What tools to use for Business Intelligence?
Business Intelligence involves a range of practices that collect and compare date to support effective decision making. Need to know what tool to use for business intelligence?
The answer lies in understanding the data points most important to your organisation, what measures improvements, intelligence and operational efficiency. We cover these below and expand on them and even more important points to cover.
We cover the basics of BI in the following article.
What is business improvement?
The concept of improvement in an enterprise business relates to addressing the gap between the current and desired level of output, operations or process. It requires an assessment of current performance, the balancing of continuous improvement and innovate improvements and adopting strategies to ensure that performance continues to improve, rather than falter or fall back, over time.
To help ensure that improvements stick, it is important to emend a culture of improvement over time. Strategies to manage cultural changes associated with improvements can help employees accept and support improvements. Support through change and relevant training program can also help ensure improvements are adopted.
What is business intelligence?
Business Intelligence (BI) for enterprise businesses refers to the technologies, tools, practices, and applications that organisations use to collect, analyse and present business data. The primary aim of BI is to support better decision-making by providing comprehensive insights into various operational, financial, and strategic aspects of the business.
The implementation of BI encourages a data-driven culture within enterprise organisations, which can improve communication and culture. By promoting transparency and facilitating access to shared insights, BI enhances collaboration among departments, ensuring cohesive communication aligned with your strategic objectives.
Common features of BI tools include dashboards, data mining and predictive analytics. These tools enable users to analyse large datasets, identify trends and generate reports that inform strategic planning and performance measurement.
Basics of business intelligence for enterprise businesses
Business intelligence empowers enterprise organisations to harness their data more effectively, fostering an environment conducive to informed decision-making, operational efficiency and sustained innovation. Business intelligence works by:
- Enabling informed decision-making: BI systems facilitate the aggregation and analysis of data, providing executives and managers with reliable real-time insights. This capacity for data-driven decision-making enhances the quality of strategic choices across various levels of the business tiers.
- Enhancing operational efficiency: Through the examination of business processes and performance metrics, BI enables organisations to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks. The consequent optimisation of operations often results in reduced costs and increased productivity, thereby improving overall operational execution.
- Supporting competitive advantage: The analytical capabilities of BI tools allow organisations to glean insights into market trends, consumer behaviour, and competitive activities. This knowledge equips enterprises to refine their strategic approaches, sustaining competitive differentiation in increasingly dynamic markets.
- Creating data visualisation: BI platforms typically incorporate advanced data visualisation tools, which transform complex datasets into comprehensible graphical formats. This enhancement in interpretability aids stakeholders in discerning significant patterns and correlations swiftly, fostering a clearer understanding of critical data.
Continuous improvement
Although they are related, there is a differentiation to be made between BI and continuous improvement. Kaizen is a Japanese system of continuous improvement that involves staff from all areas of the business. The term is made up by the combination of the words for “change” (or “correct”) and “good”. Everyone is encouraged to suggest improvements and be empowered to present ways that processes could be enhanced. The basis of the philosophy is the idea that “to do it better, make it better”.
It stems from the idea that it’s often problematic processes that are examined in an effort to improve. Processes that appear to be working smoothly may not be considered with the same lense of improvement. Kaizen improvements are often not related to major changes to a process, but rather ongoing, incremental improvements that can have a big impact over time. This resulted in 29 seconds being saved in the production of each new vehicle made by Toyota UK.
When can business intelligence make a difference?
BI methodologies facilitate extensive examination of customer data, enabling organisations to develop a nuanced understanding of consumer preferences and behaviours. Such insights inform marketing strategies and enhance customer engagement, contributing to improved satisfaction and loyalty.
BI also helps address and manage risks, through the analysis of historical data and forecast future trends aids organisations in identifying potential risks. By implementing proactive measures based on data insights, it’s easy to devise effective risk mitigation strategies.
Business Intelligence can also be out to other activities within a business:
- Advertising: BI tools can be used in advertising strategies, with BI findings helping enterprise businesses to understand the success of campaigns and draw insights from consumer behaviour.
- Sales: Business intelligence sales dashboards leverage data mining, predictive modelling and machine learning to forecast future events. These tools have become essential for sales teams, allowing them to gain valuable insights into customer behaviour, business performance and market trends.
- Digital marketing: BI solutions can use the data stored in databases and data warehouses to present insights into customer segments and activity. The application of BI processes through large data sets is also seen as a more ethical and trustworthy way of data handling.
- Call tracking: The increase in mobile communication and the expanding applications of digital channels are driving businesses to incorporate call tracking into their multi-channel marketing strategies, ensuring a seamless customer experience across all interaction points. BI tools can help businesses monitor and track call-related data.
Tools you can use for business intelligence processes
BI tools can help you establish and track key performance indicators (KPIs) effectively. This capability fosters an environment of accountability and performance evaluation, aligning individual or departmental objectives with your overarching vision or mission.
Business intelligence enables improved processes and decision-making across various industries by establishing key metrics and visualising outcomes through dashboards, scorecards, charts, and more. It encourages a culture of accountability and transparency within organisations. When teams can readily access and understand data, they are empowered to take ownership of their projects and align their efforts with the organisation's overarching goals.
Are BI and workflow management tools the same thing?
BI tools are designed to analyse data and provide insights that help organisations make informed decisions. They focus on data visualisation, reporting, and analytics. Workflow management tools, on the other hand, focus on automating and managing business processes and workflows within an organisation. They help streamline tasks, improve collaboration, and ensure tasks are completed in an organised manner. Features of workflow management tools may include task assignment, process tracking, and the ability to create custom workflows that define how tasks should flow from one person or department to another.
BI tools are primarily for data analysis and reporting, while workflow management tools are for process automation and task management. BI focuses on turning data into actionable insights, whereas workflow management centres on managing and optimising processes and tasks. BI tools are often used by analysts and decision-makers to derive insights from data, whereas workflow management tools are used by teams to manage day-to-day operations and workflows.
Are BI and ERPs the same thing?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs) are comprehensive software solutions that help organisations manage and integrate core business processes, such as finance, HR, manufacturing and supply chain management. They provide a centralised system for managing day-to-day operations and ensure that all departments within a company are on the same page.
BI tools concentrate on data analysis for decision making. ERPs gather data from various internal departments as part of everyday operations. ERPs maintain a centralised database that includes transactional data from different business functions, while BI can source data from multiple systems, including ERPs, CRMs and external sources. BI aggregates and analyses data from these various sources to provide a comprehensive view of performance.
Ultimately, ERPs aim to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure process compliance. While BI aims to uncover insights and drive strategic initiatives, helping organisations identify opportunities and challenges based on data analysis.
At Stimulus, we always recommend Pimcore for effective business growth. Discover the differences between ERPs and Pimcore here; and make the decision for yourself.
Related questions
Who uses BI?
Various departments should use Business Intelligence (BI) tools for a diverse array of purposes. While data analysts and data scientists commonly use BI software, self-service BI tools are much more accessible for everyday users, making them suitable for sales, marketing, and operations teams. Ideally, nearly every employee should engage with analytics solutions at some point to foster a truly data-driven culture.
Although there are specialised analytics tools catering to specific departments, such as marketing, sales, and HR analytics software, BI tools provide similar capabilities on a broader scale and facilitate insights across different departments.
Key users of BI include data analysts, data scientist, executives and leaders, marketing teams, operations staff, Information Technology (IT) teams and even finance and human resources teams.
What do business analysts do?
They often serve as a vital link between the business and technical teams, ensuring that requirements, constraints, and deadlines are clearly understood. Depending on the team structure, they may also assist with testing and quality assurance, which requires them to possess a broad understanding of the product.
They create detailed reports and documentation outlining findings, requirements, and solutions, which are essential for project tracking and future reference. Business analysts constantly seek opportunities for improvement by evaluating current processes and suggesting enhancements based on industry trends and best practices.