An Effective Analysis on Business Intelligence & Competitive Intelligence

The right information in the right place at the right time is fundamental although not easy for the making of significant business decisions and staying competitive. Competitive Intelligence CI allows the scanning of the environment, the recognition of risks and opportunities in the competitive arena and a better understanding of today & tomorrow's information requirements with the support of Business Intelligence BI Software. Competitive intelligence has captured the interest of a lot of companies in recent years, due to the tremendous changes occurring represented in the increasing need to know more about an industry, a market, a product or a competitor. Choosing the right BI software is critical to increase productivity and effectiveness in the organization. At the same time a very elaborating and complex process due to the fact that numerous vendors exist on the market most of which are updated very rapidly besides most of BI software selection criteria already used are vague and not complete. It is also difficult to evaluate BI effectiveness as a tool in conjunction with supporting the CI cycle different phases. Moreover, the findings of the study also revealed that it is difficult to declare the most competitive BI software as what is good for one user might not be good for the other depending on their varied business needs. Furthermore, the study initiated a new classification of BI Software vendors depending on their support of the CI cycle phases and divided them into five categories including: Fully complete, Complete, Semi Complete, Incomplete and Insubstantial.