📊Business Intelligence: BI Boards (Definitions)

BICC: "Business Intelligence Competency Center, an organization concerned with managing and distributing data within a business as well as BI projects." (Fernando Iafrate, "From Big Data to Smart Data", 2015)

BICoE: "A permanent, cross-functional, virtual or physical organizational structure, loosely coupled for flexibility and agility, that is responsible for the governance and processes necessary to deliver or facilitate the delivery of successful BI solutions; it's also an institutional steward of, protector of, and forum for BI best practices." (Forrester)

BISC: "A permanent, cross-functional, virtual, or physical organizational structure, loosely coupled for flexibility and agility, responsible for the governance and processes necessary to deliver or facilitate the delivery of successful BI solutions, as well as an institutional steward of, protector of, and forum for BI best practices." (Forrester)

📊Business Intelligence: Reporting (Definitions)

"An automated business process or related functionality that provides a detailed, formal account of relevant or requested information." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

[enterprise reporting:] "1.The process of producing reports using unified views of enterprise data. 2.A category of software tools used to produce reports; a term for what were simply known as reporting tools." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

[ad hoc reporting:] "A reporting system that enables end users to run queries and create custom reports without having to know the technicalities of the underlying database schema and query syntax." (Microsoft, "SQL Server 2012 Glossary", 2012)

"A process by which insight is presented in a visually appealing and informative manner." (Evan Stubbs, "Delivering Business Analytics: Practical Guidelines for Best Practice", 2013)

"The practice of reporting what has happened, analyzing contributing data to determine why it happened, and monitoring new data to determine what is happening now. Also known as descriptive analytics and business intelligence." (Brenda L Dietrich et al, "Analytics Across the Enterprise", 2014)

"The process of collecting data from various sources and presenting it to business people in an understandable way." (Daniel Linstedt & W H Inmon, "Data Architecture: A Primer for the Data Scientist", 2014)

"A common interaction with an organizing system." (Robert J Glushko, "The Discipline of Organizing: Professional Edition" 4th Ed., 2016)

"The function or activity for generating documents that contain information organized in a narrative, graphic, or tabular form, often in a repeatable and regular fashion." (Jonathan Ferrar et al., 2017)

"Business intelligence reporting, or BI reporting, is the process of gathering data by utilizing different software and tools to extract relevant insights. Ultimately, it provides suggestions and observations about business trends, empowering decision-makers to act." (Data Pine) [source] 

"When we talk about reporting in business intelligence (BI), we are talking about two things. One is reporting strictly defined. The other is 'reporting' taken in a more general meaning. In the first case, reporting is the art of collecting data from various data sources and presenting it to end-users in a way that is understandable and ready to be analyzed. In the second sense, reporting means presenting data and information, so it also includes analysis–in other words, allowing end-users to both see and understand the data, as well as act on it." (Logi Analytics) [source] 

🪙Business Intelligence: Data Visualization (Definitions)

"Technique for presentation and analysis of data through visual objects, such as graphs, charts, images, and specialized tabular formats." (Paulraj Ponniah, "Data Warehousing Fundamentals", 2001)

"Technique for presentation and analysis of data through visual objects, such as graphs, charts, images, and specialized tabular formats." (Paulraj Ponniah, "Data Warehousing Fundamentals for IT Professionals", 2010) 

"Visual representation of data, aiming to convey as much information as possible through visual processes." (Alfredo Vellido & Iván Olie, "Clustering and Visualization of Multivariate Time Series", 2010)

"Techniques for graphical representation of trends, patterns and other information." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"Information abstracted in a schematic form to provide visual insights into sets of data. Data visualization enables us to go from the abstract numbers in a computer program (ones and zeros) to visual interpretation of data. Text visualization means converting textual information into graphic representation, so we can see information without having to read the data, as tables, histograms, pie or bar charts, or Cartesian coordinates." (Anna Ursyn, "Visualization as Communication with Graphic Representation", 2015)

"[...] data visualization [is] a tool that, by applying perceptual mechanisms to the visual representation of abstract quantitative data, facilitates the search for relevant shapes, order, or exceptions." (Jorge Camões, "Data at Work: Best practices for creating effective charts and information graphics in Microsoft Excel", 2016)

"Presenting data and summary information using graphics, animation, and three-dimensional displays. Tools for visually displaying information and relationships often using dynamic and interactive graphics." (Daniel J Power & Ciara Heavin, "Decision Support, Analytics, and Business Intelligence" 3rd Ed., 2017)

"Data Visualization is a way of representing the data collected in the form of figures and diagrams like tables, charts, graphs in order to make the data for common man more easily understandable." (Kirti R Bhatele, "Data Analysis on Global Stratification", 2020)

"Techniques for turning data into information by using the high capacity of the human brain to visually recognize patterns and trends. There are many specialized techniques designed to make particular kinds of visualization easy." (Information Management)

"The art of communicating meaningful data visually. This can involve infographics, traditional plots, or even full data dashboards." (KDnuggets)

"The practice of structuring and arranging data within a visual context to help users understand it. Patterns and trends that might be unrecognizable to the layman in text-based data can be easily viewed and digested by end users with the help of data visualization software." (Insight Software)

"Data visualization enables people to easily uncover actionable insights by presenting information and data in graphical, and often interactive graphs, charts, and maps." (Qlik) [source]

"Data visualization is the graphical representation of data to help people understand context and significance. Interactive data visualization enables companies to drill down to explore details, identify patterns and outliers, and change which data is processed and/or excluded." (Tibco) [source]

"Data visualization is the practice of translating information into a visual context, such as a map or graph, to make data easier for the human brain to understand and pull insights from." (Techtarget) [source]

"Data visualization is the process of graphically illustrating data sets to discover hidden patterns, trends, and relationships in order to develop key insights. Data visualization uses data points as a basis for the creation of graphs, charts, plots, and other images." (Talend) [source]

"Data visualization is the use of graphics to represent data. The purpose of these graphics is to quickly and concisely communicate the most important insights produced by data analytics." (Xplenty) [source]

📊Business Intelligence: Report Model (Definitions)

"A semantic description of business entities and their relationships in a SQL Server Reporting Services solution. Used to create ad hoc reports through the Report Builder application." (Marilyn Miller-White et al, "MCITP Administrator: Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Optimization and Maintenance 70-444", 2007)

"A 'blueprint' of a report. A report model includes the data source (such as a SQL Server database) and a data view (the tables and/or views that can be used in the report). Users can then use the report model to create their own reports, picking and choosing what data they want to include from the data view." (Robert D. Schneider and Darril Gibson, "Microsoft SQL Server 2008 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies", 2008)

"Report models are templates used to create reports with Report Builder. They include the data source definitions (such as which server and which database to connect to for the model) and data source VIEW definitions (such as which tables or VIEWs to include in the model). Reports can't be viewed from a report model. Instead, the report model must be used to create a report using Report Builder." (Darril Gibson, "MCITP SQL Server 2005 Database Developer All-in-One Exam Guide", 2008)

"A metadata description of business data used for creating ad hoc reports in Report Builder." (Jim Joseph, "Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Unleashed", 2009)

"A metadata description of business data used for creating ad hoc reports." (Microsoft, "SQL Server 2012 Glossary", 2012)

 "A metadata description of business data used for creating ad hoc reports in Report Builder." (Microsoft Technet)

📊Business Intelligence: Dashboards (Definitions)

"A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance." (Stephen Few, "Dashboard Confusion", Intelligent Enterprise, 2004)

Dashboard reports: "Highly summarized, often graphical, representations of the state of the business that are often used by executives and strategic decision makers." (Reed Jacobsen & Stacia Misner, "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step", 2006)

Dashboard: "A means of providing information in a straightforward way. Like the part in a car it is named after, a business dashboard allows executives to see key metrics about anything from monthly sales to manufacturing downtime." (Tony Fisher, "The Data Asset", 2009)

Dashboard (also called performance dashboard): "The presentation of key business measurements on a single interface designed for quick interpretation, often using graphics. The most effective dashboards are supported by a full data mart that enables drilling down into more detailed data to better understand the indicators." (Laura Reeves, "A Manager's Guide to Data Warehousing", 2009)

Dashboard: "A visual display mechanism to enable business users at every level to receive the information they need to make better decisions that improve business performance." (Paulraj Ponniah, "Data Warehousing Fundamentals for IT Professionals", 2010)

Dashboard: "A BI tool that provides a comprehensive, at-a-glance view of corporate performance with graphical presentations, resembling a dashboard of a car. These graphical presentations show performance measures, trends, and exceptions, and integrate information from multiple business areas." (Linda Volonino & Efraim Turban, "Information Technology for Management" 8th Ed., 2011)

Dashboard: "A technique to represent vast amounts of decision-support information at an amalgamated level using tabular and graphic representation, such as graphs and traffic lights." (Paul C Dinsmore et al, "Enterprise Project Governance", 2012)

Dashboards: "Business intelligence tools that display performance indicators, present data and information at both summary and detailed levels, and assist decision-makers employing them to act on the information they present." (Joan C Dessinger, "Fundamentals of Performance Improvement" 3rd Ed., 2012)

Dashboard: "A view that displays ranges of data in a graphical format. Key performance indicators (KPIs) or any element can be displayed in a dashboard. Each element is represented by a gauge that displays the data ranges that are defined. Links to comments, trend data, and element properties can also be provided." (Jim Davis & Aiman Zeid, "Business Transformation", 2014)

"[...] dashboards indicate the status of a performance metric at a given point in time. [...] dashboards are used to represent actual granular data, they contain data that is more recent than that of scorecards." (Saumya Chaki, "Enterprise Information Management in Practice", 2015)

Data dashboard: "A management-level online report capturing data conditions and trends."(Gregory Lampshire, "The Data and Analytics Playbook", 2016)

"A dashboard is a visual display of data used to monitor conditions and/or facilitate understanding."

(Steve Wexler et al, "The Big Book of Dashboards: Visualizing Your Data Using Real-World Business Scenarios", 2017)

"A dashboard is a reporting tool that consolidates, aggregates and arranges measurements, metrics (measurements compared to a goal) and sometimes scorecards on a single screen so information can be monitored at a glance. Dashboards differ from scorecards in being tailored to monitor a specific role or generate metrics reflecting a particular point of view; typically they do not conform to a specific management methodology." (Information Management) [also (Intrafocus)] 

"Dashboards are a reporting mechanism that aggregate and display metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), enabling them to be examined at a glance by all manner of users before further exploration via additional business analytics (BA) tools." (Gartner)

📊Business Intelligence: Trend Analysis (Definitions)

"The process of looking at homogeneous data over a duration of time to find recurring and predictable behavior." (Sharon Allen & Evan Terry, "Beginning Relational Data Modeling" 2nd Ed., 2005)

"the process of looking at homogeneous data over a spectrum of time." (William H Inmon, "Building the Data Warehouse", 2005)

"An analytical technique that uses mathematical models to forecast future outcomes based on historical results. It is a method of determining the variance from a baseline of a budget, cost, schedule, or scope parameter by using prior progress reporting periods' data and projecting how much that parameter's variance from baseline might be at some future point in the project if no changes are made in executing the project." (Cynthia Stackpole, "PMP® Certification All-in-One For Dummies®", 2011)

[trending] "A process by which underlying trends are identified within time-related data. These trends may be manually, algorithmically, or statistically identified and may be extrapolated into the future to aid planning." (Evan Stubbs, "Delivering Business Analytics: Practical Guidelines for Best Practice", 2013)

"A form of statistical analysis used to analyze activities over a period of time." (Sally-Anne Pitt, "Internal Audit Quality", 2014)

"Using tools and statistics to identify consistent movement in one direction or another. The analysis might show a consistent upward trend or a consistent downward trend, but either way it indicates a change worth investigating." (Darril Gibson, "Effective Help Desk Specialist Skills", 2014)

"A data analysis technique that examines project performance over time to determine if performance is improving or deteriorating." (Cate McCoy & James L Haner, "CAPM Certified Associate in Project Management Practice Exams", 2018)

"An analytical technique that uses mathematical models to forecast future outcomes based on historical results." (Project Management Institute, "The Standard for Organizational Project Management (OPM)", 2018)

 "analysis of data to identify time-related patters" (ITIL)

📊Business Intelligence: Indicator (Definitions)

"An indicator is an objective feature or attribute supporting the implementation of a process. Indicators are used for the rating of process attributes. The indicators of the process dimension are base practices and work products; the indicators of the capability dimension are generic practices and generic resources." (Lars Dittmann et al, "Automotive SPICE in Practice", 2008)

"1.An attribute type that is considered to be binary: On or Off, True or False, Yes or No." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"A metric that you can use to predict the project’s future. For example, if the metric 'comments per KLOC' is 3, that may be an indicator that the project will be hard to maintain." (Rod Stephens, "Beginning Software Engineering", 2015)

"A measure that can be used to estimate or predict another measure." (ISO 14598)

📊Business Intelligence: Descriptive Analytics (Definitions)

"The practice of reporting what has happened, analyzing contributing data to determine why it happened, and monitoring new data to determine what is happening now. Also known as reporting and business intelligence." (Brenda L Dietrich et al, "Analytics Across the Enterprise", 2014)

"If you are using charts and graphs or time series plots to study the demand or the sales patterns, or the trend for the stock market you are using descriptive analytics. Also, calculating statistics from the data such as, the mean, variance, median, or percentiles are all examples of descriptive analytics." (Amar Sahay, "Business Analytics" Vol. I, 2018)

"The simplest form of data analytics, in which historical data is collated and summarized in a user-friendly format, providing an understanding of what has previously happened." (Board International)

"Descriptive analytics is a form of data analytics that looks at data statistically to tell you what happened in the past. It helps a business understand how it is performing by providing context that will aid stakeholders in interpreting information." (Logi Analytics) [source]

"Descriptive analytics is a preliminary stage of data processing that creates a summary of historical data to yield useful information and possibly prepare the data for further analysis." (Techtarget) [source]

📊Business Intelligence: Delta Lake (Definitions)

"Delta Lake, an open source ACID table storage layer over cloud object stores initially developed at Databricks." (Michael Armbrust et al, "Delta Lake: High-Performance ACID Table Storage over Cloud Object Stores", Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 13(12), 2020) [link]

"Delta Lake is a transactional storage software layer that runs on top of an existing data lake and adds RDW-like features that improve the lake’s reliability, security, and performance. Delta Lake itself is not storage." (James Serra, "Deciphering Data Architectures", 2024)

"A Delta Lake is an open-source storage layer designed to run on top of an existing data lake and improve its reliability, security, and performance." (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) [source]

"Delta Lake is an open source storage framework that enables building a Lakehouse architecture with various compute engines." (Apache Druid) [source] 

"Delta Lake is an open-source storage framework designed to improve performance and provide transactional guarantees to data lake tables." (lakeFS) [source] 

"Delta Lake is an open-source storage framework that enables building a format agnostic Lakehouse architecture with compute engines including Spark, PrestoDB, Flink, Trino, Hive, Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Athena, Redshift, Databricks, Azure Fabric and APIs for Scala, Java, Rust, and Python." (Delta) [source]

"Delta Lake is an open-source storage layer that uses the ACID compliance of transactional databases to bring reliability, performance, and flexibility to data lakes. It is ideal for scenarios where you need transactional capabilities and schema enforcement within your data lake." (Qlik) [source] 

"Delta Lake is an open-source storage layer for big data workloads. It provides ACID transactions for batch/streaming data pipelines reading and writing data concurrently."  (Database of Databases) [source] 

"Delta Lake is the optimized storage layer that provides the foundation for tables in a lakehouse on Databricks. Delta Lake is open source software that extends Parquet data files with a file-based transaction log for ACID transactions and scalable metadata handling." (Databricks) [source]

"Delta Lake is the optimized storage layer that provides the foundation for tables in a lakehouse on Databricks. Delta Lake is open source software that extends Parquet data files with a file-based transaction log for ACID transactions and scalable metadata handling. Delta Lake is fully compatible with Apache Spark APIs, and was developed for tight integration with Structured Streaming, allowing you to easily use a single copy of data for both batch and streaming operations and providing incremental processing at scale." (Microsoft) [source] 

📊Business Intelligence: Prescriptive Analytics (Definitions)

"The analytics methods that recommend actions with the goal of finding a set of action that is predicted to produce the best possible outcome." (Brenda L Dietrich et al, "Analytics Across the Enterprise", 2014)

"Prescriptive analytics manipulate large data sets to make recommendations. Decision support that prescribes or recommends an action, rather than a forecast or a summary report." (Daniel J. Power & Ciara Heavin, "Data-Based Decision Making and Digital Transformation", 2018)

"Prescriptive analytics involves analyzing the results of the predictive analytics and 'prescribes' the best category to target and minimize or maximize the objective (s). It builds on predictive analytics and often suggests the best course of action leading to best possible solution. It is about optimizing (maximizing or minimizing) an objective function." (Amar Sahay, "Business Analytics" Vol. I, 2018)

"A combination of analytics, math, experiments, simulation, and/or artificial intelligence used to improve the effectiveness of decisions made by humans or by decision logic embedded in applications." (Forrester)

"A type of data analytics in which a combination of previous performance, business models, and logic is used by a machine to suggest the best course of action to achieve a desired outcome." (Board International)

"Prescriptive analytics is a form of data analytics that uses historical data to forecast what will happen in the future and recommend actions you can take to affect those outcomes." (Logi Analytics) [source]

"Prescriptive analytics is the area of business analytics (BA) dedicated to finding the best course of action for a given situation. Prescriptive analytics is related to both descriptive and predictive analytics. While descriptive analytics aims to provide insight into what has happened and predictive analytics helps model and forecast what might happen, prescriptive analytics seeks to determine the best solution or outcome among various choices, given the known parameters." (Techtarget) [source]

📊Business Intelligence: Business Analytics (Definitions)

"Meta-data that includes data definitions, report definitions, users, usage statistics, and performance statistics." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"Provides models, which are formulas or algorithms and procedures to BI." (Linda Volonino & Efraim Turban, "Information Technology for Management "8th Ed, 2011)

"The process of leveraging all forms of analytics to achieve business outcomes by requiring business relevancy, actionable insight, performance management, and value measurement." (Evan Stubbs, "Delivering Business Analytics: Practical Guidelines for Best Practice", 2013)

"Application of analytical tools to business questions. Business Analytics focuses on developing insights and understanding related to business performance using quantitative and statistical methods. Business Analytics includes Business Intelligence and Reporting." (Daniel J Power & Ciara Heavin, "Decision Support, Analytics, and Business Intelligence" 3rd Ed., 2017)

"BA is a data-driven decision making approach that uses statistical and quantitative analysis, information technology, and management science (mathematical modeling, simulation), along with data mining and fact-based data to measure past business performance to guide an organization in business planning and effective decision making." (Amar Sahay, "Business Analytics" Vol. I, 2018) 

"Use of data and quantitative and qualitative tools and techniques to improve operations and to support business decision ­making. Emphasis on using statistical and management science techniques, including data mining, to develop predictive and prescriptive models." (Daniel J. Power & Ciara Heavin, "Data-Based Decision Making and Digital Transformation", 2018)

"Aggregated information on business processes that enables managers to analyze process trends, view performance metrics, and respond to organizational change." (Appian)

"Refers to the skills, technologies, and practices for investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. It focuses on developing new insights and understanding of business performance based on data and statistical methods. While business intelligence (BI) focuses on a consistent set of metrics to both measure past performance and guide business planning, business analytics is focused on developing new insights and understanding based on statistical methods and predictive modeling." (Insight Software)

"Business Analytics describes the skills, technologies, statistical methods and data driven approaches used to explore and investigate past business performance to gain new insights that can support business planning." (Accenture)

"Business analytics is comprised of solutions used to build analysis models and simulations to create scenarios, understand realities and predict future states. Business analytics includes data mining, predictive analytics, applied analytics and statistics, and is delivered as an application suitable for a business user." (Gartner)

"Business analytics (BA) is the iterative, methodical exploration of an organization's data, with an emphasis on statistical analysis." (Techtarget) [source] 

"Business Analytics is the process by which businesses use statistical methods and technologies for analyzing historical data in order to gain new insight and improve strategic decision-making." (OmiSci) [source]

"Business analytics is the process of gathering and processing all of your business data, and applying statistical models and iterative methodologies to translate that data into business insights." (Tibco) [source]

"Describes the skills, technologies, statistical methods and data driven approaches used to explore and investigate past business performance to gain new insights that can support business planning. Examples of business analytics tools include data visualization, business intelligence reporting and big data platforms." (Accenture)

♜Strategic Management: Scenario Analysis (Definitions)

"The process of identifying and evaluating potential risks to your business, and how they might play out, before they occur." (Annetta Cortez & Bob Yehling, "The Complete Idiot's Guide® To Risk Management", 2010)

"A technique to evaluate scenarios in order to predict their effect on portfolio objectives." (Project Management Institute, "The Standard for Portfolio Management" 3rd Ed., 2012)

"Scenario analysis, or what-if analysis, assesses the potential out­come of various scenarios by setting up several possible situations and analyzing the potential outcomes of each situation." (Christopher Donohue et al, "Foundations of Financial Risk: An Overview of Financial Risk and Risk-based Financial Regulation" 2nd Ed., 2015)

"A scenario analysis involves changing parameters in a model and then examining the results. A tool that helps a user explore different scenarios by changing a range of input values." (Ciara Heavin & Daniel J Power, "Decision Support, Analytics, and Business Intelligence" 3rd Ed., 2017)

"A technique for integrating information and ideas on current trends and future developments into a small number of distinctly different future outcomes." (Robert M Grant, "Contemporary Strategy Analysis" 10th Ed, 2018)

📊Business Intelligence: Key Performance Indicator [KPI] (Definitions)

"A performance measure that is indicative of the organization's performance within a specific area." (William A Giovinazzo, "Internet-Enabled Business Intelligence", 2002)

"A key performance indicator is a metric that provides business users with an indication of the current and historical performance of an aspect of the business." (Claudia Imhoff et al, "Mastering Data Warehouse Design", 2003)

"A measurement of business operations that compares a value at a specified point in time to a predetermined goal and, optionally, determines a trend direction. Often, a KPI is displayed using a graphical image such as a stoplight or a gauge using colors and relative indicators according to predetermined business rules." (Reed Jacobsen & Stacia Misner, "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step", 2006) 

"An important set of metrics (see Metrics) used to determine how well a product is performing in the market." (Steven Haines, "The Product Manager's Desk Reference", 2008)

"Financial and non-financial metrics used to assess the strategic performance of an organization." (Ralph Kimball, "The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit", 2008)

"Quantifiable, measurable objectives agreed to beforehand and that reflect the critical success factors of an organization." (Tilak Mitra et al, "SOA Governance", 2008)

"A piece of information that an organization considers a crucial reflection of how well it's doing." (Ken Withee, "Microsoft Business Intelligence For Dummies", 2010)

"Financial and nonfinancial metrics used by an organization to define and evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of making progress toward its goals." (Janice M Roehl-Anderson, "IT Best Practices for Financial Managers", 2010) 

"A business calculation (metric) with associated target values or ranges that allows macro level insights into the business process to manage profitability and monitor strategic impact." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"In business intelligence, refers to quantifiable measurements (numeric or scale-based) that assess a company’s effectiveness or success in reaching strategic and operational goals. Examples of KPI are product turnovers, sales by promotion, sales by employee, earnings per share, etc." (Carlos Coronel et al, "Database Systems: Design, Implementation, and Management 9th Ed", 2011)

"Metrics that measure the actual performance of critical aspects of IT, such as critical projects and applications, servers, the network, and so forth, against predefined goals and objectives." (Linda Volonino & Efraim Turban, "Information Technology for Management" 8th Ed., 2011)

"A measure used to quantify performance and outcomes." (Carl F Lehmann, "Strategy and Business Process Management", 2012)

"Quantitative performance measures that define the critical success factors of an organization, help the organization measure progress toward its goals and objectives, and identify areas for organizational performance and improvement." (Joan C Dessinger, "Fundamentals of Performance Improvement" 3rd Ed., 2012)

"A high-level measurement meant to indicate how well an individual or group is performing a set of activities that is considered critical to the overall success of an endeavor." (Project Management Institute, "Navigating Complexity: A Practice Guide", 2014)

"A measure that indicates the achievement of a specific objective." (Sally-Anne Pitt, "Internal Audit Quality", 2014)

"A measurement that shows whether an organization is progressing toward its stated goals." (Jim Davis & Aiman Zeid, "Business Transformation: A Roadmap for Maximizing Organizational Insights", 2014)

"Quantitative and measurable statement used to judge whether or not a goal has been reached; linked to a measurement and to the means of evaluation." (Gilbert Raymond & Philippe Desfray, "Modeling Enterprise Architecture with TOGAF", 2014)

"A set of metrics directly linked to the desired corporate objective (e.g., shareholder value) and explicitly integrated into the firm's incentive compensation system." (Thomas C Wilson, "Value and Capital Management", 2015)

"Most frequently referred to as KPIs. Metrics that indicate the performance of the business." (Brittany Bullard, "Style and Statistics", 2016)

"A set of business metrics used to determine whether a person, product, group, or division is successful." (Pamela Schure & Brian Lawley, "Product Management For Dummies", 2017)

"A variable or metric against which the success of a function or business is judged." (Jonathan Ferrar et al, "The Power of People: Learn How Successful Organizations Use Workforce Analytics To Improve Business Performance", 2017)

"A quantifiable measure used to evaluate the success of an organization, strategic initiative, employee, etc., in meeting the objectives for performance." (H James Harrington & William S Ruggles, "Project Management for Performance Improvement Teams", 2018)

"Quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization." (William Stallings, "Effective Cybersecurity: A Guide to Using Best Practices and Standards", 2018)

"Used to assess and measure the performance of a specific business task. For example sales results in terms of order rates over a quarterly (3 month) period." (BCS Learning & Development Limited, "CEdMA Europe", 2019)

"KPIs are metrics defined to measure business performance of an enterprise. This term is related to BPM." (Martin Oberhofer et al, "The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture", 2010)

"A key performance indicator (KPI) is a high-level measure of system output, traffic or other usage, simplified for gathering and review on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis." (Gartner)

"An acronym for Key Performance Indicator. These are key indicators to the health of the business." (BI System Builders)

"A business calculation that allows macro level insights into the business process to manage profitability." (Information Management)

"A type of performance measurement an organization may use to evaluate its success." (Board International)

"Business metrics used to evaluate factors that are crucial to organizational success." (Insight Software)

"Personalized performance metrics and benchmarks that drive the financial and operational success of the company." (Appian)

"A predefined measure that is used to track performance of a strategic goal, objective, plan, initiative, or business process. A KPI is evaluated against a target. An explicit and measurable value taken directly from a data source. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to measure performance in a specific area, for example, revenue per customer." (Microsoft)

"An indicator gauging how well a company progresses in numerous areas such as finance, customer service, and product availability and distribution." (Microstrategy)

"Key Performance Indicator - is a critical measurement of the performance of essential tasks, operations, or processes in a company. A KPI will usually unambiguously reveal conditions or performance that is outside the norm and that signals a need for managerial intervention." (Targit)

"Key performance indicators or KPIs […] are visual indicators in the form of color-coded shapes that are tied to a pre-defined, critical threshold. When the threshold is crossed, the KPI’s function is to alert key personnel so that they can take the necessary action." (Logi Analytics) [source]

"Key performance indicators (KPIs) are business metrics used by corporate executives and other managers to track and analyze factors deemed crucial to the success of an organization." (Techtarget) [source] 

📊Business Intelligence: Single Version of Truth [SVoT]/Single Source of Truth [SSoT] (Definitions)

System of Record (SOR): "Also called Single Point of Truth (SPOT), is a method for addressing the data quality problems caused by having multiple, inconsistent representations of the same entity or entity attribute by designating one system as holding and maintaining the authoritative source." (John R Talburt, "Entity Resolution and Information Quality", 2011)

"The SSOT is a logical, often virtual and cloud-based repository that contains one authoritative copy of all crucial data, such as customer, supplier, and product details." (Leandro DalleMule &  Thomas H Davenport, "What’s Your Data Strategy?" , Harvard Business Review, 2017) [source] 

"A single source of truth (SSOT) is the practice of aggregating the data from many systems within an organization to a single location. A SSOT is not a system, tool, or strategy, but rather a state of being for a company’s data in that it can all be found via a single reference point." (MuleSoft) [source]

"One version of the truth (or ‘single version of the truth’; or SVOT: "A technical concept describing the business analysis ideal of having either a single centralized database (data warehouse), or at least a distributed synchronized database, which stores all of an organization’s data in a consistent and non-redundant form. A combination of software, data quality, and strong data leadership can help enterprises and organizations achieve SVOT." (Insight Software)

"Single source of truth (SSOT) is a concept used to ensure that everyone in an organization bases business decisions on the same data." (Talend) [source]

Single Version of the Truth: "One single central data warehouse containing quality assured data that is delivered accurately through Business Intelligence reports. The opposite of this is numerous databases resulting in Business Users getting conflicting answers and results to the same question." (BI System Builders)

📊Business Intelligence: Self-Service BI (Definitions)

Self-service business intelligence (BI): "A self-service BI is a semantic layer that enables business users to perform ad hoc reporting and analysis with no IT intervention. Self-service BI helps in the higher adoption of BI solutions." (Saumya Chaki, "Enterprise Information Management in Practice", 2015)

Self-Service BI: "The activity of end users being self-sufficient in supplying themselves with Business Intelligence reports and/ or queries without having to rely on IT." (BI System Builders)

"Self-service analytics or self-service business intelligence refers to tools used to connect and analyze data, and which are operated primarily by business departments in the organization – rather than IT professionals or dedicated data analysts." (Sisense) [source]

"Self-service BI is a trend with a somewhat vague definition. In the most general sense, self-service BI tasks are those that business users carry out themselves instead of passing them on to IT for fulfillment. The aim is to give the users of BI tools more freedom and responsibility at the same time. At its heart lies the notion of user independence and self-sufficiency when it comes to the use of corporate information, which leads to a decentralization of BI in the organization." (BI Survey) [source]

"Self-service BI (business intelligence) is a software tool or application that empowers business users to analyze data, visualize insights, and obtain and share information in the form of reports and self-service BI dashboards – without the help of IT." (Logi Analytics) [source]