Taxonomy is a knowledge management tool used to provide structure to unstructured information. It is about categorizing individual elements into groups, categories or hierarchies based on common elements. The purpose of developing taxonomies is to enable findability and facilitate the identification of patterns. An example of taxonomy is the grouping of organisms in an ordered hierarchy that indicates natural relationships.
Agency theory has its origins in the research conducted by economists in the 1960s and 1970s, exploring risk sharing among individuals and groups, such as the relationship between insurers and customers.
As in all human communication, content and format go hand in hand to deliver a communication message. The content of performance reports only partially addresses communication requirements.
Since its launch on a Windows platform in 1987, Microsoft Excel has gradually become omnipresent on business desktop environments. It is widely used in businesses of all sizes for data management, analysis and reporting. In a way, it can be considered the first Business Intelligence (BI) software product mass marketed.
Almost since its launch, Excel’s position in the market has been challenged by various products with advanced data integration and analysis functionality. Together, they formed the basis of the today’s BI market, by going through several successive phases:
1987-1996 Formation – initial product launches
1996-2005 Growth – product maturity and market formation
2005-2010 Consolidation – by various mergers and acquisitions involving the major software producers in the world.
