There are no two ways about it—either you know something or you don’t know it. In spite of this, many business owners and managers today are making important business decisions based on limited information. Some act on ‘gut’ feeling or intuition while others rely on reports produced by their IT departments. Often, the picture portrayed by IT reports is misleading. So, relying on spreadsheets to make key business decisions is a mistake.
On the other hand, there is no involvement of data in decisions made based on ‘gut’ feeling. These decisions are based on intuition, which may or may not be correct. Often, decisions based on intuition lead to decreased productivity, frustration and loss of revenue over time. If you want your business to prosper in today’s competitive environment, then you must consider using business intelligence software to assess risks and make key business decisions. Software that allows you to collect, analyze and leverage a wide variety of data, business intelligence helps your business to increase its visibility and gain competitive advantage. Following are 9 benefits of using business intelligence software.
1. Reporting
Data is continuously gathered and analyzed by business intelligence software. With business intelligence software, you can generate a wide variety of reports including reports related to customer service, staffing, operations process, and expenses. While these reports are useful, the biggest benefit of using business intelligence software is the relevance of information. As they contain relevant data that is easy to understand, BI reports allow businesses to make informed decisions.
2. Less Guesswork
Running a business is not gambling and this is something you should always keep in mind. ‘Going with the gut feeling’ or ‘making the best guess’ to make key business decisions is a big NO! The future of your company depends on the decisions you make for it. Surely, you wouldn’t want the future on your business to be dependent on hit- and- miss guesswork. By using business intelligence software, you will get access accurate data and real time updates which in turn will allow to more accurately ‘predict’ how a decision will affect your business in the future.
3. Elimination of Waste
Anything that does not add value to your business is referred to as waste. By identifying the areas of waste in your company that you may not have noticed till now, BI software helps you to eliminate the waste in your company. By eliminating waste, you can increase business productivity and ultimately, revenues.
4. Performance Management
Business can use business intelligence software to set performance goals and track progress on a daily basis. Known as performance management, this ability of the BI software allows businesses to easily and effectively implement and manage performance goals. This is turn helps businesses to improve performances and increase productivity.
5. Easy Access to Data
In an effort to improve their processes, businesses have traditionally relied on several different software systems to gather transactional data. However, as these rich data resources continue to grow, businesses are finding it incredibly hard to manage, evaluate and process the data. By gathering information from multiple and often dissimilar systems, as well as from an organization’s various geographic locations and merging it into a single, integrated gateway, business intelligence software makes it easy for business owners and manages to access all the data for extensive auditing, reporting and predictive analysis.
6. Respond Faster
Instead of waiting till the month’s end for it, business owners and managers can use BI software to view reports daily. This in turn will allow them to respond faster to even the most unforeseeable situations. As a business owner or manager, you can get a clearer understanding of what’s happening in the business by using BI to access operating data and customize report views. This will enable you to immediately make changes that improve performance rather than wait until it’s too late.
7. Better Tracking of Inventory
Business intelligence software makes it easy for businesses to track spending, assess suppliers, develop strategies to minimize spending, perform in-depth financial analysis, analyze procurement data and measure performance. Additionally, to minimize extraordinary buying and ensure compliance, the procurement department can turn to the BI software.
The business intelligence software churns our detailed reports that you can use to understand spending trends and patterns to make more informed decisions that conserve resources and increase revenue.
8. Easily identify Problem Areas
Problem areas that might otherwise go unchecked in a business such as poor performance and fraud can be easily identified with a business intelligence software. For example, if your floor manager notices an increased exhaustion of an item but can’t find sales that match that then, a BI software will allow him to track purchases vs. earnings so that the required adjustments can be made.
9. An improved Customer Experience
By integrating BI software into your daily operations, you can improve customer experience and build long-term relationships with them. Using BI software, you can provide a more personalized experience to your customers i.e. an experience which is more in line with their interests and preferences. This in turn will allow you to boost satisfaction and increase customer loyalty.
In today’s competitive world, customers expect an extraordinary and personalized experience and ensuring this requires a lot more than spreadsheets and ‘gut feeling’ to operate at maximum efficiency. To protect your market share or increase it, you don’t need to work harder. You just need to work smarter and this is something a business intelligence software can help you to do.
There you have it—the 9 benefits of using business intelligence software. With BI software, you can improve both decision making and customer experience, which will ultimately lead to business growth.
by Bobby J Davidson
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