What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence is the process of collecting information and processing it to obtain insights that allow you to make better decisions for your organization.

Business intelligence relies on the investigative process to collect data that is subsequently turned into actionable information. Generally, technological tools are used that allow in-depth analysis.

For example, a restaurant owner wants to understand his customers’ preference for the type of food they like and assess the demand for a particular style. So take a restaurant survey and collect feedback on various types of favorite cuisines.

Based on this information, you can analyze what types of foods are in demand among your target audience and help you create a business strategy.

Some of the trends related to business intelligence are as follows:

• Greater investment in artificial technology
• Greater importance in data governance
• Big data
• An increase in the use of self-service business intelligence software and tools
• Interpretation of data through narrative
• Collaborative business intelligence
• Integrated business intelligence
• Cloud analysis 

We all know that the ability to use data and technology in real time is one of the most important parameters for success in today’s business world. No matter what industry you work in, access to quick information is critical for an organization to make impactful, analytical decisions.

Always keep in mind that data collection alone is not enough to obtain insights; Information processing and analysis is what leads to actionable data that drives business decisions.

Examples of the business intelligence process

An organization needs to understand customer demand, wants, and opinions to make strategic business decisions and achieve remarkable success. Next, we have for you the methodology to collect business intelligence.

Step 1: data collection

The first step in acquiring business intelligence is data collection. There are tools that can provide reliable information for statistical analysis and help an organization make data-driven decisions.

Online surveys : Online surveys are the cheapest method of collecting data and reaching a large audience. In addition, it allows the researcher to analyze the information in a disciplined manner. The results are in real time, the investment required is less and the respondent needs very little time to complete them, which in turn provides good response rates to the survey.

For example: A company wants to understand if its customers are satisfied with the service and understand how they can become more customer-centric. A customer service survey may be conducted to collect information about the staff, the product, and the general service provided to the consumer.

You can calculate the Net Promoter Score (NPS) or the Customer Effort Indicator (CES) to analyze the overall customer experience with the company, allowing the company to make decisions to be a more customer-centric organization.

Personal survey : They are face-to-face interviews, one of the most effective methods to obtain accurate information. In this method, it is easy to identify if the respondent is uncomfortable with certain questions, disinterested in the topic, and sometimes to identify incorrect comments using observation techniques such as body language, expressions, tone, etc. It is usually more expensive than other methods and requires a certain degree of experience to gather valuable information.

For example: An organization conducts in-person interviews with employees to evaluate their immediate supervisors. In this case, management skills survey questions can be used to gather accurate information to help promote a better work culture in an organization.  

Postal Mail Surveys: This is an age-old method of gathering information from a large audience. Today, this method is not widely used, as the technology has reached all corners of the world and also because it requires more time, has a low response rate, is expensive and prone to errors. Online surveys are a good substitute for this method.

For example: The government wants to conduct a survey to understand public opinion about the use of plastic bags and assess their knowledge of government initiatives to eliminate them.

An email survey of audiences in different locations to collect information from that area and consequently take corrective action.

Telephone Surveys : Telephone surveys are slightly more expensive than online surveys but much cheaper than in-person surveys. This method has some drawbacks, such as the availability of the respondent or even the establishment of a friendly conversation.

For example: A church wants to conduct a survey to understand why parishioners attend and to assess whether their spiritual needs are being met. A survey will allow them to obtain reliable information and help them understand the opinions of the audience.

Questionnaires: It is a set of questions used for research purposes that can be both qualitative and quantitative. A questionnaire may or may not be in the form of a survey, however a survey always has a questionnaire.

For example: The Human Resources Department of a company wants to conduct a staff exit survey to find out the opinion of employees about the time they spent in the organization. Questions can be preset for all employees who decide to resign, so employee retention strategies can be formulated based on employee responses.

Polls or Voting: Polls are a bit different from polls, and this method generally consists of a single question. The response rate for polls is extremely high, as it is very easy to answer and requires much less time.

The best example of a poll is election polls. Polls are conducted to find out which party the public would prefer to rule the specified area during that year.

Online forms : Forms are a type of survey, however, they are used to collect specific information from a respondent in each field such as age, gender, income, etc., unlike surveys that are used to collect generalized data such as opinions, attitudes, values, etc.

For example: A bank needs specific information from a customer to open a bank account. In that case, a form is provided to the customer to collect specific information required to open an account.

Step 2: Analysis

This is the step where all the data has to be on a single platform. Business intelligence software will allow you to collect and analyze data with advanced methods.

Analyzing the data collected through various methods will help the organization understand what the customer views are and where improvements are needed. The software allows you to compare scores from varied time periods and also between departments.

You can also use the data using advanced techniques such as conjoint analysis , analysis MaxDiff , trend analysis, text analysis and sentiment and many more. This way, you can get a solid idea of ​​where your relationship with customers is at any time.

For example, it is crucial for the hospitality industry to measure customer experience and satisfaction on an ongoing basis.

By constantly analyzing and monitoring satisfaction scores and the NPS score, the organization can improve the experience of its customers and become more customer-centric to achieve higher revenue and customer loyalty.

Step 3: Report and presentation

After the analysis, the next step is to understand what the metrics mean. This step is the most important, since a wrong interpretation of your data can cause your organization to make the wrong decision or simply not act.

Converting data to visual infographics can often make the information easier to understand. Such understanding will enable an organization to find the answers to the most pressing business, operational, and marketing questions.

These steps will help you start using business intelligence effectively, however, this is not the last step.

An organization needs to continuously monitor and analyze data in real time to stay in competition and continue to meet changing customer needs or even to discover next steps.

Following this path will help an organization spend time and money smarter and successfully address future goals, needs, and trends.

Advantages of business intelligence

Business intelligence has a direct impact on the strategic, tactical and operational decisions of an organization. It encourages fact-based decision making using historical data rather than assumptions and instincts.

These tools perform data analysis and create reports, summaries, dashboards, maps, graphs and tables to provide the user with detailed information on the nature of the business.

The following are some of the benefits of business intelligence:

• Business intelligence helps increase productivity in an organization using reports, analytical dashboards, and infographics.
• It provides an organization with a holistic view of its company, segmented into various departments, products, services, etc., which makes it easier to identify areas that require attention or improvement.
• Complex processes in an organization can be simplified using advanced automated analytics, allowing you to reduce time and effort to achieve faster and more efficient business processes.
• Easy-to-understand visual infographics and reports can be generated using business intelligence software allowing even non-technical people to understand the meaning of your metrics.

Importance of business intelligence in an organization

In today’s world, there is a need for business intelligence to enjoy a competitive advantage in an ever-changing business environment.

Business intelligence helps an organization to assess the market, customer opinions and behavior, the market, which can give the opportunity to obtain higher quotas and obtain high income.

Get actionable insights: Business intelligence is transforming raw data into useful information for business.

The raw data will not provide you with actionable information on the parameters of your business, however, business intelligence will provide the organization with a comprehensive analysis to identify weak points or opportunities that can be used to design more customer-centric strategies.

Deep understanding of the organization: It is difficult to understand the business as a whole if you do not know each component, including those that are often overlooked. Business intelligence enables an organization to identify each component that requires attention and make necessary improvements.

Achieving sales and marketing goals : Achieving those sales and marketing goals is difficult if the company does not understand the target market, trends, or changing customer needs.

Business intelligence will provide deep analysis to drive sales for an organization, improve marketing performance, and help synchronize the two teams to achieve those sales and marketing goals.

Anticipating buyer behavior and trends: Customer engagement or engagement is a buzzword used in the business world, therefore attracting leads is essential rather than relying on old outdated techniques based on hard sell.

Business intelligence software will enable a company to create holistic customer profiles based on every interaction or comment during the customer journey. This will allow you to gather valuable intelligence to obtain detailed information on buyer behavior and trends, which will allow you to improve your sales, marketing or growth strategies.

Increase overall productivity: Many organizations have inefficient procedures or impediments, that is, old traditional processes and routine manual tasks that hinder the growth of an organization.

Intelligence software can eliminate these impediments, automate routine tasks, redefine processes, generating new levels of organization and priorities for everyone’s work. This will allow for efficient and responsive customer service , better use of human resources, and accurate measurement of marketing campaigns, increasing overall productivity throughout the organization.

Data governance and regulation : Data governance and regulations are gradually adjusting the rules around the capture, storage and use of personal data.

The new laws include requirements to keep data accurate and up-to-date, demonstrate the reasons for processing the data, and formulate a clear privacy policy to improve transparency.

Business intelligence helps you centralize all your data, which in turn improves transparency and exposes errors and loopholes. In addition, it will allow a company to be in a position to comply with global laws and regulations and avoid being blacklisted by both regulators and customers.

Accelerated ROI: Last but not least, business intelligence helps an organization accelerate ROI by managing day-to-day efficiency, sales conversion metrics, and customer experience through analytics.

Business intelligence will enable a company to gain valuable insight into consumer buying behavior, experience, and customer needs, setting the organization on a path to success.

Gone are the days when organizations depended on making the best guesses or going by instinct.

Business intelligence provides an organization with accurate data, real-time updates, trends and forecasts, and predicts what-if scenarios, eliminating the need for guesswork.