The Semantic Overload of "Business Intelligence"

Between head hunters, sales brochures, pundit articles, and social forums, it appears more and more that the concept, not just the term, of "Business Intelligence" has been hijacked. And since often perception is reality, this misconception is adversely affecting the quality of actual business intelligence usage, in turn giving it a bad reputation.

One of the major definitions floating around has been that "Business Intelligence" is...
"the processes, technologies and tools needed to turn data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into plans that drive profitable business actions. Business Intelligence encompasses data warehousing, business analytic tools and content and knowledge management"

That is like saying "A company's profit is what its SAP application shows in the GL reports". Hmmm, no. Profit is actually real money in the bank, tangible currency. The description above is about software, process, and data.

Finance is about money, as opposed to "Financial Processes", "Financial Systems", "Financial Reports", etc.

• Processes are about streamlining tasks, making them more reliable, efficient and verifiable.
• Systems are about implementing processes, automating them, speeding them up, versus manual labor.
• Reports provide information, not money. Checks provide money.

Business Intelligence is a company's insight into its processes, how they perform; or in alternate terms: the awareness of its actions and how they influence its customers, market opportunities and business operations. It is conscious about relevant cause & effect relationships in its business handling.

Intelligence is cognitive capability.

Not a tool.

Not a system.

Not an architecture.

Not a process.

There are, however, business intelligence processes, architectures tools, and systems.

And there are plenty of good reasons to build, sell, integrate, and use them.

Just call those tools, systems, architectures, processes by name.

Why is this important?

Because so many companies struggle gain any value out of their B.I. investments, as they assume they are done, have "Business Intelligence" already, by mere acquisition, implementation, and casual use of B.I. tools, systems, processes. And then everybody wonders what went wrong; expectation missed by confusing intent.

The responsibility for the suffering of the silver-bullet syndrome is equally distributed between eager vendors, over-hyping their tools' or services' capabilities, and the naïveté of decision makers falling for the hyped promises. 

Business Intelligence is a mind set. A way of doing business. Not a the sales/implementation of of Information Technology, Software, or Databases.

Follow-up: Several days after I had written this, I stumbled over another blog along the same lines. The two articles were authored independently, but speak to the apparent state of affairs in