Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact

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Chen, H., Chiang, R.H.L. & Storey, V.C., 2012. Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact. MIS Quarterly, 36(4), pp.1165—1188.

Introduction

The following article discusses the rise of Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A) and its growing importance for businesses. Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google and emeritus professor at the University of California commented: "So what's getting ubiquitous and cheap? Data. And what is complementary to data? Analysis."

The authors distinguish the following BI&A flavors:

  1. BI&A 1.0 - Database based and limited to structured content
    • already integrated into commercial enterprise IT systems

  2. BI&A 2.0 - Web-based and handles unstructured content; includes Web intelligence and web analytics
    • Web site design, product placement optimizations, customer transaction analysis, market structure analysis, product recommendations
    • social media - companies treat the market as a "conversation" rather than traditional business-to-customer one way marketing

  3. BI&A 3.0 - Mobile and sensor-based content
    • handles data obtained from mobile phones and data, devices equipped with RFID, barcodes, and radio tags ("Internet of things"
    • customization, location-aware, person-centered, and context-relevant operations

Applications

  1. E-Commerce and Market Intelligence
    • long-tail marketing, serving millions of potential niche markets)
    • market intelligence: Netflix Prize competition (algorithm to predict user movie ratings; $1 million price for the best algorithm)

  2. E-Government and Politics
  3. Science and Technology
    • collaborative approaches
    • big data analytics for analyzing data streams

  4. Smart Health and Wellbeing
  5. Security and Public Safety