Over the past decade, Business intelligence (‘BI’) is rapidly becoming a critical success ingredient in business which is largely due to the fact that CIOs and IT leaders are increasingly recognising the value of insight when making important decisions. The increase focus on digital has impacted on the way data is collected, which has facilitated and spurred on the need for and value of business intelligence.
Business intelligence looks to improve efficiencies, productivity and leverage data to provide insights to its employees, customers, suppliers, partners, cost and profit centers etc. BI tools exist to serve up the right information, in a timely fashion, in a range of formats to assist in strategic and tactical planning and growth of a business.
Major enterprise solutions in BI include Oracle Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence as well as Microsoft Business Intelligence. There are also a range of open source BI solutions.
Business intelligence can have a solid impact on company profitability and growth. Coupling predictive analytics within business application that use next generation user experience is key as it allows a company to measure and reassess based on information collected. It is also important for businesses to keep in mind that it is more than likely that their competitors are utilizing business intelligence tools.
For those businesses reluctant to change and embrace BI, they run the risk of declining competitive advantage by not leveraging data mining technologies.
If a business is seeking to grow, cut costs, or gain further company insight, business intelligence is an essential business tool for gaining granularity in regards to measuring and understanding different dimensions of any business. Being able to extract meaningful data using existing business processes is an important part of what makes business intelligence work and represent such value.
Businesses that draw on and use BI have a greater chance to seize on new or increase profitability, smarter decision-making, and lowering of operating costs through improved administrative management.
What and how can you incorporate business intelligence to your business?
The key importance with BI is to look for realistic areas where real measurement will make a difference. Most businesses have a lot of areas that can and should be measured they are not aware of. In these cases, signing up for a Business Intelligence Analysis is the best bet to find out where BI can be applied using a holistic approach.