Business intelligence (BI) applications have been around for a long time, and they've changed the way organizations process and analyze information. Business users tap directly into unprecedented amounts of data and quickly get reports, dashboards and visualizations – but many struggle to garner the specific results needed to make better decisions. For instance, business users are still required to ask questions and slice-and-dice data to "fish" for the answers and insights necessary to run their organization. The complexity and overwhelming volume of Big Data has many organizations wondering what questions they should be asking. Further still, business intelligence systems often produce so much analysis and raw data that it's difficult to identify the insights that will make an actual impact.

Automation with artificial intelligence solves these problems. For instance, customers of SaaS products may want to know how their company is doing versus peers who use the same product. Artificial intelligence can automate benchmarking questions to find the answers in the data. Since all data can be reported anonymously and automatically, the benchmarking analysis remains in accordance with the privacy policies of its customers.

As an IT leader, you'll want to know: What will it take to automate the intelligence of today's BI systems to capitalize on enterprise Big Data? How can we convert the 70 percent of business users that currently do not use business intelligence tools? What automation capabilities are essential to enable business users to focus on strategically applying intelligence to the business (rather than obtaining and analyzing data)?

In this slideshow, Jim Berardone, chief customer officer at OnlyBoth, has highlighted how automation can help IT leaders extend the power of business intelligence to business users.