Operational (ERP) systems are organised by different areas (such as procurement, sales and production) and their related workflows. This is obligatory and is of major economic importance. The analyses and reports produced by area-based systems are often no longer sufficient, however, if a company is to be managed and controlled as a whole. This is where business intelligence comes in.

Although business intelligence is based on the statuses of individual workflows, it does not remain closely linked to these statuses, as the information is immediately ‘mirrored vertically’ and recombined to form (new) processes based on analytical findings. New database procedures exist that can produce such findings with great speed, even when very high data volumes are involved.