Computerworld's is running a webcast series on BI to learn what you'll need to turn your company's BI vision into reality. Topics covered by the series include data quality, required technologies, reporting options, and building management and staff buy-in.

Episode one is up and it covers BI and Analytics: What Is It and How Does It Help?

Can you identify your most profitable customers? Do you know what new products they would buy if only you offered them? Do you know how to price your products to best balance profit and market share? Business intelligence software can help answer these questions. With BI you can, for example, take data from point-of-sale systems and compare it with data from ERP systems. It can help you compare sales data with cost data. This shows you not only which products sold the most, but also which were the most profitable. Compare this information with customers' prior purchases or the demographics of each selling area, and you can find new ways to cross-sell customers or even entirely new products or promotions to offer them

Prashanth Rai