The Most Important Benefits of Business Intelligence

Business intelligence solutions offer benefits beyond being a tool for analysis. Instead, consider business intelligence as a process that includes the delivery of business change. After all, generating insight alone does not add business value unless these insights are acted upon.

There are many reasons why organisations choose to implement business intelligence and analytical tools in their operations. Typically, all projects have a common goal of using BI tools to create insights and action from data. After all, the primary competitive advantage of business intelligence is an increased understanding of market forces for more confident and positive decisions.

However, organisations can benefit in a variety of ways following implementation of business intelligence tools. These range from simpler operational decision-making to the increased productivity of staff.

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Decision-making

One of the key goals and benefits of business intelligence implementation is to convert company data into well-structured, analysable insights. This intelligence then informs strategic decision-making.

Business intelligence tools consolidate all an organisation’s data into a single, centralised depository that pulls data together from across business activities and customer interactions. This can include metrics such as Google Analytics data and HubSpot marketing information.

Good business intelligence involves having access to all your business data in a single, unified location for easy access across the entire organisation. This provides business value by providing a holistic view of an organisation, its customers, and their interactions. From here, teams can make business decisions based on facts rather than assumptions or conjecture.

Data Accuracy and Compliance

Another benefit of business intelligence tools is the data accuracy and compliance established through data centralisation. Easily available transparent data avoids potential downtime and wasted resources as a result.

Rather than having to check multiple databases when cleaning data, a centralised data storage system provides a clearer overview of all the information an organisation holds. As a result, teams have a clearer overview of inaccurate data, facilitating and supporting improvements where needs arise.

Data accuracy in itself provides business benefits through providing a stable foundation for insights; inaccurate data creates inaccurate insights, potentially causing losses for an organisation.

Customer Experience

Business intelligence tools provide further benefits by helping companies understand how customers are interacting with their business.

Customer data can be collected from a range of sources, such as website analytics or email marketing reports. This data is then consolidated within a centralised location through BI tools. This consolidation helps improve data accuracy and customer relationship management, fostering a more positive customer experience.

Cutomer insights improve the segmentation and targeting of various customer groups. This provides value to an organisation by helping to identify where resources should be appropriately applied.

Productivity

In terms of direct benefits to staff, BI tools have the potential to improve the productivity of teams. Routine tasks which previously took a long time can be automated, freeing staff time for more useful and beneficial tasks.

BI tools have the potential to improve inventory control, reduce inefficient bottlenecks, and refine operational processes. Centralised data also reduces administration time, and significantly boosts productivity and data integrity within an organisation.

Inventory Control

Another benefit of the centralised data storage provided through business intelligence tools is improved inventory control. Many BI tools include forecasting functionality, which helps avoid bottlenecks, stockouts, and overstocking.

For example, easy-to-read dashboards can be reviewed regularly to keep managers informed in real-time of an organisation’s situation. Teams do not need to manually find this data and extrapolate insights.

Sales and Marketing

Marketing activities can benefit from business intelligence tools and their depth of data. For example, an e-commerce business can use a dashboard to quickly and easily identify where most of their traffic comes from and can target underperforming platforms as a result.

Sales staff also receive sales activity measurement tools. With improved visibility of sales information, sales staff can identify trends in purchases and behaviours, thus influencing future sales and marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

Business intelligence solutions offer a range of benefits across an organisation, not just in operational departments. Instead, the creation of centralised data provides team performance boosts in terms of increased productivity, as well as tangible performance benefits for an organisation.

At BDI, we know that every organisation is unique and has personal needs. Our team of business experts are familiar with a variety of easy-to-implement tools and packages and are happy to discuss your organisation’s needs. We keep an open mind throughout the consultation process, working with you and your key stakeholders to make valuable and meaningful improvements to your business systems.

If you are a SunSystems of Infor Q&A user, please contact Nick or one of our sales team for further insight. We offer Business Systems Reviews, Budgeting and Forecasting, and Data Analysis and Review services, personalised to each organisation. To find more information about these services, please visit the ‘Services’ page or get in touch with one of our team. We look forward to working with your organisation soon.

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