Business Intelligence Components Part 1: Overview and the 'Master' BI Components list

Business Intelligence (BI) is a hot topic in today's business landscape. Everyone wants it but not everyone knows what they need. In describing a business' needs and analyzing capabilities of existing BI solutions, people often refer to a list of generic classifications of BI components.

The interesting thing about this is that someone (or organization) had compiled a list of BI components in which everyone seems to refer to in all of their BI articles. It's also found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence). Whether all these articles are all referring to this source for their information or not is irrelevant. The important thing is this list is out there and is used verbatim and in order in many locations.

Everyone seems to be describing BI as being something along the lines of "made up of an increasing number of components. These include the following" and then including the below list from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence:

Multidimensional aggregation and allocation

Denormalization, tagging and standardization

Realtime reporting with analytical alert

A method of interfacing with unstructured data sources

Group consolidation, budgeting and rolling forecasts

Statistical inference and probabilistic simulation

Key performance indicators optimization

Version control and process management

Open item management

Funny thing is no one actually talks about what these are or why their important. They just rely on Wikipedia's BI knowledge to provide generalized talking points. ~95% of the articles mention the components in fancy wording. The other discussions I found on the specific topics got so far under the hood that most people would give up reading after paragraph one.

The following series of blog posts is meant to provide a high level look at what these components of BI actually mean in layman's terms. I originally had these in one GIANT post but it was getting ridiculous so I made this a ten part series with this being part 1.

PART I:      Overview and the 'Master' BI Components list
PART II:    Multidimensional aggregation and allocation
PART III:   Denormalization, tagging and standardization
PART IV:   Realtime reporting with analytical alert
PART V:     A method of interfacing with unstructured data sources
PART VI:   Group consolidation, budgeting and rolling forecasts
PART VII:  Statistical inference and probabilistic simulation
PART VIII: Key performance indicators optimization
PART IX:    Version control and process management
PART X:     Open item management