Publication Date: articles ran through the month of January 2008

Business intelligence: What financial directors want from BI

Jessica Twentyman reports on how business intelligence software is helping financial directors to plan corporate strategy based on better reporting and more accurate forecasting. (Printed in 15 January issue of Computer Weekly magazine, p 26, as "BI builds buridges from IT to finance")

Business intelligence: market overview

This year we have seen has seen a massive consolidation of the BI industry with Hyperion being bought by Oracle; SAP buying Business Objects and IBM’s planned acquisition of Cognos.

BI is now regarded as software for the masses, allowing end users across the business to make informed decision. This article looks at how demand from end-users is driving the changes in the industry and the evolution of business intelligence.

Business intelligence: Master Data Management

Why isn’t it always possible for users to keep and maintain a single version of the truth, in terms of their enterprise data? How does MDM help and what approaches can IT directors take to implement MDM?

Business intelligence: Managing unstructured data / Make sense of unstructured data

Mick James reports on how enterprise search can help unlock huge untapped resources. (Printed in 22 January issue of Computer Weekly magazine, p 28, as "Achieve competitive advantage by making sense of unstructured data".)

Business intelligence case studies

Each case study will run as a standalone feature-length article, which explains how the company/organisation has implemented BI, business drivers and measurements of success. The article will aim to cover how data is extracted, translated and loaded from production systems into databases/data warehouses, how reporting is fine-tuned.

Government IT procurement: the role of the North East Centre of Excellence (case study)

Lindsay Clark reports on how the North East Centre of Excellence is using Cognos reporting and analysis system to identify procurement savings across 25 local authorities. (Printed in 22 January issue of Computer Weekly magazine, p 24, as "Councils get better deals with BI".)

Deal Group Media uses business intelligence software to give online advertising direction (case study)

Ruth Holmes reports on how Deal Group Media underpins its online marketing service with analytics software to offer its customers an accurate picture of what gets results.  (Printed in 22 January issue of Computer Weekly magazine, p 30, as "Web-based marketing gets smarter".)

Business intelligence rises up the IT agenda (including case studies of North Wales Police and Virgin Media)

Cath Jennings reports that rationalising data analysis tools to gain a single view of coporate information is a rising priority but it can be a long road to standisation. Includes case studies from Virgin Media and North Wales Police. (Printed in 8 January issue of Computer Weekly magazine, p 28, as "The business intelligence challenge".)

Get real value from real-time systems (including case studies of Zavvi Entertainment and Unilever)

Cath Jennings reports on how organisational change and clearly defined terms and business goals are key to unlocking the benefits and avoiding the pitfalls of real-time analytics. (Printed in 8 January issue of Computer Weekly magazine, p 32, as "Get real value from real-time systems".)