It’s Kind of a BIg Deal

The importance of Business Intelligence (BI) to companies of all sizes

We all want to know where our business is going, what we can expect for the future and, better yet, the margins of success we will see in the upcoming months. But in order to see the future, we need to know “the now” of said business. Business Intelligence (BI) provides us with that knowledge whether your business is small, medium, or large—BI is a one-size-fits-all tool.

At amshot, we focus strongly on being able to customize software to meet the individual needs of our clients—and that includes BI. Keep reading for a crash course in all things BI and why it’s worthwhile.

BREAK IT DOWN NOW

The formal definition of Business Intelligence refers to tools, technologies, applications and practices used to collect, integrate, analyze, and present an organization’s raw data in order to create insightful and actionable business information. Basically, Business Intelligence is a system for turning your business data into info that can help you make informed business decisions. BI allows us to pinpoint areas of weakness and strength in real time to gain further insights and tackle any opportunity to enhance business output.

That was a lot of loaded words, so think of it as an update. Updates to a cellphone let users see what Apple or Samsung or Google have been working on to make their experience better. Each upgrade has new benefits such as new gadgets, faster loading speeds, increased battery life, etc. All of those changes were made by looking and analyzing the current, ongoing issues within the software. Business Intelligence is like a non-stop, ongoing update to your business that leads to more overall success.

HELP YOURSELF

There are numerous benefits of using BI. As we mentioned, it provides real-time feedback that allows businesses to identify and achieve efficiencies in their organization, but that’s not all. Our team looked at the ways BI helps businesses, and here are just a few that stood out to us:

• More accuracy when reporting, analyzing and planning – No matter how much you do something, it won’t matter unless you are accurate on every account. BI allows you to organize data without the potential for manual error and make decisions in real time.
• Faster analysis, planning, and reporting – Efficiency plays a big role in business profitability. BI allows companies to make business decisions in a more timely matter, especially under pressure. It consolidates a lot of data and gives us a single perspective.
• Improved data quality – You know the saying “quality over quantity”? With BI, businesses have access to both. It gathers the entire quantity of big data and transforms that into accessible figures in a high quality way.
• Increased competitive advantage – It is important to understand that Business Intelligence is not the same as competitive intelligence. BI scans internal data within your business, which leads to a competitive advantage, while competitive intelligence looks at other people’s business. Knowing everything about your current state of business and tackling the issues that arise puts you ahead of competitors on its own, even if you don’t know the ins-and-outs of your competitors’ business.
• Reduced costs and increased revenues – Of course, this is the ultimate goal for any business. BI lets you determine who your customers are by collecting data at high speed, which allows businesses to know them inside and out. Understanding their consumer behavior can result in a faster point of sale in a more accurate way.

USE IT OR LOSE IT

The ability to focus on the current state of your business becomes increasingly easier when utilizing everything BI has to offer. Every company want to be aware of where they stand as an individual part of the larger market, and BI helps companies analyze their systems, employees, and functionality. While this type of technological support may be new to some industries, the opportunities for growth and profitability that BI provides should be considered by any business looking to upgrade.

No two businesses are alike—we know that. BI helps us make your business more successful by blending this cloud of big data with the individual needs our software can provide. BI is the overhead macho-man of business analytics that can help companies grow and succeed, and amshot can help implement it. Contact us for a free consultation.