By now we’re sure you’ve heard about Business Intelligence, or BI. Everyone is saying that it can help your business and streamline your processes. Perhaps you're on the fence about it? Maybe you don't know enough about it to make a decision? Let us break it down into the simplest form for you… Business Intelligence is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyse an organisation's raw data. Now that you know what it is, you may ask if it's really worth the money? The answer is, YES! and here’s why.
BI allows your decisions to be driven by data
When you are the one making day-to-day decisions about where your company is heading, or where to best spend your money, it can become a stressful roller coaster. Sometimes you just have a hunch...which can be very wrong. Other times decisions are made based on anger or personal issues, or even out of fear.
With a quality Business Intelligence software in place, you’ll never have to speculate again about whether or not to trust your gut. BI enables you to get well-organised and detailed data that allows you to move in the right direction based on hard facts. Having that ability arguably leads to better informed business decisions. Having consolidated facts about your business helps to also make very specific adjustments. For example, you might find that one of your products or services isn't selling well and choose to stop offering that product, or make an adjustment to it.
The real beauty of BI is its ability to help you get to know your customers better. What are they buying? How often are they returning? This allows you to increase opportunities for your high-value customers. Business Intelligence can improve profits in all of these scenarios.
BI data helps you decide where to cut costs
It’s the question we all want the answer to… how can we improve profits? Well the answer lies in Business Intelligence. The reason for this? it helps you find out where you can cut costs. It’s simple common sense… if your expenses are less, your profits immediately go up. The data you receive from using BI is packaged in a format that's easy to read. You can even do a query search to find specific information. When you evaluate your data, you can find out what isn't working efficiently and fix it. You can learn which products or services are not selling and stop providing them. Sometimes, you will discover that you can cut costs by using another manufacturer, or offering a more tailored service based on your customers needs. There are innumerable places where BI can help you cut costs, and thus, improve your profits.
Some of the BI products we offer
Greater insights into consumer behaviour
One of the main advantages of investing in BI and skilled personnel is the fact that it will boost your ability to analyse the current consumer buying trends. Like any business, once you understand what your consumers are buying, you can use this information to develop products that match the current consumption trends and consequently improve your profitability.
BI can be used to enable informed business decisions across the whole business, increasing operational and strategic efficiency on both a micro and macro level. Whether you are looking to to gain an accurate view of sales or profit figures in real-time, consolidate critical reports, drill-down deeper into the numbers or set business priorities and goals at a top level, implementing an effective BI tool can help you make the right decisions at the right time.
To learn more about the Business Intelligence products we offer at Advance get in touch with us today!
