What is business intelligence?
Business Intelligence (BI) is the application of intelligence, research and analytical tools to meet business objectives. BI is not about shady operatives, tailing targets, bugging or rummaging through bins. Even where such activities are legal, they are costly, inefficient and unreliable. Nowadays there are much smarter and more targeted ways of obtaining information to support business decisions.
BI builds on information from two main sources. Open source intelligence uses mainstream media, social media, online resources, official records (corporate, legal, criminal), and databases to develop a comprehensive picture of a subject from publicly accessible material. Companies could do much of this in house, but not as effectively or efficiently as a trained investigator. Do they have the resources, the subscriptions to relevant databases, the craft and knowledge to be sure that all bases have been covered? We are talking here about much more than the first few pages of a Google search.