What is Business Intelligence and what are the benefits for companies

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A culture based on data analysis is now essential for companies that want to move with fluidity within the market and generate profit in their sector. This is why it is necessary to implement the use of Business intelligence platforms that allow to accurately identify trends and revenue opportunities, accelerate decision-making processes and increase efficiency and operations through measurable methods, established according to precise KPIs. 

What is Business Intelligence 

Business Intelligence (BI) is a set of processes and tools that allow companies to group data from different sources, analyze them and come with strategic decisions. BI combines business analytics, data mining, tools for processing and visualizing data and best practices for translating data into operations. Business Intelligence tools, mainly used for query and report creation activities, can therefore constitute a set of diversified applications: from On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP), to open source business intelligence software, passing through a software of creating charts, cards and dashboards facilitating the presentation of business data.

Starting from the concept of traditional Business Intelligence, born in the 1960s as a method of sharing information, BI has evolved in the 1980s in synergy with IT models, up to its most modern version, which gives priority to flexible self-service analytics, information and processing speed and more efficient business users. 

This is a rapidly evolving sector, which is constantly developing by including new processes aimed at improving its performance. Here are a few: 

  • Query execution 
  • Data mining 
  • Report processing 
  • Performance metrics and benchmarking  
  • Statistic alanalysis 
  • Descriptive analysis 
  • Data visualization

     

    Business Intelligence: what it is for 

    Business Intelligence is used by companies to make better decisions based on past and current data within the reference context. An exact evaluation of the data allows organizations to understand and predict scenarios, intervene to improve the effectiveness of business plans, increase sales and /or revenues and much more.
    Within a company, the use of Business Intelligence can be used to:
  • Analyze customer behavior
  • Identify market trends
  • Compare data with the competitors'
  • Increase profits
  • Improving company operations
  • Monitor company performance
  • Identify methodologies to increase profits
  • Predict successes or potential problems

 

BI and its benefits for companies 

In 2019, the Analytics market reached a value of 1.7 billion euros, with a growth of 23% compared to the previous year and an average annual growth rate of 21.3% in the last four years. It has therefore become inevitable to take into account the benefits offered to companies by BI solutions.

The most obvious benefit is certainly an improved data management. The use of a BI system facilitates, in fact, three fundamental aspects:  

  • Data collection 
  • The classification and documentation of data  
  • The creation of reports 

    Within companies, information is often stored in different databases, based on different technologies, and require different access credentials. The data may be then fragmented, repetitive or managed by units that do not speak to each other, which makes it difficult to create a complete and clear-cut report. The use of BI software allows you to easily solve these problems.  

    The main advantage of Business Intelligence, however, is the improvement of business performance. A well-structured BI system, in fact, in addition to allowing the collection of data from different sources, allows to carry out precise analyzes on the state of the business. From the results of analyzes and reports it is then possible to derive strategic solutions and improve planning operations. Managers and business units are thus able to make better decisions, supported by clear and tangible data, which offer a 360 degree view of the business. 

    A BI system is therefore able to guarantee various benefits to the company that uses it: 


    • Better data quality, fewer errors

    • Complete reporting

    • Near real-time sales tracking

    • Increase of the most profitable customers

    • Improvement of service levels and greater customer satisfaction

    • Optimization of production processes

    • Clear view of the processes

    • Reduction of losses

    • Lead classification

    • Increased competitive effectiveness


    This translates into economic benefits related to both the increase in revenues and the reduction of costs. 

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