Meta Analytical Literature Study on Business Intelligence and Its Applications; a Techno-Business Leadership Perspective

The earliest known use of the term "Business Intelligence" is in Richard Millar Devens‘ in the ‘Cyclopædia of Commercial and Business Anecdotes‘ from 1865. Devens used the term to describe how the banker, Sir Henry Furnese, gained profit by receiving and acting upon information about his environment, prior to his competitors. ‘Throughout Holland, Flanders, France, and Germany, he maintained a complete and perfect train of business intelligence. The news of the many battles fought was thus received first by him, and the fall of Namur added to his profits, owing to his early receipt of the news.’ (Devens, (1865), p. 210). The ability to collect and react accordingly based on the information retrieved, an ability that Furnese excelled in, is today still at the very heart of BI. Business intelligence as it is understood today is said to have evolved from the decision support systems (DSS) that began in the 1960s and developed throughout the mid-1980s. DSS originated in the computer-aided models created to assist with decision making and planning. From DSS, data warehouses, Executive Information Systems, OLAP and business intelligence came into focus beginning in the late 80s. In 1989, Howard Dresner (later a Gartner analyst) proposed "business intelligence" as an umbrella term to describe "concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems." It was not until the late 1990s that this usage was widespread. Critics see BI as evolved from mere business reporting together with the advent of increasingly powerful and easy-to-use data analysis tools. In this respect it has also been criticized as a marketing buzzword in the context of the "big data" surge.