The current digital age has transformed the way that things work across the board. But there is perhaps nowhere that it has made more of a difference than in the world of business. We now have tools that allow us to know more about our customers and business than ever before.
Of course, that’s if you know where to find them and what to do with what you discover. The data is out there, as are the tools needed to access it, you just have to learn how to take advantage. This is why business intelligence is the key to an effective modern business strategy.
Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-powered process for analyzing data to assist executives, managers, and employees in making well-informed business decisions. The BI process involves gathering and preparing relevant data for analysis. The primary aim of BI is to enhance decision-making, enabling organizations to boost revenue, streamline operations, and gain a competitive edge in the market. To accomplish this, BI utilizes a blend of analytics, data visualization, and reporting tools, along with diverse methods for managing and analyzing data effectively.
Business Intelligence solutions combine the following:
Business Analytics
Business Analytics
Business intelligence leverages business analytics to uncover trends, patterns, and opportunities by analyzing historical and real-time data. This empowers organizations to make data-driven predictions and informed strategic decisions.
Data Mining
BI tools utilize data mining techniques to sift through large datasets, identifying hidden patterns and correlations. This helps businesses gain deeper insights into customer behavior, operational inefficiencies, and market trends.
Data Visualization
Through intuitive data visualization, BI transforms complex datasets into easily digestible charts, graphs, and dashboards. These visuals provide a clear, actionable view of performance metrics and key indicators for all stakeholders.
Data Tools
Comprehensive BI solutions incorporate advanced data tools that automate data collection, preparation, and reporting. These tools streamline workflows, ensuring accurate and timely access to critical business information.
Infrastructure
A robust BI infrastructure integrates data storage, processing, and analytical capabilities. Cloud-based and on-premises systems support scalable solutions that adapt to evolving business needs while maintaining data security and accessibility.
Best Practices
Implementing BI effectively requires following best practices, such as maintaining data quality, fostering collaboration across departments, and aligning metrics with organizational goals. This ensures consistent, meaningful insights that drive success.
By incorporating core elements like business analytics, data mining, and visualization, BI transforms raw numbers into actionable insights that drive meaningful change. Automated data tools streamline collection and preparation, while a robust infrastructure supports scalability and security. When paired with best practices—such as ensuring data quality, promoting collaboration, and aligning KPIs with organizational objectives—BI becomes an indispensable resource for addressing needs across every department.
By integrating data from various sources, such as CRM systems, analytics platforms, and marketing tools, BI creates a unified perspective on business operations. This holistic view allows organizations to break down silos, analyze their entire funnel, identify patterns, and uncover opportunities for growth.
Once the data is integrated, BI processes prepare and organize it into reliable datasets that serve as a “single source of truth.” This ensures consistency across metrics and KPIs, aligning teams around clear and accurate goals. Equipped with this foundation, businesses can utilize impactful visualizations and dashboards that present complex information in an accessible and actionable format. Whether accessed on office screens, mobile apps, or through scheduled updates, these insights empower informed decisions and keep teams aligned with strategic objectives.
By integrating data from various sources, such as CRM systems, analytics platforms, and marketing tools, BI creates a unified perspective on business operations. This holistic view allows organizations to break down silos, analyze their entire funnel, identify patterns, and uncover opportunities for growth.
Once the data is integrated, BI processes prepare and organize it into reliable datasets that serve as a “single source of truth.” This ensures consistency across metrics and KPIs, aligning teams around clear and accurate goals. Equipped with this foundation, businesses can utilize impactful visualizations and dashboards that present complex information in an accessible and actionable format. Whether accessed on office screens, mobile apps, or through scheduled updates, these insights empower informed decisions and keep teams aligned with strategic objectives.
In today’s fast-paced business environment, leveraging data effectively is essential for staying competitive. Business Intelligence (BI) plays a pivotal role in helping organizations transform raw data into actionable insights that fuel better decision-making. From understanding customer behavior to streamlining operations and identifying market trends, BI tools empower businesses to optimize every aspect of their performance.
Customer segmentation is one way that businesses use business intelligence tools to learn more about their customers. Most companies use real-time customer feedback to keep current customers and reach out to new ones.
You can use Grow’s guide to plan what to measure and where to get the data for each step of your customer acquisition funnel.
The best business intelligence software can help managers and CEOs see and control their company’s processes better. It helps them find issues or inefficient parts of operations and get them fixed and plan for unexpected problems to deal with them correctly.
Sococo uses Grow’s Business Intelligence dashboard software to discover customers’ problems to improve its products, marketing, and sales.
Forrester says that this is a goal for 74% of companies. Even though only 29% of these companies can put their analytics to use, it’s clear that actionable insights are the missing piece for companies that want to use their data to improve their business.
It’s essential to have enough facts to back up your business decisions. Read Grow Reviews Capterra 2024 to see how our Business Intelligence dashboard software gives you access to vast data to learn valuable things and make better decisions.
Making data available to all departments reduces the time people have to wait for reports and boosts the output of all teams with self-service options. Companies spend a lot of time pulling and analyzing data, which could be used to work on strategies and improve funnels that will help the business grow.
Everyone in the organization should be able to see the data. It helps teams stay up-to-date and make decisions based on data.
Use data from the outside market to find sales trends and target areas with high profit margins. Look at customer data and how the market finds new markets. Some businesses use comments and user feedback on social media to get a feel for the market. Social media is a great way to find out what customers like and what upsets them.
Some of the primary benefits of BI Tools are:
While searching for your competitive edge, you can try everything from equipment upgrades to professional consultants to beloved office snacks. Or, you can accelerate company performance and turn chaotic numbers into predictable growth with business intelligence (BI).
To compete in today’s business world, office snacks are optional, but using BI is not (unless you produce and sell office snacks, then they’re required along with BI). Serious competitors leverage the growth-inducing power of a BI solution to capitalize on company data. A significant 79% of business leaders agree that businesses slow to use and accept data will lose their competitive position and could face extinction. It’s safe to say that businesses that continue to use “old school” BI methods are on a similar path.
“Old School” BI vs Modern BI Advantages
Old-school BI involves manually gathering, storing, organizing, and presenting company data for performance reports. Many organizations still use the old-school approach, wasting dozens of hours each week. On top of that, it’s easy to become overwhelmed collecting and compiling data from many different platforms: Google Analytics, social media, CRMs, Quickbooks, and others. You need a modern BI solution to organize and present your data.
Modern BI offers an evolving picture of company performance and empowers you to immediately impact what that picture will look like, both now and in the future. Many industry-leading companies can attest to this. Netflix, Amazon, American Express, and others have experienced significant, sustained growth using BI to track, predict, and improve company performance. Admittedly, these companies have large budgets dedicated to BI, however, smaller businesses have an advantage over these companies.
How Modern BI and its Benefits Empower Small and Mid-size Companies
Agile actions and pivots are small and mid-size companies’ competitive advantage against bigger, more established companies. However agile action requires the quick information a modern BI solution provides. If you’re relying on slow info, you’re losing your advantage. Empower your company into faster action with a modern BI.
“We’ve definitely seen great improvement in efficiency and reporting. Grow just gives us the insight we need to improve and achieve better results.”
– Pablo Vidal Arean, Boatsetter CMO
How BI benefits goal-setting
Successful companies use goal setting to measure and achieve success. Industry-leading companies use BI analytics to set and reach their goals. Organizations that use analytics best are two times more likely to have top-quartile financial performance. Last quarter, what decisions helped you get closer to reaching your yearly goals? Last month, what helped you get closer to reaching your quarterly goals? Last week, what helped you get closer to reaching your monthly goals?
When reviewing last quarter’s or last month’s performance, have you ever felt too much blind guesswork was involved in company success? A modern BI solution removes the blind guesswork from business decisions by helping you focus on actions that impact your business’s key performance indicators (KPIs). Tracking KPIs like product movement, sales, marketing performance, customer satisfaction, churn, and online engagement enables you to take action to positively impact those KPIs. Knowing which actions positively impact your KPIs allows you to replicate those efforts to continually meet your goals.
Companies don’t have to rely on guesswork to sustain growth. A modern BI solution makes sustainable growth possible.
How to take advantage of business intelligence
So how do you take advantage all the information BI provides? There are a plethora of business intelligence tools now available that can help you track relevant metrics. These have evolved from more old-school methods like a simple spreadsheet, to more advanced solutions. And while a spreadsheet will do the job adequately, your use of data does not achieve its full potential without a more sophisticated BI tool.
A business intelligence platform like Grow will eliminate the need to manually gather, record, and organize your data. It will do everything for you: tracking and reporting relevant metrics; interpreting data in a more visual, easy-to-understand way; and collecting everything in a sleek dashboard that can be shared with your team, leadership, and stakeholders.
We are swimming in a sea of data. But only those with the tools to properly access and act on that data will be able to fully take advantage and see the benefits to their business. Those who do, however, will be able to increase productivity, stay competitive, and enable the entire company to make faster, smarter decisions with the data collected.
Small Business Owners
Small and medium-sized businesses(SMBs) are likely buying more because of more than one thing. Business Intelligence tools are much easier to use now than they used to be. The standardization of cloud-based Business Intelligence dashboards, which is easier for users to keep up and can be less expensive, is a big reason why access is getting better. The recent growth may also be because SMBs are getting more worried about how well they can handle the unpredictable economic winds.
One significant advantage of using Grow’s BI solutions is tracking each consumer’s profitability and website navigation path. Small businesses can gain a 360-degree perspective of customer activity by leveraging business intelligence tools. This level of visibility enables companies to identify customer needs and preferences, track customer behavior, and personalize their marketing efforts.
Sales and Marketing Teams
But how can they tell if these investments in marketing yield a healthy return on investment (ROI)?
Business Intelligence dashboards and visualization tools supported by BI reports can be used to track and evaluate marketing initiatives. Thanks to ongoing tracking and reporting, companies can immediately change their marketing strategies if necessary.
Businesses can track and assess KPIs that provide information on whether marketing activities yield higher returns using Grow’s Marketing dashboards, such as:
Operations and Supply Chain Management
If a company doesn’t have data from a fleet of Internet of Things (IoT) monitors, it might not know that a broken storage unit is causing damage to other equipment. The company might need to look at data from old customer information to determine why so many customers are canceling orders.
BI can help operations and supply chain teams optimize such processes and reduce costs by providing insights into inventory levels, demand, and production cycles.
By collecting and analyzing data from various stages of the supply chain and multiple storage solutions, Grow’s BI tool and business analytics dashboard help to reduce enterprise information silos, link seemingly disparate pieces of data together and improve supply chain operations. Business leaders can track SCM-related KPIs and goals and visualize each stage of the supply chain, enabling them to see how one step affects another.
To apply business intelligence to supply chains, businesses should store data in reliable and accessible places, embed BI within SCM systems, and ensure the accuracy and cleanliness of the data they use. By answering important questions about their data and selecting the right software, businesses can gain insights that help them improve their supply chain operations and drive better business outcomes.
Financial Analysts and Accountants
The figure shows the usage of BI tools across different company departments based on the results of “The BI Survey 19”. The data reveals that finance and controlling departments lead the way in BI usage, with 80% of the surveyed companies reporting using BI tools in these departments.
BI can help financial analysts and accountants streamline financial reporting and analysis by providing real-time access to financial data. By automating financial reporting processes, financial analysts and accountants can focus on analyzing the data and identifying trends rather than spending time on manual data entry and calculations.
A financial analyst for a retail company can use Grow’s BI tool to analyze sales data to determine which products are driving revenue growth. Using this information, the analyst can easily recommend product pricing and inventory levels, resulting in increased profitability.
IT and Technology Teams
When it comes to IT teams, having a reliable and effective business intelligence tool can make a world of difference.
In conclusion, for IT teams seeking to streamline data organization and management, a reliable BI tool like Grow is a must-have. With its seamless compatibility with current data infrastructure, robust security measures, file archiving capabilities, and scalable design; Grow can help IT teams optimize data-driven decision-making across the organization.
Before you start shopping for a BI solution, you must research a little bit into the types of business intelligence users within your business. You must figure out which users or departments in your company will be using data analytics and it is going to benefit them or present new sets of challenges. Let us have a quick look at typical business intelligence users.
Basic Users
These are your regular employees and will require basic management reports for information. They are not responsible or have the training to analyze the data but only use the information offered via the BI dashboard to improve their relevant operations.
The Advanced Users
These are the managers such as sales managers, marketing managers, service managers, etc. These users have the right skills to analyze, organize, and present the data and insights to high-level management to make informed decisions.
Executives
Refer to senior management-level employees who can define the KPIs with the authority to make changes to boost your business growth. Like basic users, they do not have the skills to analyze the data but use it to reduce costs, improve productivity, and make profits.
The Analytics
These are the BI gurus of your organization as they excel at collecting, analyzing, organizing, and presenting data in numerical as well as visual formats. These users look at statistics and create a logical argument for you to make productive decisions. These users also forecast new data patterns, trends and even discover new insights. IT Department
The IT Department
They are the masterminds responsible for integrating the business intelligence solution into your company’s infrastructure. Moreover, they will be bifurcating the employees into different user groups and assign their roles. The IT department aims to close the gap between the business intelligence solution and business operations to make the most of your newly found game changer.
Now that you know about the business intelligence solutions and how they can help the user groups in your business, it is time to prepare for the rollout. However, there are some basic requirements you must consider before implementing business intelligence.
Defining the Ground Rules
The first thing to consider is to establish the rules and effectively implement the business intelligence solution. You must determine the role of each user, what data they will receive, and how frequently. This will help your business to make strategic decisions.
Modes to Access BI
You must consider carefully how you would want your BI users to access it. For example, traveling users such as senior management and sales personnel will need remote access to the content. Plus, you will have to optimize the data analysis in formats supported by various devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
Technical Skills of User Groups
If you are a first-time business intelligence buyer, chances are your users do not have any skills or technical knowledge of how to use BI. Therefore, it is highly likely that most of the employees will be consuming the data insight to make informed decisions.
You must identify the users with the required skill set to analyze the data or may need the training to use the BI. If the users have prior knowledge about ERPs and advanced Excels, this may help them adapt to using the new business intelligence solution.
Define the Job Roles
You must do some homework on what will be the role of each user group when using BI. You must also consider how business intelligence solution will enhance their current job roles.
For example, the sales and marketing team will use the data to create more effective campaigns. On the other hand, senior executives will use the data insights to evaluate KPIs and work on areas of improvement.
You probably know that Business Intelligence (BI) is crucial to your business’s overall success. BI has the ability to turn raw data into actionable information that you can use to fuel your business-building efforts and to effectively share those efforts throughout your organization. Whether your goals are to increase sales, track trends, gain an edge on your competition or simply to improve brand recognition, BI can help.
It’s simple: data can show you where you’re succeeding as a business, where you can improve and how you can nurture your vital relationships. However, most businesses aren’t getting a clear picture of their data, and it can have detrimental effects on their growth. If this sounds familiar, read on.
In order to make sure you’re getting the most out of your data, it’s imperative that you have a comprehensive view of every aspect of your funnel, from marketing to sales to revenue to customer retention. And if you’re struggling to use BI to your advantage, it could be because you’re making one (or more) of the three most common data analysis mistakes:
1. You aren’t tracking the full funnel
If you’re only keeping tabs on a few sales metrics, you’re doing it wrong. No matter how fundamental sales are for your organization, they’re only one small piece of the puzzle that you’ll need to complete before you’re effectively utilizing your data. To combat this nearsightedness, we recommend making a list of your goals for each step of the funnel, and then determining what KPIs you’ll need to measure those goals. If that process feels overwhelming, take a look at these examples to get you thinking about what metrics you may be missing out on:
Once you’re sure that your funnel dataset is complete, you can start utilizing BI tools or manual reporting to establish a single source of truth and ensure that your entire organization is on the same page.
2. You aren't digging into the details
Some companies are content to simply stick with high-level metrics—usually because they’re the easiest to calculate—and aren’t willing to take the time to dig a little deeper. This is a mistake, because lingering solely on the surface can mean that you’re missing out on key information. For example, you need to know your basic sales number; but you can also gain a lot of insight into your business by tracking Sales by Channel Month-Over-Month. And while it’s important to keep tabs on your conversion to revenue rates, you run the potential of missing out on key revenue sources if you don’t bother to track conversion within every specific channel.
Macro-level metrics are useful for gaining overall information about your organization as a whole, while micro-level metrics can track the effectiveness of more strategic objectives. Simply put, the deeper you go, the higher your chances of gaining insights that will help you accomplish your goals will be. Because of this, full-funnel analytics are well worth the time and effort you’ll spend building them out.
To help with this, keep in mind that the main KPI associated with each goal probably shouldn’t be the only metric that you’re tracking. Always think about what supporting metrics will help you better understand the details.
1. You're too focused on one part of the funnel
Maybe you’ve taken a deep dive into your data—but only on one aspect of your funnel. If you’re fully equipped with information about your sales and revenue but have no idea what’s going with your retention or marketing strategies, you’re unlikely to get the results you need to truly succeed.
If you relate to this problem, it’s time to take a closer look at your goals by mapping out each part of your funnel. Make a list of your current goals and metrics and manually sort them into the following categories:
This should provide you with a visual representation of the gaps in your data, and help you decide where you should focus your attention. For instance, if sales has 14 metrics, but revenue has only two, you should have a tighter grasp on what data need to start gathering. Listing your goals should provide you with a stepping-off point to help you understand what data is missing and how you can obtain it.
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