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Chapter 12 Enhancing Decision Making 493

and special occasions as well as adjust promotions on the fly. Hallmark is able
to determine which customer segments are most influenced by direct mail,
which should be approached through e-mail, and what specific messages to
send each group. Business intelligence has helped boost Hallmark sales to its
loyalty program members by 5 to 10 percent. Another organization that has
benefited from business intelligence is the Cincinnati Zoo, as described in the
Interactive Session on Organizations.

Business Intelligence Vendors
It is important to remember that business intelligence and analytics are prod-
ucts defined by technology vendors and consulting firms. They consist of
hardware and software suites sold primarily by large system vendors to very
large Fortune 500 firms. The largest five providers of these products are
Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft, and SAS (see Table 12.4). Microsoft’s products
are aimed at small to medium-sized firms, and they are based on desktop
tools familiar to employees (such as Excel spreadsheet software), Microsoft
SharePoint collaboration tools, and Microsoft SQL Server database software.
According to the International Data Corporation, the global business intel-
ligence and analytics market was $35.1 billion in 2012 and is expected to
reach $50.7 billion by 2016 (Kern, 2012). This makes business intelligence
and business analytics one of the fastest growing and largest segments in the
U.S. software market.

THE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE ENVIRONMENT

Figure 12.3 (on page 495) gives an overview of a business intelligence environ-
ment, highlighting the kinds of hardware, software, and management capabili-
ties that the major vendors offer and that firms develop over time. There are six
elements in this business intelligence environment:
• Data from the business environment: Businesses must deal with both
structured and unstructured data from many different sources, including
big data. The data need to be integrated and organized so that they can be
analyzed and used by human decision makers.
• Business intelligence infrastructure: The underlying foundation of
business intelligence is a powerful database system that captures all the
relevant data to operate the business. The data may be stored in transactional
databases or combined and integrated into an enterprise-data warehouse or
series of interrelated data marts.

TABLE 12.4 MARKET LEADERS AND SHARE FOR THE TOP BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE VENDORS

VENDOR MARKET SHARE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SOFTWARE
Oracle 19.3% Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite
SAP 14.5% SAP BusinessObjects BI
IBM 13.8% IBM Cognos
Microsoft 7.4% Microsoft Excel, PowerPivot, SQL Server 2012 Business
Intelligence
SAS Institute 7.1% SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence

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