Business Intelligence is really very simple. Put actionable information in the hands of decision makers when they need it. Actionable Information is information presented in such a way that the issues are clear. To often the information is buried inside a mass of data. At other times the data is in the computer but it can't be gotten to easily. Therefore there are several important issues in Business Intelligence.

Data must be accessible whether it is in carefully crafted Data Warehouses ,Data Marts or stored in legacy information systems. To many business intelligence tools require that the data first be in a data warehouse or a proprietary storage format. Data stored in legacy data systems such as IDMS, IMS, VSAM, etc. are simply not available.

For Business Intelligence to be truly useful to the organization, the level of computer literacy to use the system has to be minimal. Systems have to be almost 'zero training' systems. The average non computer literate worker must be able to easily interact with these systems to get the information they need. Self Service Applications can fill about 60% to 70% of an organizations need for Business Intelligence. An organization needs to provide more sophisticated tools for highly computer literate knowledge works. This requirement can range from sophisticated OLAP systems to providing data access for sophisticated niche analytical programs such as an Econometric Modeling application.

Business Intelligence Software must be able to scale from a departmental application to an Enterprise wide system.  

While not something that is a 'requirement', automatic notification is certainly an important consideration.  It's like a missile alert.  When something outside acceptable limits occur the appropriate user is notified.

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