The Business Intelligence concept (BI) recently gained importance to management accountants. The BI concept, developed in computer science domains, information systems, marketing and allied fields, is now highly relevant to those who face the need to better understand their business’s process, environment, competence, markets and performance.

The BI concept arises form the notion that there is a wealth of analysis of information in the transactional processing system. The truth is that challenges can arise quickly from needs to collect, organize, standardize and analyze appropriate information form various systems to get this analysis. The value of the business intelligence quickly becomes apparent, however, this can be used whether to identify new market or profitability opportunities, to measure or manage the business implementation or to run simulations. These activities that add value are now part of the “new” and expanded set of management tools to implement the negotiations within organizations. The decision makers don’t need to be experts in IT systems or information, they need to understand this to provide the user’s specifications and deliver value to the business partners and know enough about the capability of BI/data mining as part of their decision-support toolkit.

The business intelligence relevance for the business management is high and remains unexplored; however, the historical information (about transactions) remains the central premise. The BI importance for the management accountants could be better appreciated with the strategic understanding of business, environment, competitive markets and execution. All this is led by a more general vision about the accounting information, going beyond financial information. The facilitative role of new methods and technologies is a particular interest and value. For example the data mining, a BI subset has been implemented to identify sales potential opportunities, discover financial fraud and other relevant applications to the decision-support and management accountant roles planning. These reportage requirements invite proposals in the business intelligence area. The proposals that increase our current understanding of the subject for the new and innovative directions are particularly welcome. The deep objective is to managers most relevant and effective as business members to help an organization reach their strategic goals.

Written By Jose Angel del Valle for BiCon-Business Intelligence and Strategy