Business Intelligence Analysts

The practice of business intelligence analysis is relatively recent, initially used in the computer industry starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Reportedly, IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn was the first to use the term "business intelligence" in an article that he wrote in 1958. He described a business intelligence system, which was being developed to disseminate information to various sectors within industrial, scientific, and government organizations. Luhn explained that this would be a flexible system that would use "data-processing machines for auto-abstracting and auto-encoding of documents and for creating interest profiles for each of the 'action points' in an organization."

In the 1980s, companies were adopting decision support systems (DSS) and executive information systems (EIS) as part of their business intelligence gathering processes. DSS is a computer system that compiles various types of data from different sources, such as documents, business models, raw data, or even personal information. Businesses could then analyze this data with the aim of identifying and solving problems and making decisions. EIS is a management information system that provides executives with access to an organization's internal information as well as external data as it relates to organizational goals, with the aim also to assist them in making decisions.

Today, business intelligence is an intrinsic part of many companies' business management practices. Businesses understand the benefits of analyzing past and present operations to forecast for the future. Business intelligence analysis also helps companies determine other actions they may take to save costs and operate more efficiently.