What is BI?
Business intelligence (BI) is a platform process for evaluating data and providing actionable
information to leaders, managers, and employees to help them make better business decisions.
Companies collect data from internal and external IT systems, start preparing it for analyzation,
running applications against the data, and start creating data visualizations, BI dashboards, and
reports as part of the BI procedure to make the data analysis search strategy to business users
for operational decision-making and long term planning.
How business intelligence works?
Companies and organizations have concerns and objectives. To find the answers and track
success against these objectives, they collect the appropriate data, evaluate it, and decide which
steps to take to achieve their objectives.
On the technological side, raw data from business systems is obtained. Data is processed before
being saved in data warehouses, the internet, programs, and files. Users can then access the data
and begin the analytical process to solve business problems. BI platforms also provide data
visualization capabilities, which translate data into charts or graphs and display them to relevant
parties or decision-makers.
How companies use business intelligence?
Modern BI technologies are most valuable because they provide self-service analytics, shorter
time to insight, and an easy-to-use user interaction. Instead of sending queries to a central data
team, current BI technologies enable staff to access data rapidly and answer business problems
on their own. Business intelligence is used in sales, marketing, finance, and operations.
Quantitative analysis, measuring performance against corporate goals, gaining customer insights,
and exchanging data to uncover new opportunities are all tasks.
Operations:
Managers may access and evaluate data such as supply chain analytics to find methods to
optimize procedures, saving time and resources. Business intelligence could also help guarantee
that service level commitments are met and delivery routes are enhanced.
Sales:
For fast access to complicated information such as discounting analysis, increased profitability,
and lifetime value of customer sales data analysts and operations managers frequently employ
BI dashboards and key performance metrics (KPIs). Sales managers use dashboard with data and
report representations to track revenue goals, sales rep productivity, and the state of the sales
pipeline.
Finance:
By combining financial information with operations, marketing, and sales numbers, users can
gain insights from which to make decisions and comprehend factors that influence profit and
loss.
Marketing:
Business intelligence technologies enable marketers to track project analytics from a single digital
location. BI systems can give real-time marketing tracking, measure the effectiveness of each
effort, and prepare for future efforts. This information gives marketing departments with greater
visibility into overall quality and contextual visuals for sharing with the company.
How to develop a business intelligence strategy?
A BI strategy is your road map to success. In the early stages, you’ll have to specify how data will
be used, identify essential roles, and define responsibilities. It may appear straightforward on the
surface, but starting with business goals is the key to success. Here’s how to build a business
intelligence plan.
- Understand your company’s strategy and objectives.
- Determine essential stakeholders.
- Select a sponsor from among your essential stakeholders.
- Select a BI platform and tools.
- Form a BI team.
- Define your domain.
- Make plans for your data infrastructure.
- Define your objectives and route map.