies like Vizbp that provide the benefits of business intelligence reporting.

Production data, demographic information, sales data, and the like can be synthesized in a form that is useful in making better strategic business decisions. For example, a business intelligence system could summarize sales by month and year and compare current data with historical values. This aggregated sales data can then be viewed in simple tabular format (Excel, PDF, or HTML) and/or converted into graphic images (charts, graphs, counters, call gauges, etc.). 

The synthesized data can then be presented in the form of a dashboard (similar to a car or airplane dashboard) in a simple report that presents all of this data in an intuitive and easy-to-read format.

Business Intelligence (BI) uses many data-related technologies. Data warehouse, document management, knowledge management, data retrieval, online analytical processing (OLAP), multi-dimensional analysis (based on n-dimensional data cube creation), to name a few. With today's businesses having so many different computer systems and applications, gathering data from so many different sources is usually a complex task. Building a BI system often turns out to be much more complex than the initial assessment.

Business intelligence is a relatively new technology. Until recently, BI was not possible due to the dependence of BI technology on databases, data warehouses, and related computing technologies.