Business Intelligence (BI) solutions have been around for many years now, and the buzz around BI reporting and analytics has only been increasing as the need for organizations to unlock the power of data to continuously improve and stay ahead in today’s competitive market has become apparent. According to research by Gartner, “Global revenue in the business intelligence (BI) and analytics software market is forecast to reach $18.3 billion in 2017, an increase of 7.3 percent from 2016. By the end of 2020, the market is forecast to grow to $22.8 billion.”

So how does Business Intelligence help? The key benefits of implementing a Business Intelligence system are as explained below.

IMPROVE DECISION MAKING

Decision making is crucial for the success of any business. With BI, managers can make informed decisions based on key information and metrics available in the reports and dashboards delivered. Decision makers can not only analyse current and historical performance of a company, but also obtain strategic data points that will help them make right decisions at the right time.

INCREASE VISIBILITY

In many cases, due to the vastness of data in an organization from different departments and sources available on different platforms, decision making users do not get the complete picture as they may miss out on accessing some data. But with BI, all the data is integrated into a single source (usually a data warehouse) and available in a single view to users so they can view all relevant data across the breadth of the organization. The insights gained are very helpful in identifying internal inefficiencies and optimising business processes.

BOOST PRODUCTIVITY

BI helps in automating most business reporting processes where data is a critical input and this leads to reduction in time, effort and costs thus increasing productivity levels. Preparing reports for reviews using traditional IT is often a manual method that is time intensive, whereas with BI all relevant information is readily available for users to create reports per their requirements and time can be used more efficiently to analyse the information and make decisions. This also leads to fewer errors in the reports, leading to better outcomes.

GAIN INSIGHTS INTO CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

The success of any business is dependent on how satisfied the customer is. BI can be used to identify positive and negative patterns in consumer behaviour. This helps a company understand what consumers are most receptive to, what does not work very well and predict consumer behaviour. Campaigns can then be effectively planned to a more targeted set of customers.

ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

It is important to monitor what one’s competitors are up to as you never know when you could lose customers to them. BI can help assess a company’s capabilities and compare strengths and weaknesses with that of its competitors, identify new patterns and trends in the market and stay ahead of the competition in the ever-changing market place.

Learn how business intelligence implementation for a large thermal power plant in India has helped the client monetize data by improving their business performance using predictive analytics.

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