Business Intelligence: NetSuite the Place to Start

While we could read into the topic of this entry a second meaning, with a slightly derogatory sense, what I am meaning here is the first and more powerful meaning -- "intelligence" -- new information, especially about recent events and happenings. We might also think back to war time and consider "intelligence" in its more secretive sense as well. However, in a business sense, the only reason why such information might be "secret" is that no body just by simply looking at information could deduce or contrive certain meanings and understandings without some good tools of handling and analysing data.

There are the examples, perhaps somewhat apocryphal, of the WalMart intelligence gathering with their computer data and analysis tools. Through data mining our good guys from WalMart found out through analysis that males often purchase a carton of beer and a pack of diapers together -- two items that shop keepers would hardly be aware of as being items that would be bought together. So to aid in the sales process and to capitalize on what was now had become known, WalMart stores were instructed to place these items together in the one place.

Software developers, business people and industry leaders have all developed an understanding of the power of Business Intelligence. If you do a search in Google of the term "business intelligence" you will find that there are more than 60 different suppliers with "business intelligence" software: Cognos, SAS, OpenSource, and more. What is more there is the "business intelligence pipeline", "business intelligence processes", "business intelligence analysis" -- you get the picture. There is just such a complex array of solutions, concepts, systems, examples that now we have "business intelligence consultants".

Seemingly, one of the reasons business intelligence is not more widely used is that this whole arena is now so complex that business people do not know how to make sense of this all.

I do know that NetSuite is the final answer to business intelligence, but simply because NetSuite compels a business to record in database form loads more information than would normally be kept in one database NetSuite is a great place to start building intelligence. Business Intelligence is not simply regurgitating data, nor is it simply the summary of data. Rather Business Intelligence is locating facts that initially surprise people working in the business and can lead to adoption of strategies to improve performance, profitability, or operations.

In my book, I think having the one system to combine back-office and front-office data those operating NetSuite are in a more likely place to be able to gain business intelligence than those operating disparate systems. So for me, the place to start developing business intelligence is in using the tools provided in NetSuite to start learning about our business.