Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of application programs and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data from various data sources, thus providing enterprise users with reliable and timely information and analysis for improved decision making. To put it simply, BI is an umbrella term that refers to an assortment of software applications for analyzing an organization’s raw data for intelligent decision making for business success. BI as a discipline includes a number of related activities, including decision support, data mining, online analytical processing (OLAP), querying and reporting, statistical analysis and forecasting.
Business Intelligence for Success
Business intelligence equips enterprises to gain business advantage from data. Once an organization is powered with BI it can anticipate enhanced turnaround time on data collection, come up with fresh ideas for novel business initiatives, foresee accurate picture of customer needs and demands, and perform more targeted marketing campaigns. In addition, it will gain enhanced knowledge that will help it advance its brand into the top slot in terms of market share, cut down its client churn, reduce its overheads and also diminish delays in supply chain, among other advantages. Decisions purely based on the gut feeling cannot assure success; but in BI’s fact-based decision-making framework, confident decisions can be made for assured business success. Further, BI makes an organization agile thereby giving it a competitive edge in today’s evolving market condition.
Business Intelligence Scenario
Every day, a dairy company collects from 2,000 stores information which is uploaded to servers at its headquarters at the end of the day. This information is used by the chain’s main office to instantly analyze key operational measures such as the number of dairy products sold, profits, trends, and so forth.
Next day, by early morning the company’s managers receive performance data. Next, they verify current revenue, time required to perform each job, and other performance measures. With BI, franchisees with multiple locations can have consolidated views, as can the company’s regional managers.
This scenario clearly explains how implementation of Business intelligence can be very fruitful for an organization. BI can catalyze a business’s success in terms of
Revenues
- Distinguish the products and services that drive revenues.
- Rank customers and locations based on profitability.
Customer relationship management
- Categorize low-value customers and work toward improving their value.
- Find customer relationship issues early and take timely action to resolve them.
Sales and marketing
- Aim at high-value customers to minimize marketing risk.
- Rank the success of product promotions based on product and market segment.
- Find what is in the sales pipeline