For many, the dividing line that kept (DW) information isolated from the front office vanished. Going beyond reporting, visionary enterprises found ways to enhance revenue and cost efficiencies across multiple business process and knowledge user communities. Front-line employees, suppliers, consumers, and business partners are finally being offered BI capabilities for tactical decision support. In this way, pervasive BI emerged within enterprises that compete using data analysis.

Yet many front-line workers have historically made decisions without access to the necessary facts to achieve alignment with corporate objectives. The goal of pervasive BI applications is to take the data that produced the back office ROI of more than 400% and deliver it to front-line employees in a form appropriate to their job functions-with similar results.