Business Intelligence is a process enhanced by technology that helps companies improve the way they make decisions; it empowers companies to find answers to business questions with the data they already have in their digital ecosystem.
It contributes to decisions based on data and not on subjective elements like the personal experience of decision-making leaders.
Keeping in mind this is a process and requires strategy, it is crucial to reach goals. What does this process consist? How many stages does it have? The thorough process goes from data source identification and treatment definition to data consumption of final users. It has these stages:
Data collection
- Data sources identification, both internal and external, will work as data providers for the business intelligence process.
- Definition of rules about how frequently data will sync and where.
- Real-time vs historical data: Decide whether to work with real-time data, historical data, or both.
Data preparation
Once data is collected, it should be prepared to meet quality and availability criteria. This step includes data integration, data consolidation, and data cleansing.
Creation of queries: Define what questions your business needs to answer.
Dashboards and reports creation: Select what graphic representations are better to represent data findings. If you want to know more about this, we recommend reading: Tips to create a successful dashboard.
At this point, you must define roles for users according to their specific needs for data consumption.
Thinking about it, you will define roles for internal and external users, according to their data consumption needs.
What kind of analysis can be performed by BI tools?
Essentially, there are three kinds of analysis.
- Descriptive analysis. It helps to answer questions like Why did something happen?, Is it going to happen again? This analysis is useful to visualize data on several levels to discover why something happened.
- Predictive analysis. It models future scenarios and the results we might expect from them. It is good to make decisions related to goal achievement, for example, how a new line of products or a new business division, will impact overall sales.
- Prescriptive analysis: It recommends business actions based on data so the decision makers reach their goals.
Business Intelligence for everyone
In the beginning, business intelligence tools were for C-level executives. But it changed, and now they have evolved in terms of concepts and technologies. This evolution has nurtured an open approach that empowers all business users to make their decisions based on data. This way, not only strategic decisions are made with BI, but also operative ones.
That is why once everything from the previous point is ready, users will make better decisions. It does not matter if it is about deciding the right time to release a product in the market or when to contact a lead that is more likely to purchase.
BI is still evolving, allowing more users to become part of the data culture in their workplaces. It helps improving decisions making process, guarantees better decisions, more efficiency, and enhances business opportunities.
What are the benefits of modern business intelligence?
Besides improving the decision-making process in the Company, it offers these advantages.
- It helps to identify the reasons behind results, especially when data volume makes it impossible for a human being to identify such causes.
- It increases organizational efficiency: It delivers integral access to information to business leaders, delivering an overview of their business areas and the Company, making it easy for them to identify synergy opportunities inside the organization.
- It allows saving time in data consulting. Asking for data from the whole digital ecosystem, cuts off time invested in tasks related to data consultation and delivers a complete overview of what is happening in the organization.
- Accessing relevant information in real-time. Useful when decisions require current data and not historical to be made
- Faster data consumption. Graphic representation options allow efficient data consumption by synthesizing information in a short space and highlighting what matters.
If you are looking for all benefits of business intelligence for your Company, then we recommend you to know BI4Web. It is a 100% web tool that allows access to all business intelligence benefits from any device, any where, and anytime.