Companies looking to get ahead in their industry are increasingly turning to business intelligence (BI) solutions to support their growth objectives.
Regardless of company size, BI solutions allow management to positively impact the company by making informed and smarter decisions with accurate business data to maximise revenue, performance, and more.
In this guide, we explore 10 advantages and positive outcomes that you can achieve with BI tools, plus how YourShortlist can help you find the ideal BI partner for your business.
What are BI Solutions?
Business intelligence solutions are often implemented to help a company remain competitive within its market and achieve specific growth milestones.
There are many BI solutions on the market, some of which can be custom designed to suit a company’s specific industry requirements or business goals.
Companies that implement BI technology can withstand many modern business challenges and adapt their operations for both long-term cost savings and a productivity boost.
Although the upfront cost and relative complexity of some BI solutions can put off smaller business buyers, most systems are user-friendly and provide valuable long-term benefits that far outweigh the learning curve and expense of implementation.
How BI Solutions Benefit Your Business
Business intelligence tools primarily benefit a company’s operational insights and planning activities by aggregating and visualising key data from across the business.
This allows data to be accurately and effectively reported on for the benefit of the leadership/C-suite, stakeholders, and the wider organisation.
Data analytics and real-time trends provide the company with insight into the impact of their operations, helping them plan strategies from an informed position and steer the business in the right direction.
BI also provides benefits such as boosting productivity, insights into customer behaviours and retention numbers, and improved customer satisfaction through optimising your service.
Here are 10 important ways that your business could benefit from implementing BI solutions:
Accurate and high-quality data
It’s common knowledge that accurate business data drives commercial success. This is why BI solutions are needed to help aggregate high-quality data while analysing, updating, and maintaining company databases to gain insight into the performance of the company.
Faster and more relevant reporting
Data collected from finance, operations, and sales departments can be used to create customised reports that offer a quick overview of relevant and accurate insights for monitoring KPIs. Providing accurate reports from real-time information through Business Intelligence software enables informed business decisions that reduce risk and boost business growth.
Competitive analytics
Access to competitive analytics is essential in the corporate world as it provides a competitive advantage when used to accurately budget, forecast, and plan key operations. Companies use competitive Business Intelligence analysis to help them understand their competition and differentiate their products and services to reach the optimal market position.
Efficiency and productivity
In organisations where BI solutions have been implemented, less time is spent on managing data as the system offers a single source of real-time information from across the entire business. This allows decision-makers to be more productive and have more time to focus on important business development activities.
Identifying patterns to improve growth
Companies are constantly searching for new opportunities and patterns to help them develop effective business growth strategies. Business Intelligence software can help identify market trends, sales forecasts, market conditions, and more to enable more accurate and achievable growth projections.
Tracking KPIs through BI solutions
When BI solutions evaluate and track the progress of a key metric against a specific target, they can send alerts to the relevant user to enable faster follow-up and decisive responses.
Improved customer satisfaction
From customer behaviour and feedback to user personas and more, BI provides insight with which companies can better understand their customers and then customise their services to suit their needs. When the right changes are made to improve products and services based on real-time BI data, customer satisfaction increases.
Operational oversight and increased revenue
BI tools offer a 360-degree view of a company’s departments and operations. This helps managers reconcile decisions, execute strategies, and implement processes with full knowledge of their interdependencies and outcomes across the wider organisation. Companies can identify issues, discrepancies, and inefficiencies to improve their operations, therefore boosting sales revenue and informing future budget allocation.
Performance oversight and monitoring
BI reporting tools assist in monitoring business performance by providing an overview of financial, operational, and managerial insights related to productivity. With BI tools, companies can track metrics and trends that align with their business goals via real-time data and KPI progress while receiving alerts on any downturns that have been detected.
Personalised services and improved collaborations
User-friendly BI software has features that allow data to be personalised for easier understanding and communication. This allows for smooth collaboration between users in the organisation who need to report on data or have it presentable to key stakeholders requiring quick and straightforward answers. BI software makes it easy for management, business development, and IT departments to work together and foster greater inter-departmental communication and collaboration.
BI Procurement Made Easy
When you’re searching for new BI software for your business, it can be difficult to compare your options to find the solution that best meets your requirements.
At YourShortlist, our goal is to make technology procurement simple, transparent, and cost-effective by matching businesses with the right software providers.
Whether you’re actively searching for new BI tools, dissatisfied with your current solution, or simply looking for a way to gain greater insight into your business data, we can help guide you in the right direction.
If you’re looking for a new BI tool, discuss your requirements with a member of our team today to receive your free, bespoke shortlist of BI Partners.