See QuickStudy on Business Metrics Competitive Intelligence Competitive Intelligence has developed in recent years in many Fortune 1,000 companies as a line of business activity, sometimes as a central unit of researchers with marketing or accounting expertise who advise top management. It can also involve heads of business units that meet regularly. CI professionals gather data and analyze it using many software tools and systems on the market. But they also interpret the data for upper management, affecting decisions about, for example, whether to withdraw a product dominated by a competitor or to close a plant that produces products that aren't expected to be profitable. See QuickStudy on Competitive Intelligence Cookies Cookies are small amounts of structured data that are shared between a World Wide Web server and a user's browser.
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Cookies use forms that users are asked to fill out when they get to a Web site that supports them. Not every browser can support cookies. Companies are rushing to automate and better manage all the ways they deal with customers, including people who might not consider themselves customers yet. ERP vendors are branching out into applications such as supply-chain management and sales force automation, but whether those functions fit under the ERP banner is debatable. See QuickStudy on ERP Metadata Metadata is information that describes the contents of a database.