In recent years, companies across the world have changed their method of operation significantly. Marketers have access to an enormous volume of data collected over the internet. They process this information to analyse an individual’s preference, consumption patterns and various other important factors. These practices developed a unique method of data handling and processing called Business Intelligence (BI). The right business intelligence software will reveal more actionable data, provide clear insights, and facilitate strategic decision-making.
What is Business Intelligence (BI)?
Business Intelligence is a set of practices that collect, integrate, process, analyse, and present information to a particular business. It integrates multiple applications and suitable technologies that help gather raw data.
In easy and other words, we can say that Business Intelligence or Business Intelligence is a collection of techniques and technologies used to collect and process information. These data are used by companies to make an important business decision, analyse their growth pattern, and understand customer behaviour.
A combination of several other types of information handling and processing technologies create what is Business Intelligence. It borrows its key attributes from data mining, querying, and online analytical processing.
Business Intelligence is one of the fastest growing industry trends, expected to become a Rs. 100 million industry by the end of 2022. It offers several benefits over other types of market research.
The significant benefits over business intelligence offers are as it witnessed most penetration in the SME and MSME industry sectors. A worldwide study shows that small organisations that operate with up to 100 employees were the main beneficiaries of Business Intelligence integration.
What is the purpose of Business Intelligence?
The primary purpose of Business Intelligence is to assist the executive and management take a better business decision. It eliminates any presumption from the company’s part and presents a proper picture of how their business is operating.
Business Intelligence plays an important role to assist companies and reduce overhead and operating costs, manage working capital, identify new opportunities, streamline their existing manufacturing process, and detect and eliminate any inefficient processes. These capabilities make what is business intelligence an important aspect for modern and efficient enterprises.
The ability to correctly identify and act on a company’s shortcomings make Business Intelligence one of the best types of market analysis tool in existence. It combines several key features of other data gathering and processing techniques like data mining, real time analytical processing, query processing, etc. All these systems come together to form what is Business Processing.
The introduction of better Business Intelligence allows organisations to merge data and product into a unified management system. Business Intelligence packages along with other types of organisations allows companies to analyse a vast amount of historical and current data and find out future demand. This information also helps businesses make –
- Accurate and market-ready decisions.
- Reach new revenue figures.
- Identify and mitigate problems that hamper revenue generation.
- Recognise emerging market trends.
- Increase operational efficiency.
What are the benefits of using Business Intelligence?
A company with such infrastructure can enjoy several Business Intelligence benefits. A capable system can collect a vast amount of unprocessed information and develop it into an intelligible and business-friendly data. Let’s take a look at some of the most important benefits of installing Business Intelligence infrastructure in a business.
- Quicker and accurate responses to queries – Business Intelligence systems provide actionable information on any business queries a consumer may forward. Quicker response times also give organisations a larger period for accurate resolutions, thereby imparting quality to the whole project scenario.
- Insights on customer behaviour – Another Business Intelligence benefit is its market report intelligence. Companies can analyse which product is performing better in the market, allowing a business to increase the production of that particular product and reduce loss-making manufacturing goods.
- Benchmarking the market – Business Intelligence systems collect data from various sources, including market data compiled by several other companies. Such statistical data-mining allows companies to consider the production and sales figures of their competitive businesses and benchmark the market. In short, Business Intelligence can provide the vital competitive advantage to a business in manufacturing or selling its product or in forwarding its services.
How Does Software Tools Helps to Optimize Business Intelligence?
Business Intelligence software system helps to provide information of all kinds of business operations like you can get current as well as historical details of your business operations. Through the BI software system it is also possible to have a view on predictive business operations. As there is high importance of business analytics, through software elements it was easy to reporting, analysis, visualization, and data mining. The applications of business intelligence also now can be easily tackle all the business manufacturing, sales, production and many other financial and managerial sources of business data for purposes that include business performance management.
However, despite the numerous advantages that Business Intelligence offers, procuring and installing the infrastructure can put a severe financial strain on a company. It is one of the main reasons why most SME and MSMEs in India don’t have access to such systems.
Business Intelligence delivers a clear view of a business’s operations as well as productivity. It is one of the most efficient ways to create a performance management system that maximises a company’s profit.
Business Intelligence has become a must-have system for both small and large scale enterprises, aiding them to gather and process the necessary information. A worldwide survey shows that small and medium scale industries (especially in the manufacturing sector) that operate with up to 100 employees were mostly adopting Business Intelligence packages for engineering businesses. Almost 50% of all companies that fall under this category have either such systems in place or have availed Business Intelligence services. Numerous benefits make this system ideal for growing businesses.
