What Is Business Intelligence? 3 Key Features Of BI

Business intelligence or BI, plays a key role in helping organisations create effective and wise strategic plans and help them to gather, store and analyse data in a valuable manner. The information received can then be used as a guide to help understand what new processes to adopt, areas where costs can be cut, new business ventures available, ways of improving customer service and so on. Business intelligence means that managers do not have to rely solely on their instincts, when faced with major problems or understanding how to improve their business as a whole.

Efficent, Better Informed Decision Making

The advancement of today’s technology has made it possible for the development of BI tools which can help analyse data accurately. Managers should hire professional BI consultants, who know how to best use these tools, rather than trying to do it themselves. By doing this managers can spend their precious time on other areas of the business, enabling quick decisions to be made that will benefit the organisation. Managers will be able to be empowered to make decisions that are backed up with hard numbers and not based only on their gut feelings.

BI Tools and Data Recording

Most businesses gather tons of data that are aimed at understanding the market trend, competitors and why a customer behaves in a certain way. To keep track of such information, an organisation will need to use several types of business intelligence tools such as databases and spreadsheets. The information collected is then stored in a central place to make it easy for the concerned departments to access and benefit from it. For this reason, it is important for systems to be put in place that controls the implementation of the data collected.

Effective Data Analysis

In the past, even though companies collected data, the process of analyzing and interpreting it was often made difficult by technical and personnel issues. For instance, the information gathered would often be accessed by few individuals. As a result, businesses could not take full advantage of the data collected. To avoid such occurrences, it is important for the business to involve all the employees concerned in the collection and analysis of data. If data has been analysed and affects the sales department, it is important for all staff, of the said department, to be made aware of the information. This allows them to make necessary adjustments for the benefit of the department and the entire company.

For this to happen, proper mechanism of sharing the data needs to be put in place. This can easily be done through the creation of an intranet, where every employee has access to the information. Having the information collected by the BI consultants easily accessible, plays an important role in motivating the rest of the staff as they will consider themselves an important part of the company.

By Sarah McDowell; a Search Consultant at http://www.fdcstudio.co.uk/ providing Digital Marketing Services throughout the UK