viii History teaches that behind every successful strategy there has been a tireless effort to collect
intelligence... BI is the activity of monitoring the environment external to the firm for information that is relevant
for the decision-making process in the company.
p.1 The term BI is used to denote a process, an organizational function, and a product. The process or activity
of BI, which is carried out by individuals or by a formal organizational unit, produces a product that is termed business
intelligence. The best definition we found for this end product is Greene's (1966), who defines the BI product as
"processed information of interest to management about the present and future environment in which the business is
operating." [JLJ - Greene, in Business Intelligence and Espionage, 1966, uses the words "present or
future environment"]
p.1 intelligence... is information digested, analyzed, and interpreted for the purpose of decision
making... Management decides... what information is of interest or relevance to its decisions.
p.21 At the collection stage, the amount of data collected is limited by the specification of collection
targets... Collection targets assure that only what is needed for decision making is collected. The amount
of raw data that the collector has to scan is reduced further by system procedures that identify
which sources are most likely to provide the necessary data.
p.24 The goal of the intelligence program is to supply decision-makers with information to serve as a basis
for their decisions. As such, the program has to be geared to the kinds of decisions that take place within the organization.
p.35 What intelligence do managers need to help them make business decisions? ...the typical
assumption of management books and guides is that managers know what information they need to make good decisions... Our experience
during audit after audit, as we interviewed managers for the kind of information they needed to make their decisions, showed
otherwise... It is a difficult task to clearly formulate one's information needs.
p.36 Every major business decision requires intelligence input... As a general rule, no
major business decision should be undertaken without serious intelligence backup.
p.38 The forging of long-term objectives and strategies to guide the corporation, its divisions
and subsidiaries, requires intelligence... the formulation of long-term strategies requires the use of specific knowledge
about the external environment.
p.39 Monitoring the competitive environment is a necessary ingredient
in strategy development since a strategy requires realistic assumptions about the behavior of competitors, and their
reaction to strategic moves by the firm.
p.40 The intelligence collected in the first stage serves the second stage of the strategic planning
process, the assessment of the situation by management... Assessment refers to the evaluation of key success factors.
The assessment will point to the opportunities and problems in the environment. Those will generally be in the areas where
the firm must do well to succeed. Each industry will have its set of key success factors
p.40 the purpose of data collected by the BI personnel is to enable the decision-maker to arrive
at an assessment of the situation faced by the corporation in terms of its position vis-a-vis the key success factors in the
industry... It is clear that the birth of a strategy... follows logically and chronologically the assessment
of the situation, which, in turn, is based on the environmental intelligence picture provided by the BI program...
the poorer that input, the poorer the resulting strategy. [JLJ - clever and insightful]
p.103-104 There are six components determining our judgment of the usefulness of data to the firm. To analyze
data we should consider the following factors: Relevance, Truth value, Understandability, Sufficiency, Significance, Timeliness
p.116 The intelligence audit should be the first step in reorganizing the BI system or implementing
a new one. The audit is a diagnostic tool. It is used to obtain data about aspects of the organization that are important
to the establishment of the BI system. To design a sound business intelligence system, it is important to first conduct an
audit in order to obtain answers to the following questions:
1. What intelligence is needed by users?
p.119 The person conducting the audit interview should be prepared for the fact that many decision-makers
do not possess ready insight into their own information needs... It is therefore the role of the
BI specialist to elicit from the executive a sound understanding of the intelligence support he or she needs for decision
making, and to obtain responses in terms of targets and priorities, communication blocks, the use of sources, and so on.
