ost- operation analysis and financial reporting, but it also can be applied to manage day-to-day operations by responding immediately to competition and providing real-time information for personalized customer relationship management. Applying business intelligence first requires effective data collection and management. What data the IIC collect depends on what information it is trying to glean. For example, customer intimacy intelligence can be derived anywhere, from billing and usage data collected from the network to customer inputted data from a Web portal. Profitability analyses, on the other hand, require more financial and customer segment data that are derived from accounting, sales, network inventory and customer management systems. Data availability and information access present two common hurdles to using business intelligence. There are always questions as to what kind of reporting functionality an OSS provides, what level of detail various types of network equipment record and whether the IIC is advanced enough to have data collection applications, such as mediation devices, installed in its operation. The collected data must be stored and analyzed, which is generally performed in a data warehouse. Moving data into the warehouse means developing strong warehouse data models, and then building effective transformation rules, likely in a middleware layer, to map disparate data in a uniform manner from various systems into the warehouse. Tying this warehouse into an integrated architecture, and making current data accessible to the front lines, helps executive management respond more effectively to business requirements and competitive pressures. Some common uses for business intelligence include deriving performance metrics to gain an overall idea of how the IIC is operating and where any inefficiencies might lie. It's also applied to financial analyses, from an overall look at the company to specific studies on customer segment and product profitability. As mentioned, customer intimacy and precisio