A lot of people think business intelligence (BI) is the sole domain of large, Fortune 500 companies. However, the cost of doing BI has gone so low that even small- and medium-sized businesses can use it to create a competitive advantage. How can your business benefit from using BI in its daily operations? Here are three ways BI can help your business.
- BI helps you make smarter business decisions. Having a lot of information at your fingertips means nothing if you don’t know how to analyze and harness it. Most information comes from a variety of sources that are scattered and unstructured. However, if you use a BI system to analyze your data, you can actually see trends that will help you decide where to allocate your resources. Now, you no longer have to rely on gut feel to justify your decisions.
- BI lets you know your customers better. Ever wondered why customers prefer one product over others, or why they tend to buy less on certain days? BI can help you solve those riddles. A CRM system equipped with BI tools can collate data from different sources, such as your sales, marketing, and product development departments, to draw a picture of your typical customer. This will help you predict what they will buy next or give you the information you need to determine new sales strategies.
- BI increases employee productivity. With the help of business intelligence, you can take a long, hard look at your business processes and determine the areas that could use some improvement. BI can let you see where the bottlenecks are, which processes could benefit from automation, and which processes use too many people. In addition, BI tools can eliminate the need for employees to file daily reports manually, which allows them to focus solely on operations.
How does your business plan to use business intelligence to streamline operations? Let us know in the comments!