Business Intelligence (BI) solutions can help your company by making your products and services more popular with your audience, and allowing your analysts to “see” trends and understand how the market will change. Understanding this incredible cloud tool could be the key to getting and staying ahead of the competition.
Business Intelligence Goes Hand in Hand with Data Analytics
BI solutions combine data analytics, data mining, data visualization, infrastructure, and best practices to help companies make the best decisions. Experts say that a business has BI control over data, most often stored in the cloud, when it has a holistic view of the organization and uses of these resources to drive change, increase productivity or respond quickly to market changes.
Modern BI solutions provide businesses with internal analytics built around data, as well as quick access to solutions and decisions. From the organizational point of view, BI analyzes, processes, queries, and reports on large volumes of data—thus making things easier for IT departments.
When talking about data analytics, there are two concepts and two different ways to use the information produced by these solutions. The first is self-service BI, which facilitates access to information by going around the traditional IT department. The second is the concept of operational BI, which makes it easier for management to give other employees access to cloud-stored data in order to support certain functionalities. The latter allows trends and problems alike to be spotted, thereby enabling quick reactions and solutions.
With BI and data analytics, management facilitates business decisions and insights from the operational level. From sales analytics, stock velocity, seasonal estimates, forecasting functions, or “what if” analyses, business decisions become increasingly conclusive, objective, accessible, and representative.
Harvesting the Power of Data
What exactly are BI solutions and how do they simplify digital transformation? The main components of BI are methods and custom-designed software for collecting and structuring data and converting it into reports that support and improve decision-making. With employee behavior forecasting, loyalty programs forecasting and marketing summaries, BI solutions can complement your business plan.
By harvesting the power of data, your business can deliver valuable experiences for consumers, and innovate through automated processes.
Budget-conscious authorities can eliminate tools and costs for overlapping services by replacing them with a single service that is agile, flexible, and supports collaboration across the company. BI solutions are scalable and 100% cloud-native—allowing managers to react quickly to ever-changing market demands. BI systems effectively support your business through:
- Accurate data collection
- Timely and well-informed business decisions
- Better results across the team
- Visibility into financial and operational information
- Improved productivity
- Return on investment
- Reduced inefficiency in processes and activities
Top BI Tools on the Market
Let’s take a quick look at some of the best BI solutions on the market right now.
Designed for companies already using the BigQuery cloud data warehouse, Google Data Studio (GDS) is a complementary BI tool. It is aimed at non-technical users working with lots of data and spreadsheets.
Holistics is a more powerful and technical tool than Google Data Studio. It offers data analytics models and the option to transform that data into BigQuery and other SQL repositories.
Power BI is a familiar tool in the industry, especially for companies working in the Microsoft ecosystem. It supports large amounts of data and helps companies to centralize it.
Looker is a Google Cloud Platform solution with an innovative approach to real-time data exploration. It can be ideal for companies looking for a single source of information and documentation solution for the entire company.
BOARD is a powerful BI and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution. It features a “toolkit” design that allows clients to create customized BI and CPM applications without the need for time-consuming programming.
Sisense provides analytics solutions and market insights. This platform could be more suitable for small to medium-sized businesses.
Which Industries Benefit From Business Intelligence Solutions?
BI solutions can be a huge help for sales, performance management, and reporting spheres. As a result, the departments that would reap the most benefits from using BI software solutions are: Human Resources (HR), Procurement, Sales, Marketing, Management, IT Client Services, and Finance.
In an increasingly competitive business climate, the right BI solution empowers companies to make smart and quick decisions. Understanding how BI tools work and how to put them to use can help your business stay ahead of the competition.
