Using business intelligence, analytics and data efficiently is the key difference between successful businesses and those that fail in the present-day context. Why? Because things are evolving and becoming more competitive in every field of business. The advantages of business intelligence and the proper use of data analytics are essential to beat the competitors.
Business intelligence development (BI) uses tools and services that transform data into actionable information, which inform an organization's strategy and business decision-making. BI tools analyze and access data sets and present results in summaries, reports and dashboards, graphs, and maps. As a result, they give users detailed information about the status of their business.
What Is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) isn't just a piece of software or a set of programs to analyze large amounts of data. It is instead an umbrella concept that encompasses the most effective business practices and infrastructure, software, and any other tools used to improve decision-making and efficiency.
In the simplest sense, BI is about information analysis. A database combines information from various areas of your business. Then, applications transform the raw information into charts, reports, and other analytical tools that provide insights.
The Purpose of Business Intelligence
The main purpose Business Intelligence serves for a company is to help corporate leaders, business managers, and other operational department leaders make better business decisions based on data. As a result, numerous businesses use BI to reduce costs, identify more profitable business opportunities, and identify the inefficiencies of business processes.
The tools for Business Intelligence are decision support systems that use data (DSS). Sometimes, BI is employed in conjunction with briefing books, reports, and tools for querying and executive information systems. Business executives can begin analysing information themselves through these instruments instead of waiting for IT to produce complicated reports. The information available to users helps them make business-related decisions based on facts rather than intuition and stories.
Furthermore, with 54% of businesses reporting that cloud analytics has become a vital part of their business operations, it might be beneficial to investigate the possibilities for your company to keep ahead of the game.
Examples of Business Intelligence
There are numerous ways to use BI, so the exact usage scenario will mostly depend on the industry of your business and its requirements. A few of the most commonly used methods small companies use BI are:
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Examine financial data to monitor the amount of revenue, profits, and other KPIs.
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Study customer preferences and behaviours
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Monitor marketing and sales performance
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Find bottlenecks and issues in the process
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Find out which operations must be improved
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Recognize trends in the company as well as in the market
The eCommerce Website services could use BI to present their most loved products quickly to customers, to determine if customers encounter common issues regarding their services or products or in case of delays or bottlenecks during the delivery of the goods.
Choosing a Definition of Business Intelligence
As the BI landscape continues to change, new definitions of BI are beginning to emerge. It's becoming increasingly clear that there's no single way to define business intelligence systems any longer. For example, Wikipedia describes business intelligence as an umbrella term that refers to a collection of methods, theories, and tools that convert raw data into useful insight.
However, Hans Peter Luhn, the man who is often referred to as "the father of the field of business intelligence," believes that BI is about understanding the interrelationships among the information described in a manner that helps drive forward towards achieving an endpoint.
In 1989 Howard Dresner, the Gartner Group analyst, developed this notion by stating the business intelligence systems are strategies and techniques developed to help businesses make better decisions through evidence-based support systems. However, Forrester continued to claim that business intelligence allows the development of more tactical, strategic, and efficient operational insights and decision-making.
Benefits of Using BI Tools for Small & Medium IT Companies
Business intelligence is not simply software. It's an overall approach to incorporate data into day-to-day processes. As a result, the above benefits translate to real-world successes that show the benefits of BI.
BI Offers Faster and More Accurate Reporting
What makes BI an essential component for any company - big or small is the fact that it provides access to speedy and accurate reports. Depending on the tool you use, these reports can be done in real-time so that you can access current and pertinent financial data, operational information, and sales figures that will assist your business in moving forward.
Instead of having to wait for reports put together (most of them contain outdated or current), you can use an array of custom-designed templates, charts, graphs, tables, and charts created using the most current available information.
It Gives You a Competitive Advantage
Put business intelligence provides the business with a competitive advantage. It allows you to access an abundance of information. Perhaps even more importantly, it allows users to alter and execute strategies to invest in forecasting, planning, and budgeting. BI will track your business along with the market and, particularly, your competitor's marketing and sales efforts.
It Streamlines Business Operations
Another major obstacle that businesses must overcome is the waste of precious resources. Every business is guilty of the extent of not being able to increase productivity, regardless of whether it is management being entangled by bureaucratic red tape or employees being pressured to conform to unproductive procedures. BI's major benefit is that it allows you to streamline processes by reducing the workload and creating mechanisms that permit your employees to perform their jobs more efficiently.
It Helps with Corporate Negotiations
Negotiating with vendors and suppliers can be difficult, especially if you've no experience in this field. But, it's much easier when you know the types of figures that are attainable. Tools for BI can give you detailed and up-to-date information about:
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Sales trends
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Preferences of the customer
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Markets that aren't explored
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Product improvements
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Inventory pricing
Depending on the software or tools that you are using depending on the tools or software you are using, you'll have access to the most up-to-date relevant industry news. Still, it's your responsibility to make the most of these elements when negotiating.
It Manages Inventory
It can be difficult to manage inventory when running the operation at a massive scale; however, BI software makes sure that you're executing exact orders at the correct moment. If you employ it using IoT technology, your inventory process becomes easy, and you'll always be able to guarantee that you have the right items available. This is crucial since it does two things:
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Reduces Excess Inventory: You can prevent having too many stock items in the back of the room, which could take up too much space.
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Ensures Products Are in Stock: This will prevent the possibility of having certain items not in stock that customers are looking for.
What are BI Tools?
The Business Intelligence (BI) tools assemble unstructured data from external and internal sources and enable businesses to find easily the data they require. Businesses can use queries to reduce the amount of data into a smaller quantity of data. BI software usually comes with reports and data visualizations which allow businesses to analyze their data and gain information.
Basic BI tools usually prepare data to be analysed, whereas advanced BI solutions incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide advanced insights and custom dashboards. In addition, business intelligence software includes various tools, such as spreadsheets, data warehouses, online analytical processing (OLAP), and reports.
Top Business Intelligence Tools of 2022
Data analytics makes decision-making five times faster for organizations. So it's not surprising that the market for business intelligence will grow to more than $33 billion in 2025.
With more tools for business intelligence accessible as never before, it's more difficult to decide which one to pick. So here are the most effective business intelligence platforms to be used in 2022.
Domo
Domo is a cloud-based platform focused on business-user-deployed dashboards and ease-of-use. It has tools for business intelligence suited to different sectors (such as health care, financial services manufacturing, education, and health care) and the roles (including CEOs and sales executives, BI professionals, and IT personnel). CIOs should begin by looking at how it manages information that comes from AWS, Jira, GitHub, and New Relic before looking at how more than 500 other integrations could benefit other employees in the company.
Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is a self-service analytics program that permits employees of all levels within an organization to gain insights regarding their department. It does not require any programming skills, and users can visualize data using AI-powered queries.
Connecting Power BI with well-known Microsoft applications, such as Excel or Teams companies can work together in the creation of reports as well as share information for faster adjustments. Power BI also offers complete data encryption that protects the company's data even if they share it outside the organization.
Tableau
Tableau is a business intelligence platform and data visualization which allows users to examine and access data through their computer, desktop, or mobile device. In addition, they can integrate Tableau into different applications. For example, employees can share dashboards within the company and subscribe to reports to be informed of updates.
There are three levels of licensing companies can benefit from. They can also grant licenses to a single person or several people in their team. They can also blend and combine licenses to meet the requirements of their workers.
Qlik
Qlik is a complete cloud data integration and analytics platform that provides contemporary business intelligence. It allowed for flexible deployment and enterprise SaaS and hosted by customers, including Multicloud and on-premises deployments that do not limit users to a specific cloud.
Qlik can also be a top performer in the BI business, according to Gartner's Magic Quadrant report for 2021. Qlik also has an impressive vision of the future of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) driven enhancement.
Its strengths include flexibility in deployment, data literacy, and customer attention.
Zoho Analytics
Indian multinational technology company Zoho launched the BI Suite Zoho Analytics in 2009. This self-service BI and Analytics solution is used for reporting in the enterprise and the creation of dashboards.
It also comes with an automatic sync feature that allows businesses to analyze the data coming from all sources. Businesses can upload data from spreadsheets, flat files, or even online storage services. In addition, users can connect to a range of relational databases, either stored in-house or on the cloud. It is powered by the intelligent analytical assistant Zia that uses NLP and machine learning to assist marketers in getting insights within just a few minutes.
Zoho Analytics' clientele includes Dell, Tesla, HP, Ikea, and Canon.
Dundas BI
Dundas BI from Dundas Data Visualization is used primarily to create scorecards and dashboards, one of the strengths of the company's past. Still, it is also able to provide ad-hoc and standard reporting. Visualization and analysis are done with web application development interface that can adapt to the needs of user's power users, and regular users can access different options.
The most recent version comes with an updated in-memory processor and a brand new natural language query option and point-and-click trend analysis and support for Linux and the development platform that can be used to create customized analytical applications. Dundas BI has been tailored to 19 different industries, including mining, cleantech, construction, and standard subjects like the banking industry and medical. It is sold to large corporations but is a specialist in embedded BI.
Looker by Google
Google's Looker Google is an intelligence tool for businesses directly connected to the company's database to provide reliable, centralized data. It is a drag-and-drop visualization builder, which allows users of any level of proficiency to be successful with the program.
Looker's Marketplace offers analytics for many popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools, allowing employees to pull in new data feeds quickly. It also provides out-of-the-box integrations to applications, such as Slack, Dropbox, Marketo, and APIs that connect to other applications.
Google Data Studio
The Google Data Studio allows businesses to transform data into useful dashboards and reports. It was released in 2016 as part of the Google Analytics 360 suite.
Google Data Studio offers easy-to-use tools, such as transforming data into graphs and charts for deeper data, tweaking reports to offer visualization and customized solutions, and making data more accessible through sharing data and collaborative work. In addition, it includes a range of templates built-in for marketing.
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy concentrates on an enterprise BI market across various industries using the cloud, on-premises, and alternative deployments. A drag-and-drop interface lets users build custom data visualizations and create custom real-time dashboards.
MicroStrategy boasts federated analytics which lets customers leverage their existing data sources investments, such as Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI, and combine the data to create reports and data. The platform also has a semantics graph, which provides the data assets to enrich data silos using information about location and Telemetry. MicroStrategy offers a free 30-day trial period for the full platform.
Oracle Analytics Cloud
Oracle has been expanding the Oracle Analytics Cloud offering for the last several years. First, it was that was introduced in 2014 as a result of its massive Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition suite. Then, in 2020, the company introduced a Cloud HCM service to offer self-service workforce analytics for HR managers, analysts, and line-of-business managers.
Oracle has been focusing on making its cloud offerings simple and user-friendly and includes strong reporting capabilities and machine-learning features. The key features are data preparation and data connectors, visualizations, and predictive analytics. There is also the native mobile app and the ability to embed analytics.
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The Key Takeaway
Business Intelligence allows organizations to make quick and accurate decisions. It streamlines processes and allows employees to develop innovative ideas to help the company's expansion.
There are many advantages to using business intelligence solutions. First, it's an industry growing with numerous proven benefits when used correctly. It gives users specific insight into your company's past, present, and future, allowing you to make educated business decision-making.
BI software collects, organizes, mines, and visualizes essential KPIs to achieve that. As a result, it reduces guesswork and waste, helps inefficient inventory management, and increases sales intelligence. The strong blend of functions and advantages that business intelligence applications provide provides the user an advantage in the market that can be the difference between success and failure in the current world.
