What is Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to skills, technologies, applications and practices used to help a business acquire a better understanding of its commercial context. Business Intelligence may also refer to the collected information itself.
BI applications provide historical, current and forecasting views on business operations. The goal is to gain insights into business operations.
BI is not only reporting but also gathering, storing, providing and analyzing data. Business Intelligence often aims to support better business decision-making. Thus, a BI system can also be called a decision support system(DSS).