Looking at the increasing role of social media within business intelligence

The role of business intelligence (BI) is slowly shifting within organizations.  People speak about the transition from traditional uses towards operational or pervasive BI and the fact that as technology advances, the role of BI in general is becoming increasingly valuable within the daily decision making habits of many businesses.  In addition, the ability to: 1) integrate social metrics into business intelligence applications, and 2) use social networking concepts within BI frameworks increase the push towards a more interactive and timely approach to BI adoption.  Both of these items are complementary to making BI more user friendly and usable – ideas that have eluded many organizations for a long time.

The first includes the use of text analytics and importing external data sources to gain a broader picture of what is happening within an industry, with competitors, or insights into product perceptions.  The second relates to the idea of integrating social media functionality into business intelligence applications.  The premise behind which, is to make BI accessible to the masses…

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