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    What is Business Intelligence?

    Business intelligence (BI) transforms raw data into clear insights for faster decision-making. Using dashboards, reports, and visualizations, BI shows what is happening across the business in real time and helps teams improve performance and reduce risk.

    Expanded Definition

    Business intelligence is the set of tools and methods that turn company data into useful insights. Gartner defines BI as reporting, dashboards, interactive visualizations, and queries that help stakeholders and leaders track performance and spot trends. Forrester’s 2025 BI research reinforces this, noting that “BI is alive and well…GenAI is not the end of BI,” instead, generative AI is extending BI’s value by making insights more accessible.

    Today, BI is no longer limited to static reports created by IT. Modern platforms provide self-service and automated, so business teams can explore data on their own.

    With Alteryx One, users can prepare and analyze data without writing code, while Auto Insights highlights patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. This shifts BI from only showing past results to also tracking what is happening now, forecasting future outcomes, and recommending the best next steps.

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    How BI is Applied in Business & Data

    Business intelligence delivers value by putting data to work across an organization. Companies use BI to monitor organizational performance, uncover opportunities, reduce risk, and drive efficiency. Rather than just producing reports, BI helps leaders and teams act on real-time insights that shape strategy and daily operations.

    Applications vary by function: Executives track KPIs to gauge overall health, finance teams analyze revenue and cost drivers, operations leaders optimize supply chains, and marketing teams measure campaign ROI. Industry-wide, the OECD has found that BI adoption is closely tied to higher productivity, especially when insights are applied consistently across departments.

    McKinsey echoes this, emphasizing that AI is acting as a foundational amplifier for BI by scaling analytics and extending human capabilities across functions.

    According to Chris Goodman, Consultant and Alteryx ACE, teams that focus on enablement and problem-solving together quickly see how BI can drive collaboration and improve business outcomes.

    With Alteryx One, companies can extend BI by:

    • Automating manual reporting workflows.
    • Connecting disparate data sources for a unified view.
    • Embedding insights into day-to-day business processes.

    How Business Intelligence Works

    Business intelligence platforms connect to company systems, bring in different types of data, and turn that data into dashboards and reports. Teams can review and analyze this information via charts, alerts, and interactive views. Traditional BI explains what happened in the past, while newer approaches use machine learning to predict future outcomes.

    Use Cases

    • Insurance: Analyzing claims patterns to detect fraud and optimize underwriting decisions.
    • Retail: Tracking store-level sales and inventory to reduce stockouts and improve demand forecasting.
    • Public Sector: Evaluating program efficiency, improving service delivery, and tracking resource allocation for greater transparency.
    • Sales & Marketing: Measuring campaign ROI, tracking lead quality, and identifying customer segments with the highest growth potential.
    • Healthcare: Monitoring patient flow to allocate staff and resources more effectively.
    • Supply Chain: Monitoring logistics costs, vendor performance, and delivery timelines to reduce risk and improve resilience.
    • Higher Education: Using enrollment and retention data to allocate funding and improve student outcomes.
    • Finance: Detecting revenue leakage, monitoring compliance, and analyzing profitability by product or region.
    • IT: Tracking system performance, security incidents, and service-level metrics to ensure reliability.
    • Manufacturing: Analyzing equipment performance to predict failures and minimize downtime.

    Industry Examples

    • Finance: Banks apply BI to monitor fraud detection patterns and regulatory compliance.
    • Logistics: Shipping companies optimize fleet routes using BI dashboards fed by real-time telemetry.
    • Public Sector: Governments track program efficiency and citizen service usage through BI reporting.

     

    FAQs

    How is BI different from analytics?
    BI typically focuses on descriptive analytics (what happened), while advanced analytics explores predictive (what will happen) and prescriptive (what to do).

    Is BI only for large enterprises?
    No. With cloud BI platforms and self-service tools like Alteryx One, small and mid-sized organizations can unlock BI without IT overhead.

    How does BI integrate with AI?
    AI enhances BI by automatically spotting unusual patterns, answering questions in plain language, and predicting future outcomes.

    Further Resources

    Sources and References

    Synonyms

    • BI
    • Decision support systems (DSS)
    • Management information systems (MIS)

    Related Terms

    Last Reviewed:

    August 2025

     

    Alteryx Editorial Standards and Review

    This glossary entry was created and reviewed by the Alteryx content team for clarity, accuracy, and alignment with our expertise in data analytics automation.