You'd think that CKE would have thought twice about rolling out such an over-the-top concoction in the midst of a national obsession with the growing epidemic of obesity. But CKE was able to introduce the Monster Thickburger nationwide on Nov. 15, 2004, with such confidence (if not impudence) that the public would receive it with open mouths because of the insights the company obtained from its business intelligence (BI) system. BI refers to a variety of software applications that analyze an organization's raw data and extract useful insights from it. BI as a discipline is made up of many related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting.