As the availability of data increases, running companies becomes both more accessible and more of a challenge. Easier because, with the correct information, you can improve decision-making and avoid mistakes, a significant challenge because it is necessary to know how to collect and select this information to make the most of it.
In this scenario, nothing better than an efficient BI system to do the hard work for you. Business Intelligence is a set of solutions that allow you to collect, store, process, and analyze information from different sources and find answers for more efficient and competitive management.
Business Intelligence Tools
Many people think that Business Intelligence is a single tool. But the truth is that it is a system of devices that, when integrated, allow your company to analyze data in an agile and assertive way. BI includes ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Data Warehouse, Web Analytics, and Data Mining tools, among others.
All these tools collect, store, process, and analyze essential data for your business, such as market data, competition, customers, suppliers, etc. But if you keep this data isolated without confronting it, you could take advantage of a huge opportunity to improve your company’s decision-making because they are interconnected.
Business Intelligence’s job is to automatically compare this data and find answers that otherwise could not be perceived. This means you will have privileged information about your business environment, overcoming the competition and obtaining better results.
Why Invest In Business Intelligence
As the name implies, when properly used, these tools bring intelligence to your business. And intelligence is essential for you to stand out in the market and take your company to new heights. Among the benefits that this practice brings to your company are the following:
Increased Knowledge Of The Business Environment
By knowing your business thoroughly, including those features that are difficult to understand, such as the reasons that lead a customer to remain loyal, you will have more subsidies to make decisions, going straight to the central point without beating around the bush.
Predictability
One of the characteristics of BI is that it identifies behaviors, patterns, and trends. That is, it puts you one step ahead in decisions. By knowing where the economy is heading, how your customers’ behavior is changing, or when your suppliers’ prices are rising, you can take early action to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.
Organizational Learning
The more you know your company, the easier it is to identify where it is and where it is heading. With Business Intelligence, you quickly learn about your company, as it permanently processes information and provides management reports that allow you to carry out these analyses in real-time, impacting the agility of decisions.
Risk Reduction
By using BI to get to know your company in-depth, you will be preventing yourself from risks that may need to be appropriately sized or even identified. For example, you may have increased your sales and expenses, which hurts the business’s profitability. This loss margin can be so small that it is noticed daily, but BI can help you identify this trend and correct the flaws so that your company can avoid financial difficulties shortly.
Contextualized Data
One of the great difficulties that companies that still need a business intelligence system face are analyzing data out of context. An electronic spreadsheet, for example, can bring the numbers but does not bring the information that influences these numbers.
On the other hand, Business Intelligence does a complete reading, getting not only the results of a survey but the characteristics that impact it, which provides a more realistic scenario for decision-making.
Better Use Of Business Opportunities
A new niche market appears or the possibility of a partnership with a large company, but you need to know if you can meet this demand right away. Many entrepreneurs would only take the risk if they knew the impacts on the business; others would not even try. But you don’t need to be at this crossroads if you have an efficient Business Intelligence system.
Just check your company’s data and decide without delay and with the maximum possible security.
Innovation
In a highly competitive market, where a new challenge arises every day, innovation is almost an obligation for those who want to remain in the market. And innovating means taking risks, but not without a good safety margin. Business Intelligence gives you this margin of safety, identifying the risks and opportunities of each investment, helping in decision-making, and prioritizing projects.
Competitiveness
In the end, what you get out of all this is competitiveness. A company is prepared to face all market challenges without fear of losing. You put yourself ahead of the competition because you know where your business is taking you and your goals and the best ways to achieve them.
And Decision-Making?
If you have not seen the relationship between Business Intelligence and decision-making throughout this post, take a second look. We talk about it all the time, highlighting how every benefit BI brings leads to better decisions. That’s because you’ll have access to unique data treated correctly to understand all the factors that impact your business.
But to do so, you must be prepared to deal with the plethora of data available on the market. And preparation comes from well-defined strategic objectives, realistic and measurable goals, and performance indicators that reflect what you expect to know about your company.
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