Do you want to optimise your business performance? While you can turn your eyes to market research and surveys, there are other more efficient ways to enhance your business performance. In recent years, more and more business owners and large companies have been relying on Business Intelligence (BI) to find solutions for various issues they may have. 

Business intelligence, simply put, is a way for companies to contextualise business data and derive meaningful information for their business operations. Business intelligence’s biggest benefit is that it allows businesses to make data-based decisions. 

What is business intelligence?

We should first answer the question – what exactly is business intelligence? There are many ways to define business intelligence, but generally speaking, it is the combined strategies and software technologies that allow businesses to analyse huge volumes of data and transform it into meaningful information. After a company has that meaningful information, it can then take action and make decisions based on the data. 

Companies turn to business intelligence because it is a sure way to understand why something in the business process is the way it is. For example, what affects performance, why customers behave in a certain way, or simply to better understand their data are just a few of the reasons companies seek this service. To do all that, business intelligence combines several techniques – business analytics, data mining, descriptive analytics, and data visualisation to make sure the information you get is as reliable as possible. 

How does Business Intelligence work?

While BI may sound simple enough in theory, it is complex to perform. For BI to work, first and foremost, we need data. Most organisations collect their data and periodically extract it, filter it and store it for future analysis. Data can be used for a variety of different reasons – from organising data from employees, to creating a new business strategy. To achieve this, BI can use different software to gather and analyse data to come up with valuable insights. The BI tools include features such as KPI, data visualisation, online analytical processing, SaaS BI, and many more. 

All of these tools will help organise your data into a unified one, allowing you to make easier data-driven decisions. 

Where can we use Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence can be used in virtually any type of business or organisation. Here are some of the areas where you can apply data and business intelligence to transform your operations:

• Marketing & PR: BI can turn into the biggest marketing tool for the Marketing and Communication department at your company. BI can help you determine the best way to promote your new product or where to properly spend your budget. At the same time, you will be able to understand what people are talking about your brand, as well as how the audience and media perceive it. Based on this information, you will have the instruments to better manage your brand reputation and overcome communication crises.
• Finance: BI can help your Finance department calculate risks more accurately, or even track all finance factors that come into play when making major decisions. BI can also help you determine your annual budget and identify potential problem areas to ensure financial stability for your business. Here at A Data Pro, we can help you with KYC and Enhanced Due Diligence-related challenges in the shortest time possible.
• Human Resources: HR departments can benefit tremendously from utilising BI. The service can be used to increase employee productivity by monitoring their tasks and performance automatically. BI could also be used to automatically track payroll and employee satisfaction.

• Improve Sales: BI can be one of the most successful ways for your company to increase sales to existing customers. You can use it to track customer behaviour and create or improve your sales campaigns. Furthermore, you can use BI to make more accurate sales forecasts. BI can do that by analysing your previous sales history data, for example. 

Why is Business Intelligence so important?

Business Intelligence is proving to be more and more important to businesses around the globe. Perhaps the most important reason to implement Business Intelligence in your operations is to make informed, data-based decisions. Having reliable data and fast analysis helps improve your business decisions. Up-to-date information is crucial for any business, and BI can save you a lot of time waiting for manual brand monitoring or risk assessment. 

Furthermore, Business Intelligence can also improve the access to information. Enormous amounts of data are generated every second, and being able to access accurate data at the right time can be crucial for any business. 

BI can help you make sense of your data with various visualisation tools, for example.  Besides having access to reliable information, BI systems can help you organise your data for analysis. The BI systems can organise and classify your data in any way convenient for you. This will further save you the time and resources needed to organise and clean datasets. 

And last but not least, Business intelligence can be used in industry-specific ways. You can use BI with a targeted approach, depending on the needs and type of business.