Leader: The cure for info overload?

Are you suffering from information overload?

You're not alone. Top UK IT chiefs say businesses are in danger of drowning in the data they all store - from email to customer stats to financial info.

The current regulatory climate has made matters even worse, with companies in many cases now required to store more data for longer periods of time.

You what…?

Bust through tech jargon with silicon.com's Cheat Sheets.

A whole software market, called 'business intelligence', or BI, has arisen to help organisations make sense of all this data and get some value out of it.

Because it's an area of growing interest, silicon.com has dedicated a special report to the topic.

If you're still wondering just what business intelligence is and what it's used for, look no further than our Cheat Sheet on the topic, which answers all the most common questions.

And if you want to hear about businesses which are using BI to good effect, we've written case studies on several - from a publisher that has made its marketing campaigns more lucrative, to a university that has liberated it users, to a holiday resort that better understands and serves its customers.

Business intelligence can be used by executives across an organisation - whether in finance, marketing or HR - but it holds particular strategic value for the IT department. Given the need for today's IT chiefs to prove their business acumen, BI tools can help IT win over the board by allowing them to provide insight into how IT systems impact business processes.

BI is also seen as a way to help organisations fight fraud, e-crime and data theft. When combined with proper policies, sophisticated analysis of data can flag up inconsistencies and highlight nefarious behaviour.

And, though new laws and regulations have in part caused the data management headaches we're all experiencing, business intelligence tools can help alleviate some of those headaches by making data easy to organise and present to the regulators.

In the end, business intelligence tools are no panacea but when used properly have been shown to increase efficiency of business processes and productivity of staff. If you feel that sinking feeling when you think about managing data at your organisation, it's an area worth looking into.