Neural networks are increasingly being used in real-world business applications and, in some cases, such as fraud detection, they have already become the method of choice. Their use for risk assessment is also growing and they have been employed to visualise complex databases for marketing segmentation. This boom in applications covers a wide range of business interests - from finance management, through forecasting, to production. The combination of statistical, neural and fuzzy methods now enables direct quantitative studies to be carried out without the need for rocket-science expertise. This is a review of the state-of-the-art in applications of neural-network methods in three important areas of business analysis. It includes a tutorial chapter to introduce new users to the potential and pitfalls of this new technology.