Leveraging business intelligence tools for Competitive Advantage

Being on the top in today's competitive world is the primary goal for all the business analysts out there. Consider your company harnessing the full power of its data, outmaneuvering competitors with the dexterity of a master chess player. It's not just a scenario for tech behemoths; it's a reality that business intelligence (BI) tools can bring to your doorstep. 

 

To remain competitive, businesses must have a clear view of all their data, which is where business intelligence (BI) tools come in. After all, nearly half of all businesses already use BI tools, and projections show that this trend will continue in the coming years. 

 

However, for those who haven't yet adopted a tool or are simply interested in learning more, it can be difficult to define BI. We created this comprehensive guide to educate people on what business intelligence is, how it works, and other topics. Let’s dive in and understand how these BI tools work and how to they help in leveraging an competitive advantage in the marketplace.

 

How Does Business Intelligence Tools Function? 

 

First and foremost, Business intelligence refers to the tools and systems that are used to collect and analyze business data in order to gain insights that allow businesses to make informed decisions. Customers can use business intelligence tools to learn how a company performs now and in the past. You can help businesses predict what will happen in the future by using business intelligence and analytic tools. 

 

Businesses and organizations have concerns and objectives. To answer these questions and track performance against these objectives, they collect the necessary data, analyze it, and decide which actions to take to achieve their objectives.

 

On the technical side, raw data from business systems is collected. Data is processed before being saved in data warehouses, the cloud, applications, and files. Users can then access the data and begin the analysis process to answer business questions.

 

Large amounts of structured and unstructured data from both internal and external systems are collected, processed, and analyzed by business intelligence tools. Documents, images, emails, videos, journals, books, social media posts, files, and other media may be used as data sources. BI tools find this information using queries, which can then be presented in user-friendly formats like reports, dashboards, charts, and graphs.

 

Also Read | How BI Tools Help Data Scientists

 

Role of BI in the Modern Business 

 

The demand for immediate, precise, and actionable insights has reached unprecedented levels in today's fast-paced and ever-changing business environment. This article delves into the world of Business Intelligence (BI), revealing the indispensable roles of Business Intelligence (BI), its multifaceted components, needs, and pivotal importance within modern enterprises.

 

The significance of BI is demonstrated by the involvement of the world's leading IT vendors in these systems, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, SAS, QlikTech, and others. In fact, the companies' entire analytical reporting is based on the multidimensional data operated by BI.

 

Therefore, what specific tasks are BI systems supposed to solve? Top management can see profitable and unprofitable business directions, as well as the dynamics of income and expenses, with their assistance. He or she can reasonably predict the development of the situation in each area and make decisions after gathering the necessary data for specific sections.

 

Businesses in a variety of industries are turning to BI-based solutions. Marketers gain a tool that assists them in analyzing the market, studying competitors, customer behavior, forecasting demand and supply, determining the most effective sales tools, and analyzing the effectiveness of marketing promotions as a result of the business intelligence system. Business intelligence is used by production managers and logisticians to develop a production plan, manage shipments, inventory, supplier relationships, analyze vehicle routes, and so on.

 

Most Popular BI Tools

 

There are dozens of BI tools available today. These were the most frequently cited websites that ranked the best BI tools in order to determine the top five. These are just a few of the most common ones. 

 

1. Microsoft PowerBI

 

Power BI is a robust BI tool that includes both a free desktop application and a cloud-based platform for sharing reports and dashboards. Power BI is a full-featured tool that can transform and visualize data, as well as provide some impressive predictive modeling and AI-based features, making it a true market leader in the BI market.

 

2. QlikSense

 

QlikSense is a self-service BI tool that supports a wide range of analytics use cases, including guided apps and dashboards as well as custom and embedded analytics. It has a user-friendly interface that is optimized for touchscreens, advanced AI, and high-performance cloud platforms. Its associative exploration capability, Search & Conversational Analytics, allows users to ask questions and uncover actionable insights, which helps those new to using BI tools increase data literacy.

 

3. Infor Birst 

 

Infor Birst is a cloud-based analytics and business intelligence platform that aids in the comprehension and optimisation of complex analysis processes. Birst was acquired by Infor, a global company with a diverse portfolio of software products for specific industries, in 2017. Infor Birst is now a sophisticated end-to-end solution that includes a data warehouse, visualization and reporting platform, and a networked BI approach based on extensive automation and learning technologies. Customers gave the BI vendor's software 4.1 stars on Capterra and 3.9 stars on G2Crowd.

 

4. Zoho Analytics

 

Zoho Analytics is an easy-to-use BI tool that is also very affordable, making it ideal for small businesses and beginners. However, in order to keep costs low, Zoho Analytics does not sacrifice functionality. Many of the same impressive data preparation and visualization features can be found in the other BI tools on this list.

 

5. Pentaho 

 

Hitachi Vantara's Pentaho is an end-to-end data integration and analytics platform that provides a variety of business intelligence capabilities such as OLAP services, reporting, dashboarding, data mining and integration, ETL, and more. With all of these features, some of which are presented as open-source plugins, the software aims to assist businesses in managing large amounts of data in order to positively impact strategic decisions and business results. Pentaho's BA platform is available in the cloud or on-premises in two flavors: a community edition with limited features or a more comprehensive enterprise edition obtained through an annual subscription.

 

Also Read | 11 Top Business Analysis Tools

 

Real Life use cases of BI Tools

 

What is an illustration of business intelligence? Business intelligence can be used to serve personalized ads based on browsing history, provide contextual KPI data access to all employees, and centralize data from across the business into one digital ecosystem so processes can be more thoroughly reviewed. Here are some case studies that demonstrate how BI is helping businesses all over the world:

 

1. Starbucks 

 

Starbucks' success can be attributed in large part to its well-structured BI infrastructure and subsequent ability to make data-driven decisions quickly and on the fly.  You've probably visited or passed by a Starbucks at some point in your life, but have you ever wondered how they chose your favorite store location?

 

Starbucks carefully examines a variety of data points to determine what factors contribute to a successful store location.

 

2. The American Express Company 

 

American Express (AMEX) has long been a fixture in the financial world. Their credit cards are thought to account for nearly a quarter of all credit card transactions in the United States, and they are regarded as one of the world's most valuable brands. 

 

3. Walmart 

 

Walmart was drowning in data, with 245 million customers visiting over 10,000 stores and 10 websites. 

 

Walmart began cleaning up data from its 10 websites, each of which used a 10-node Hadoop cluster to store data. Walmart decided to transition to a single website and a 250-node Hadoop cluster to serve as the foundation for all of its online customer data in an effort to unify its online presence.

 

4. Chipotle Mexican Grill 

 

Chipotle Mexican Grill is a restaurant chain with over 2,400 locations worldwide. It used business intelligence to track operational effectiveness. Chipotle can now monitor the operational efficiency of each restaurant and provide detailed information in dashboards. Chipotle was able to create uniform KPIs for benchmarking and sharing improvement and success stories by standardizing reporting and working from the same data ecosystem. This solution saves the company thousands of hours.

 

To sum up, , Business intelligence improves how a company makes decisions by using data to answer questions about the company's past and present. Teams across an organization can use it to track key metrics and organize around goals. Self-service solutions are used in modern business intelligence tools to make it easier for stakeholders to access and explore their data.