Business intelligence, a tool for growth

Covid-19 made us realise that digitalising your business allows you to meet your customers’ needs, even in times of crisis. Being able to offer services adapted to new consumer habits means guaranteeing the sustainability of one’s business.

However, in order to do this, it is important to know your target audience and to understand their buying habits. This is where the DATA comes into play, which must be collected, exploited and valued in order to make the most of it.

In this context, Business Intelligence, offers a way of analysing data and providing information to assist in decision-making.

What does BI mean ?

Business Intelligence (BI) is the set of technological tools and processes designed to analyse data in order to transmit usable and relevant information to a company’s directors and managers. The ultimate goal is to enable them to make optimal, informed decisions in response to market expectations.

BI allows a company to understand its environment and to implement strategic planning based on the needs of its users/consumers.

Why is it that important ? 

BI encompasses different tools, methods and applications that help in collecting data. This collection is done from internal systems (information system) and external sources, aiming to have a usable database, afterwards. Visuals, dashboards and reports from BI software support data analysis to make analytical results available to decision makers.

Meaningful data accelerates and improves decision-making by optimising the business process and increasing operational efficiency. Good use of data promotes competitive advantage and generates profits as a result of new revenues generated by better use of the information collected.

On the other hand, BI also helps to identify market trends and solve business problems related to poor decision making or inadequate orientation to current demand.

Business Intelligence and Advanced Business Intelligence, what is the difference ?

To understand the difference between traditional BI and advanced BI, we need to start by unpacking the concepts of analytics and advanced analytics.

Analytics is about applying BI methods, while advanced analytics uses Machine Learning algorithms to go beyond simple analysis to the creation of forecasts. Advanced Business Intelligence is therefore about going beyond statistical and descriptive analysis to interpreting data. It uses probabilities to make predictions about buying behaviour and possible market trends. This is where predictive analysis comes in.

Tough competition and the advent of new consumer habits require companies to be more vigilant and to take the path of digital transformation to achieve digital maturity. Through the prediction of future probabilities and trends, BI can become the key to your business growth.

In addition, to get the most out of your user-centric solutions, it is recommended that you engage the services of an IT consultant who is specialised in Business Intelligence. At Timsoft, we take a digital transformation approach and focus on Big Data. Our data management experts support companies throughout their BI projects to improve data quality and guarantee optimal use of the information collected.

Read also our article on power BI and data visualisation.