Business Intelligence

by Ismael D. Tabije

Business intelligence (BI) has two different meanings related to the use of the term intelligence. The primary, less frequently, is the human intelligence capacity applied in business affairs and activities. Intelligence of Business is a new field of the investigation of the application of human cognitive faculties and artificial intelligence technologies and the management and decision support in different business problems. The second, which is the subject of this article, relates to the intelligence as information valued for its currency and relevance. It is expert information, knowledge and technologies efficient in the management of organizational and individual business. Therefore, in this sense, business intelligence is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, providing access to, and analyzing data for the purpose of helping enterprise users make better business decisions. The term implies having a comprehensive knowledge of all of the factors that affect your business. It is imperative that you have an in depth knowledge about factors such as your customers, competitors, business partners, economic environment, and internal operations to make effective and good quality business decisions. Business intelligence enables you to make these kinds of decisions. A specialized field of business intelligence known as competitive intelligence focuses solely on the external competitive environment. Information is gathered on the actions of competitors and decisions are made based on this information. Little, if any, attention is paid to gathering internal information. Business Intelligence enables organizations to make well informed business decisions and thus can be the source of competitive advantages. This is especially true when you are able to extrapolate information from indicators in the external environment and make accurate forecasts about future trends or economic conditions. Once business intelligence is gathered effectively and used proactively you can make decisions that benefit your organization before the competition does. The ultimate objective of business intelligence is to improve the timeliness and quality of information. Businesses realize that in this very competitive, fast-paced, and always changing business environment the only thing that will help them gain a competitive advantage over their competitors is how quickly they respond and adapt to change. Business intelligence enables them to use information gathered to proactively respond to changes. BI provides many benefits to companies utilizing it. It can eliminate a lot of the guesswork within an organization, enhance communication among departments while coordinating activities, and enable companies to respond quickly to changes in financial conditions, customer preferences, and supply chain operations. BI improves the overall performance of the company using it. Information is regarded as one of the most important resources a company can have, second only to human resources. So when a company can make decisions based on timely and accurate information it improves the performance of that company. BI also expedites decision making because businesses realize that information can be used to achieve a competitive advantage so that when a business obtains key information they quickly use it before a competitor obtains the same information. It also maximizes the customer experience because when you are able to properly cater to the wants or needs of a customer you enhance the customer's experience. Ismael D. Tabije is the Publisher-Editor of www.BestManagementArticles.com, a unique niche-topic article directory that features exclusively business and management topics. For a large dose of business intelligence tips, ideas and strategies, see http://business-intelligence.bestmanagementarticles.com.

Article source: ArticlePros.com

Approaches to management

By peit14121951

All organizations have objectives. However in a market economy the prime motive of any organization is to maximize owners wealth or to earn a rate of return, which is in line with the risk. In addition, all business have stakeholders such as suppliers, workers, government, community, interest groups such as trade uniions, employer associations and other interest groups such as environmental groups in the contemporary world.

This requires management of a business to plan, organize, control, coordinate and motivate all levels of employees to meet the set and agreed objectives. However, the managment can use appropriate management theories to accomplish the main functions of business. They also provide the requisite knowledge to understand human behavior and feasible human resource policies to control and motivate employees to maximize the potential of all the employees to improve the efficiency and effctiveness of the organization as whole on a continuous basis.

The main management theories are classical managment theories, human relation theories, systems theories, political perspectives of managment and modern contingency theory of managment. The classical managment theories focus is on the principle of specialization or division of labor, specifiic authority and resposibility, prescibed rules and procedures, pyramid structure of organization, low span of control, top down communication channel, less employee direction in the decison making process, mostly authoritiave managment style in planning, organizing, coordinating, control and motivating emplyees. They beleived employees are primarily has to be directed and they are primarily motivated only by money.

They also belived that this theory can be applicable to any organization irrespective of size, nature of activities, nature of employees. the nature of external environment, cultural factors and political factors, group behavioral factors. However, it has been found that even though classical managment theories are used in varying degrees the oversigt of the complex factors at work in organizations may create conflict and dysfunction in organizations particularly in large organizations, where the external and internal enviornment is dynamic and nature of tasks are complex in nature.

The other theories of managment have evolved over a period of time due to the weaknesses observed by organizational theorists in the 19th and 20 th century. In the modern thought, all theories have some relevance, however the choice of these theories is contingent on internal and external environment in terms of dynamics, nature of tasks, nature of managment, nature of employees, motivational factors, political activity, importance of leadership, approriate mangement style development, change managment issues, decentralization vesus centralization, organizational culture. That is in most organizations the size, and the issues as mentined above will determine, which mix of theories are useful in accomplishing the functions of management and management roles in modern organizations. That is managment theories, without context will not work and may create more dysfuctions than improve the organizational effectivess in achieving its set goals.

As mentioed above, the theories of managment are one of the essential store house of knowledge to management. If used wisely, will enable the top managment in undertaking their main fucntions of managment to meet organizational goals in their specific internal and external environment. That is, the contingency approach is the best possible world combined with the insights in to human behavior by other management schools of thought.

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