Online information sources: tools of business intelligence

Organisations seek to use information intelligently and to generate busines s intelligence for future profitable prospects. Although not regarded as bu siness intelligence per se, there is a role for commercially produced onlin e information sources and internally generated intranet resources in busine ss intelligence activity. For example, the human post-coordination of raw d ata from a commercial source may direct business decisions; Web pages on in tranets serve to unify 'grey' internal company information; the company int ranet serves as a platform for unifying internal and external sources. Howe ver, technological and cultural barriers can inhibit the effectiveness of o nline information sources held on company networks, and other processes, su ch as the mining of transactional data, offer alternative means of deriving business intelligence. For those involved in the provision of business inf ormation, ultimately it is the question of what to provide at the point of application that is most important when attempting to create business intel ligence from online information sources.