v Business executives must make the decisions that lead the firm or
organization toward its desired goals. Business intelligence helps to make those decisions rational ones and optimizes
the likelihood of their resulting in steady progress toward the firm's goals.
vii-vii The purpose of this book is to introduce the subject of Business Intelligence to those who are unfamiliar
with it, to provide useful material for those already in the field... and to establish even more clearly the concepts, methods,
values, ethics and future of this field.
p.5 Business intelligence, therefore, is
processed information of interest to management about the present or future environment in which the business is operating.
p.73 Management doesn't care about intelligence sources, nominal costs of collection, or
clever filing techniques; they want answers to questions, and they want the answers promptly.
This kind of pressure calls for a smoothly functioning [business intelligence] group.
p.117 [Phillip L. Oster discusses business proposals] The company which can learn the most about the degree
of influence possessed by each of the [proposal evaluation] factors will stand the best chance of winning the contract.
p.125 There can be no specific statement as to what is and is not of value when evaluating information inputs.
Creative use of everyday information along with sparsely acquired intelligence may easily win a program when confronted in
the marketplace with unorganized or nonsystematic competition... In your own organization it is imperative that your
information not necessarily be of great volume, but pertinent, concise, timely, and valid.
