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What is business intelligence (BI) and how is it different from analytics?
Business intelligence is the set of tools and practices that gather company data and present it in reports and dashboards so people can monitor performance. Analytics is broader and more investigative. BI usually answers what happened and what is happening now, while analytics also explores why and what might happen next.
In practice the terms overlap and many vendors use them interchangeably. A useful rule of thumb:
- BI: recurring, standardised reporting such as a weekly sales dashboard
- Analytics: ad hoc investigation, such as why a customer segment stopped buying
Most small and mid-sized companies need solid BI first. Deeper analytics becomes valuable once the basic numbers are trusted and agreed across the business.
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