A recent International Data Corporation (IDC) study, “The Financial Impact of Business Analytics,” confirms what many business executives and managers already know to be true: business intelligence (BI) initiatives can provide considerable value to all types of business organizations. The study, which was first conducted in 1996, found that, “Business analytics implementations generated an average five-year return on investment (ROI) of 431 percent.” In addition, “over half (63 percent)” of the firms participating in the study “had a payback period of two years or less.”