Blog 8: Chapter 11: Business Intelligence

When looking at the lecture notes, I found an article that interested me. It is titled “Business Intelligence’s Time is Now” and appeared on BusinessWeek.com in March 2009. The article discusses how the recession is fostering interest in business intelligence. The author talks about specific examples in companies such as Chili’s, Welch’s, and Carnival Cruise Lines. During the recession, Chili’s is using business intelligence software to get a better handle on consumer spending patterns to make lots of decisions, like altering staff levels and moving around menu items. Welch’s says although Bi software can be expensive, the ability to reduce transportation costs with its help makes the cost worth it. In addition, they say that now instead of spending 80% of their time gathering information and 20% analyzing it, BI software has switched those numbers around and analysts are able to do 30 hours of work in only 30 minutes! Carnival Cruise Lines has felt a huge lag in people looking to go on cruises during the recession so they decided to focus on those who they know are most likely to go on a cruise whether there’s a recession or not. Because they don’t have an unlimited budget to market to every customer, CCL used BI software to look at internal customer information but also third-party information about household income and composition. With this information Carnival can quickly and easily create marketing campaigns for the right audience.

Clearly, BI software is worth the cost because it allows companies to find the information they are looking for and use it to their advantage. Not only does it help with that, but it also speeds up analyzing time so that work can be done faster than ever before!