In my opinion, the most successful tools used for business intelligence directly shield the business user from the query logic used for displaying that same data in some form of visual manner. (For more resources related to this topic, see here.) Any report, dashboard, or analytical application that is delivering information to a user through a BI tool but the numbers cannot be tied back to the original source will break the trust between the user and the data and will defeat the purpose of Business Intelligence. The single source of truth is the key for any Business Intelligence operation whether it is a mom and pop soda shop or a Fortune 500 company.

If the integrity of the data is compromised in any way by an individual not intimately familiar with the data source, then there cannot, by definition, be intelligence in the business decisions made within that same data. One of the goals of Business Intelligence or BI is to shield the users of the data from the intelligent logic lurking behind the scenes of the application that is delivering the data to them.

What isn’t business intelligence? It is not spreadsheet analysis done with transactional data with thousands of rows. In this article by Ahmed Sherif, author of the book Practical Business Intelligence, is going to explain what is business intelligence? Before answering this question, I want to pose and answer another question.

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