ABSTRACT
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages, including those from SAP AG, PeopleSoft, Oracle, and Baan, have made a tremendous contribution to the world of business. They have made a wide range of businesses more efficient by providing them with much information they need. Today’s businesses need to understand, monitor, process, and apply information on their industry, their competitors, their customers, and a large volume of other information on an ongoing basis. The era is long gone in which strategic adjustments were done once every one to five years by the senior management only. The wide range of people who need the external information will pose a great challenge to the data integration, distribution, and intelligence extraction. Companies need to identify suitable sources and determine effective ways to collect the key information. Integration of external and internal data will be the key. While an oversupply of data and information exists, a short supply of intelligence persists in today’s business world.
