pdf books of IT

of huge databases that combine all of a company’s data and allow users to access the data directly, create reports, and obtain responses to what-if questions. Building a database at a large corporation is a huge undertaking that includes defining hun¬dreds of gigabytes of data from many existing systems, providing a means of con¬tinually updating the data, making it all compatible, and linking it to software that makes it possible for users to search and analyze the data and produce helpful reports. Software for business intelligence helps users make sense of all these data. Business intelligence refers to the high-tech analysis of a company’s data in order to make better strategic decisions.6 Sometimes referred to as data mining, business intelligence means searching out and analyzing data from multiple sources across the enterprise, and sometimes from outside sources as well, to identify patterns and relationships that might be significant.

SYSTEM COMPLEXITY

By collecting the right data and using business intelligence software to analyze it and spot trends and patterns, managers can make smarter decisions. Thus, IT has evolved to more complex systems for managerial decision making and control of the organization, the second stage illustrated in Exhibit 11.1. Further advancements have led to the use of IT to add strategic value by providing tight coordination both internally and with external customers, suppliers, and partners, the highest level of application shown in Exhibit 11.1. The remainder of this chapter will focus on these two higher-level stages in the evolution of IT.