Information is the new currency for business. The thing is that the more data a company has, the more customized its product or service would be. But just the presence of data does not help a business to succeed – information needs to be analysed, tested and then relevant insights should be extracted. This can be done by hand, or you can implement business intelligence tools and process it automatically.
IT data solutions help companies increase productivity, efficiently manage assets and make better decisions based on analytics. What BI tools you need and how to design the collection and analysis of data, we will find out in this article.
What is BI, and how does it work?
Business Intelligence is a term used to describe various operations within an organization. This is the workflow that deals with data – from collection to prioritization. Thus, a BI system uses a large amount of information from databases, cleans, structures and then turns them into relevant insights regarding a topic or category.
Such deep processing and filtering of information helps managers and C-level representatives make more reliable, accurate, quick and information-driven business decisions.
OK. Why should I implement it?
BI has a wide range of tools – from automatic data mining and interpretation to working with artificial intelligence algorithms. Accordingly, you can use the capabilities of BI in business tasks of different levels of complexity. For example, generate a report on a topic, process a client request, or analyse risks. At the same time, data sources, as well as the scope of application, can be of any kind – for instance, sales analysis or optimization of sales chains.
How a Company’s Core Department Teams can Apply BI
Let’s take a look at how core departmental teams can apply business intelligence.
Data scientists and analysts
Analysts, due to the specifics of the profession, more than other departments are familiar with BI consulting services, because they work with the data of the entire company. They require more advanced and multilevel tools to provide a comprehensive roadmap or recommendations on how to improve company performance.
Finance
By combining financial analytics with data on operations, marketing and sales, the manager responsible for the company’s financial growth can identify the factors that influence profits and losses.
Marketing
With the help of digital BI tools, marketers can track key indicators of advertising campaigns in one place. For example, monitor a campaign in real time, measure the effectiveness of targeted actions and make decisions about future activities. In addition, the final data can be visualized. Thus, you can obtain more accurate interpretation of the results, as well as share it with the team.
Sales
Sales and operations managers often track KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and more complex information on discounts, demand dynamics and customer requests – in the form of reports, graphs and maps. Thus, they analyse the structure of sales, the level of income from clients and their lifetime value (LTV). This and other sales information allows companies to work with sales representatives and tailor sales funnels to meet customer needs.
Operations
In product-related companies, managers regularly work with sales chains and logistics. In such cases, the automatic information processing through BI-systems helps to save their time and resources in investigating the ways to optimize processes. For example, it monitors whether all service agreements have been met and whether the correct delivery route has been chosen.
How Data is Analyzed
Having regard to the goals and objectives of the business, information can be analysed in different ways – based on historical, current data or forecasts. So, you can use current processes findings and monitor the productivity of a team or campaign.
At the same time, if you need to react quickly or build a strategy in order to overcome the crisis, you can create several models based on machine learning or AI algorithms to make the best decision. And if the task is to understand where the company is going in the next few years, business analytics helps to make predictions and assess the likelihood of future events.
If you play long, a company that manages data and implements BI technologies can take actions faster and be more flexible.
Takeaway
Designed business intelligence ecosystem help managers have more versatile control over business processes, make well-considered decisions and eliminate statistical biases – by identifying bad or outdated data, eliminating duplicates and generating KPI-reports.
This is especially important when drawing up a long-term development strategy, conducting genuine business restructuring or improving the product and processes for specific customer requests.
