Business Intelligence: What It Is & Its Importance

The digital transformation of the world has helped businesses create a data repository. With a wealth of information at their fingertips, entrepreneurs are better equipped to make significant decisions. It has reduced the risk factors and has ensured that every conclusion is based on meticulous research and analysis of historical data. Thus, the process of making sense out of an enormous database is known as Business Intelligence (BI).

It is highly significant in today’s world because of the competitiveness and the challenge of retaining customers in the dynamic digital space. The amount of data available to businesses is humungous but putting it to the correct use is the need of the hour. Thus, Business Intelligence has become an indispensable tool in the entrepreneur’s arsenal. Let us help you understand this concept in detail.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence or BI is defined as the collection of strategies, processes and technologies that are used to convert raw data into meaningful inferences and deductions that help make profitable business decisions. It reduces the dependency of the workers and the entrepreneurs on assumptions and instinct. Instead, everything is based on the factual data available, which means that you are not wasting any resources and making your organisation more productive and goal oriented. Data-driven businesses work faster and better and help in achieving a competitive edge.

BI entails a variety of processes that define the ways of collating and storing data in an ordered manner to analyse it and draw inferences. It is usually helpful in assessing the performance of the business in the past few years and comparing it with the current results. These insights enable the business owner to identify the weaknesses that must be eliminated and the opportunities in the system that can be leveraged to prosper.

Its broad characteristics include data acquisition, recording, analysis and reporting. Other BI processes are data mining, statistical analysis, setting performance metrics, data visualisation and much more. Thus, it is imperative that entrepreneurs looking for a business for sale Brisbane should have a clear understanding of the concept and its importance. Since actionable decisions are based on data, BI cannot be ignored by entities operating in the digital realm.

Why is Business Intelligence Important?

BI builds an atmosphere of efficiency and promotes meaningful structuring of data to track performance and move towards the business goals. Here are the benefits of BI for an organisation.

1. Makes Sense Out of Raw Data

BI converts a large amount of data available to a company into comprehensible information that can be utilised by every department without needing defined skills. The process of sifting through streams of information without getting results wastes the time, effort and money of the business. Thus, BI is needed to save the entity from the challenge of identifying key points from the big data and using it for development.

Data visualisation presents the information in a dashboard in easy-to-understand visual representations with colour codes that provide a clear picture and help to determine trends and patterns. Thus, the productivity of the organisation is enhanced.

2. Understanding Customer Behaviour

Data analytics is a significant part of BI and it aids in realising customer behaviour. For example, you will have charts and graphs showcasing which product is being bought the most and which age group of the target audience is buying it. The frequency of buying the products and other trends helps in absorbing the essence of the data and making improvements in the offerings to exceed their expectations.

Some businesses even go to the length of identifying segments in the audience and tailoring the products accordingly. Thus, customers become more inclined to shop from them.

3. Building Responsible Teams

BI makes the employees accountable by tracking their performance using its tools and procedures. It is helpful when the managers have to monitor large teams or delegate scores of responsibilities that must be supervised. It is essential to delegate work to every member when you wish to become a successful entrepreneur. Thus, BI comes to the rescue of business owners in this case.

The BI tools are effective in regulating the operations and making the teams self-sufficient and motivated to perform to the best of their abilities. The workers also feel empowered as they have access to all the required info needed to make the right decisions and excel.

4. Enhance Marketing Strategy

With the data gathered from the websites, social media pages and other traditional methods of advertising, the entrepreneur can identify the result of the campaigns. BI tools help them to determine the popularity and visibility of the promotions and the conversions that they generate.

They also get to know about redundant activities that are not getting the desired results. Thus, the marketing team can finetune their strategy and get rid of the wasteful tasks to focus on the useful ones.

5. Increasing Sales

The best utilisation of the data is the identification of the customer profile and persona. It helps the sales executives to better understand the target audience and approach them with the same mindset. The data collected over the years through different customer touchpoints and its interpretations help in customer relationship management.

It becomes easier for the sales professionals to retain existing customers by keeping them happy and finding new ones through the leads. BI tools also aid in keeping the customers satisfied through constant communication and after-sale services.

6. Outshining Competitors

BI is helpful in finding all the information about direct and indirect competitors to your business, such as their marketing strategy, turnover, unique selling point, market share, etc. It aids in understanding what they are doing right to woo the customers and where your business is faltering.

When you can figure out your strengths and weaknesses, you can rise above the competitors to carve a niche for yourself. Aspiring entrepreneurs who purchase a business for sale in Brisbane need to have this information to compete and emerge victorious.

7. Real-Time Data Access

The best part about using BI is that it has made useful reports and insights available to the employees and senior management at any time of the day. They can access authorised information anywhere through spreadsheets and dashboards that can be viewed on their Smartphones. They no longer have to wait for another team to prepare the reports and charts. It is all available at their fingertips without any delay.

Conclusion

The traditional way of data collation and filtration was a time-consuming and exhaustive task that was not able to provide insightful results. However, BI and the advent of digital tools have changed the ball game. It has now become vital for every business to use BI for success.