IBM researcher Peter Luhn wrote in 1958: “Business Intelligence is the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal.”

Thirty-one years later, Gartner Group analyst Howard Dresner added, “Business Intelligence describes concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems.”

Today a number of companies use BI to run business tests, including restaurants like Wendy’s and T.G.I. Friday’s, as well as sports teams like the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots.

customer support
A number of business executives rely on business intelligence systems to run business tests and perform everyday functions. For instance, Wendy’s and T.G.I. Friday’s use BI software to decide which new products to add to their menus, which poor performing items to remove and which poor performing stores to close.

They can also renegotiate food supplier contracts and identify inefficient processes through their software. In sports, the New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox both use team data and analytics to help coaches select players, stay below the salary cap, develop new plays tailored to their competitors and predict their chances of making the playoffs using statistics.

Retailers like Wal-mart uses data mining to improve help desk and order inventory. Capital One runs BI software and performs over 30,000 business tests each year to identify the best customers and which credit card offers to send. In fact, most of the most successful enterprises under each category use BI solutions to keep ahead of the competition.

customer care
Increasing return-on-investment (ROI) is what companies really want and Business Intelligence assists with just that. BI systems work together with ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM on demand (customer relationship management) to help roll their reports into more usable data for executives and salespeople alike.

BI software is also excellent at monitoring business processes. For instance, one time the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico saved $2 million over the course of three years just by cutting excessive cell phone usage, overtime, and other operating costs. Similarly, Toyota found it had been double-paying its shippers in 2000, wasting $812,000.

CRM on demand
So what will the future of Business Intelligence be? In 2009, Gartner Group predicted that, over the next two years, at least 35% of the top 5,000 global enterprises will fail to make wise decisions because they lack the information and the tools.

By 2010, 20% of organizations will have an industry-specific analytic application delivered by software as a service, which will become standard components in any BI system. To stay relevant, BI software manufacturers and consultants must be able to transform their product into a more up-to-speed application and business executives must be fully committed to understanding how to make BI work for them.

FileMaker software has been the most popular form of database management and development for many years now, largely because of its adaptability and evolution with industry trends. Now, with the help of a FileMaker developer, you can be set up with a software solution that has been tailor-made to suit both your personal and professional needs. FileMaker software had limited scope until 1992, when it became compatible with multiple platforms such as Microsoft and quickly transformed into the dynamic, frequently-updated solution that exists today.

New relational and scripting features were added to the FileMaker software in 1995, for example, and the popularity continued to grow. In 1997, users of FileMaker software Version 4.0 were able to take advantage of FileMaker Pro databases with a plug-in architecture much like Photoshop that allowed third-party developers to add various non-native functionalities. Other FileMaker solutions were also introduced this year, including a Web Companion that allows the database to perform like a Web server. Various other FileMaker plugs introduced this year enabled the user to add customized features, use the database like a FTP client, perform external file operations, and send messages to remote files.

2004 saw yet another revolutionary FileMaker product revamp with the unveiling of Version 7. Now the FileMaker Pro databases support files as large as 8 terabytes, with each individual field supporting as much as 2 gigabytes. Users can also utilize multiple tables per file and a graphical relationship editor with related tables that are displayed in a form resembling the entity-relationship diagram. A FileMaker developer certification program also introduced this year, as there has been and continues to be a growing number of professional developers working with this software program.

Since then, other changes to the FileMaker Pro product family have included expanded feature sets, an integrated Web viewer, quick start screen, conditional formatting, hyperlinked pointers into databases, external SQL links, scripts that are triggered by user actions, and a redesigned user interface.

FileMaker Inc., which is a subsidiary of Apple Inc., originally released the first generation of this software as a DOS app (Disc Operating System application), which was then developed primarily for the Apple Macintosh. FileMaker Pro has been configured to be compatible with all Microsoft Windows versions since 1992, but may also be used on Mac operating systems and in blended OS settings. Although FileMaker Pro databases are frequently accessed by large businesses and corporations with substantial server capacity, there is also a more home and small business-friendly application for your desktop, in addition to a web-based configuration version.