Business intelligence is an umbrella term that describes the various software solutions, technologies, and techniques that analyze data to help organizations make more informed decisions. As of today, the global BI adoption rate stands at 26%, and that number will rise as more key decision makers understand the interaction between decision-making and business intelligence in cost reduction and streamlined processes.
But before we go any further, how does business intelligence help companies? Well, every company needs data to make a sound business intelligence decision affecting its future. Every day, they analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured data from a variety of sources such as websites, mobile apps, and even third-party databases.
In this article, we look into how business intelligence help in decision-making by highlighting its impact on three key areas: cost reduction, streamlining operations, and identifying new revenue streams. Keep reading!
What are the Business Benefits of Using Intelligence Technology for Making Business Decisions
Business intelligence refers to technology-driven analytics and data insights about your business and its operational performance. Organizations implement BI solutions for accessing data from different sources, transforming that data into useful insights, monitoring KPIs (key performance indicators), and reporting the relevant information to the responsible managers and staff.
Below are the benefits of business intelligence:
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Improve Productivity
Businesses are burdened with constant low productivity partly because workers are productive only 60% of the time or less! So, how can BI help your business boost its productivity? By automating processes such as report generation and data reporting. In such a dynamic and fast-paced environment, enterprises cannot afford to waste time on manual processes that can be automated.
By automating processes such as report generation, payroll, customer follow-up, and so on, companies are able to reduce human errors, standardize processes across different departments, eliminate redundant tasks, and increase the speed with which new products can be brought to market.
Better Marketing Strategy
Business intelligence in decision-making doesn’t stop at just boosting productivity. Did you know that 35% of startups fail when they serve no market need? BI can help organizations improve their marketing strategies by helping them identify their ideal customers, track their marketing efforts, and better understand their customers’ purchasing decisions. Eventually, streamlined marketing efforts translate to increased sales and revenue.
- Understanding your marketing spend – Most organizations operate on a tightly managed budget. If you’re responsible for marketing spending, you will know how much you have available to invest in marketing channels that will generate ROI. Business intelligence enables this kind of granular insight into marketing performance, so you know where your budget should go.
- 360-degree customer view – A SaaS startup can use business intelligence to analyze its sales data to understand its customers’ purchasing patterns. The data can then be used to identify sales opportunities and tailor marketing efforts to target the individuals most likely to subscribe to their software.
Better Financial Decisions
BI can help organizations make better financial decisions by helping them forecast their future spending and future earnings and identify their most profitable products. With clear budget tracking and financial expectations comes minimized risks of financial loss along with informed financial decisions regarding the future of the company.
Better Sales Strategy
What’s a sales department without the numbers? Vital sales metrics, such as conversion rates, customer lifetime value, acquisition costs, churn rate, etc., provide an insight into the health of your sales strategies.
Business intelligence enables companies to improve their sales strategies, identify their most profitable customers and discover hidden opportunities to find new ones. This can help the organization boost sales by targeting customers who are more likely to buy their products and services.
Better Customer Experiences
It costs 5 times as much to acquire new customers than retain the old ones. Bad customer experience is a leading cause of why even the most loyal customers switch brands (customer churn). BI can help companies understand their customers’ satisfaction based on past purchase history and the customer journey as a whole. This, in turn, helps pinpoint ways to improve their customers’ experiences by matching the product to their customers’ needs.
Improving Human Resource Management
BI can help organizations streamline their Human Resource Management (HRM) efforts by tracking every employee based on their performance in the past or even finding top talent for certain skill sets required in specific roles. What’s more, BI can help further in payroll tracking to ensure all employees are paid on time.
Better Decisions
Emerging market trends, competitor analysis, and the business environment at large is just as important to the big business plan. BI enables you to extract data (product performance, past searches, market prices, emerging trends, and so much more) from various structured and unstructured sources. This information enables businesses to generate custom reports in real-time and make quick, timely decisions.
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Better Inventory Decisions
How does business intelligence help to make decisions for an organization? BI is vital to the retail industries, where retailers and online e-commerce stores rely heavily on data to maximize profit margins and manage inventory. It helps retailers track sales and inventory data to identify trends.
Retailers can use this data to forecast demand for certain products and decide which items to restock, when to discount them and how many to order from suppliers. If retailers have accurate data about their inventory, they can reduce markdowns and avoid costly inventory losses. BI can also help retailers identify theft and fraud by identifying suspicious inventory movements or purchasing patterns.
Final Thoughts
Business intelligence is an important component of an organization’s strategy to gain insights into its operations by analyzing data. At Broscorp, we offer to develop custom business intelligence solutions that help companies improve strategic decisions, identify issues, discover potential trends, and find new revenue or growth opportunities. Unearth hidden potential in your data with Broscorp’s custom BI solutions.
