Top Benefits of Business Intelligence (BI) for Companies 

By using tools to analyze data and drive better business decisions, organizations can improve their operations and gain the benefits and advantages outlined here.

Business intelligence software’s roots can be traced back to the mainframe-based decision support systems of the 1960s, but BI technology has continuously evolved in response to advances in data architecture and new business demands. Modern BI tools can be deployed in the cloud or on enterprise servers, desktops and even mobile devices. Here are 10 key BI benefits that make for better business operations, ideally leading to increased revenue, higher profits and a competitive advantage over business rivals.

1. More informed decision-making – It’s easy to say “better decisions” without really specifying what that means. First, BI tools provide timely access to information that’s validated for accuracy, giving executives and operational workers a true picture of the business when it’s needed for decision-making. BI applications can approach near-real-time data insights for fast-moving businesses. They can discover or draw attention to trends and patterns in business data that might otherwise go unnoticed. In this way, BI reduces the reliance on intuition and guesswork in tactical decision-making and strategic planning. Taken together, all of this improves decisions and avoids flawed ones that can result in business errors and missteps.
2. Increased operational efficiency – One of the most time-consuming aspects of data analysis has always been preparing data and ensuring that it’s high-quality. Designing these processes can still be a significant effort – but once that’s completed, BI tools can automate regular data collection and processing, even in desktop systems. They also automate the updating and distribution of reports and BI dashboards in various formats, from PDF files to mobile apps. This saves time and effort, and because business users are free from manual data handling, they can focus on more strategic, higher-value tasks. In addition, some BI tools, through features such as process mining, can highlight inefficiencies in business intelligence workflows and provide actionable insights that guide additional optimizations and cost reductions. Likewise, corporate executives and business managers can use the results generated by BI applications to make business operations more efficient. BI helps optimize business processes and resource allocation to ensure that time, effort and money are put to the best use possible in companies.
3. Improved financial and strategic performance – BI software is frequently used to deliver detailed financial insights. Real-time tracking of financial metrics enables businesses to quickly adopt new tactics in response to market changes. They can then allocate resources more effectively and optimize spending. BI tools are often used alongside budgeting and planning applications, providing the analytics insights that in turn drive budgeting decisions. Most BI tools include features for setting KPIs and then monitoring and reporting on them with simple dashboards that enable managers to see the current state of their business against the strategic plan at a glance. 
4. Deeper customer insights – Customer behavior is a complex topic for many businesses because it changes over time in response to economic conditions, competitive pressures and personal preferences. BI tools are frequently used by both product and marketing teams to gain a deeper understanding of customers and market trends. In particular, the tools provide a structured framework for analyzing customer interactions across multiple touchpoints. Customers can then be categorized for more effective marketing, and changes in their buying behavior can be tracked over time. With these so-called customer intelligence insights, companies can develop new products and marketing strategies, to the extent of creating personalized recommendations for individual customers. This can increase customer retention and lifetime value, and it also feeds into improved customer support, product design and service delivery.
5. Better market intelligence – External data, such as competitive intelligence, economic and market data, provides crucial context for tactical and strategic planning. For example, in rapidly developing markets, such as new product categories, companies need to respond quickly to changing market conditions and emerging business opportunities. Integrating external data into BI software enables analysis of current business performance with that extra context, which is highly valuable for strategic decision-making. Similarly, companies use BI not only to manage their internal performance but also to benchmark against other companies in their industry. These benchmarking techniques require sophisticated analytics tools that can normalize and compare data across different organizations and market segments. The insights provided by BI tools enable companies to adapt teir strategies with increased agility while also identifying opportunities to differentiate their products or services in the market.
6. Improved data quality and access – In contemporary businesses, data isn’t used only by BI and data analytics teams. As mentioned previously, applications such as budgeting and planning are deeply informed by data. Similarly, project management efforts, product development process and pricing strategies might extensively be based on data from customer and financial records as well as other sources.BI systems consolidate data from multiple sources, providing a single, unified view with improved data quality and consistency. This ensures that decision-making is based on accurate and up-to=date information, which minimizes analytics errors and discrepancies. Wider access of data also promotes increased cross-departmental collaboration.
7. Predictive views of business trends and issues – BI tools increasingly include features that would have been considered quite advanced just a few years ago – capabilities such as predictive analytics and machine learning, for example. These technologies uncover patterns in historical data, and by comparing the patterns to incoming new data, they can predict future trends and potential business challenges. That enables businesses to take a proactive approach to changes in the market, new opportunities and internal issues. To make such technologies more accessible, companies can implement BI tools as augmented analytics features, which are designed to automatically discover insights and present them to business users with suggestions for action or further investigations.
8. Enhanced collaboration and communication – As important aspect of improved decision-making is the ability to collaborate with other users to validate decision or gain additional insights before taking action. The dashboards and reports created in BI platforms can be easily shared across business teams for comments ad collaboration. 
9. Reduced costs and financial waste – Many of the most difficult business decisions come at times of difficulty or crisis, and they often involve having to make cuts and reduce costs. In all cases, corporate executives and business managers need to make decisions under pressure, but they need to make the best decisions possible. Data-driven decision-making becomes particularly crucial at such times. By analyzing operational data, BI tools provide systematic approaches to identifying areas where costs can be reduced without compromising core business functions, through measures such as eliminating redundant processes and financial waste. BI tools can also be used to categorize expenses in order to better understand where costs can be trimmed and the potential impact of any cost reductions.
10. Stronger compliance and risk management – Regulatory compliance is a necessary burden for businesses, some more so than others. While all companies face some degree of regulation, industries such as healthcare and financial services are subject to an increasingly complex regulatory environment that requires sophisticated monitoring and reporting capabilities. BI tools can be used to track compliance metrics and degenerate automated reports and benchmarks to meet regulatory obligations. It can also go further and help monitor potential business risks as they emerge, in real time, so organizations can respond quickly. For example, BI tools can aid financial services firms in fraud and credit analysis. Similarly, in manufacturing, Total Quality Management practices require regular or continuous auditing of production and quality problems. Reports and dashboards are essential tools for quality managers working to keep stay on top of issues as they arise.

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