Business Intelligence is of pivotal importance in today’s technology-driven marketplace. Business Intelligence is referred to the tools and stratagems businesses utilize for gathering information both from external and internal sources. This valuable information could be utilized while making informed decisions and while crafting effective marketing and business stratagems. Developing Business Intelligence has been regarded as the cornerstone of success and growth in businesses. The ability to gather the perfect information, analyze and effectively utilize it for appropriate decision-making is an integral part of boosting the interests of various businesses. In this context, marketing expert Eric Dalius points out to us that Howard Dresner had defined Business Intelligence in 1989 as the term that is used to describe methods and concepts for improving business decision-making simply by utilizing effective fact-based support systems.
Risks You May Encounter If You Fail to Utilize BI
You may come across many risks if you fail to take advantage of Business Intelligence. Some of the risks involved are the following:
- You could miss or lose strategic growth opportunities
- You may fail to take the fullest advantage of all your cost savings
- You may fail to deliver as per customer satisfaction
- You may lose your competitive edge
EJ Dalius Discusses the Features to Look for while Choosing an Effective Business Intelligence Tool
There are a plethora of tools that help you in conducting Business Intelligence. However, they are quite affordable and could be used conveniently. While choosing the right Business Intelligence tools, you may consider the following features that your BI software must necessarily be equipped with.
Integrations: While choosing perfect BI software, you must keep in mind that it should be compatible and must work effectively with the already existing systems including sales tools, CRM, financial software, and supply chain, etc.
Ease-of-use: You must consider avoiding investing your money and time in any BI software that is complicated and certainly not easy to use. You could certainly come across a better choice. It the tool is difficult to use, you are less likely to get into the habit of using it.
Customized Dashboards: You are looking to come up with results you require not simply standard reports. So your BI must boast of custom dashboards to cater to your unique requirements.
Interactive Reports: You must be able to access a report and understand the specifics, look for trends, highlight data exceptions, and start sorting data into diverse sets utilizing new parameters.
Predictive Analysis: Predictive analytics helps businesses to become forward-looking and proactive, anticipating behaviors and outcomes based on data and certainly not assumptions or plain hunch. Predictive analysis is invaluable to your business. Utilizing gathered information, businesses could utilize this feature for evaluating business decisions in advance and making a strategic plan.
Ranking Reports: This critical report feature helps you to choose both the worst performing and the best performing data sets in your business. This valuable information could be used for stocking up on your best-selling merchandise. Moreover, you could consider dropping all low-performing items, rewarding top sales staff, or identifying the top-performing department.
Top Business Intelligence Tools
Microsoft Power BI: This comes up with lots of important data and insight presented in an efficient and easy-to-use dashboard that boasts of custom reports, predictive analytics, and analysis. Microsoft Power BI is known for integrating seamlessly with MS Office. You could input all unstructured data collected from other sources. It helps in creating a data-driven culture in your business.
Sisense: We know that Sisense is effective API-first cloud technology and it certainly makes it simple for mashing up data and generating analytic apps. This is known for aggregating data from diverse sources effectively into one single dashboard and boasts of easy and simple drag-and-drop functionality. It helps users in creating their custom reports and gaining insight from data.
Zoho Analytics: This tool is easy and convenient for a novice to master. Moreover, it has the ability to access data from over 500 diverse applications throughout the web along with its very own amazing suite of tools. Zoho Analytics is supposed to be a popular self-service BI, as well as, data analytics software. This helps you in analyzing your data visually, creating striking data visualizations, and discovering hidden insights in a matter of a few minutes.
Conclusion
Eric J Dalius believes that as several other organizations start embracing the BI systems, their impact would be felt across numerous industries. Enhanced insights into organization information help in improving real-time reporting features. Moreover, the capability of assessing fast progress towards objectives and goals is a major benefit that is derived from efficient BI systems.
Author Bio:
Eric Dalius -An Entrepreneur Focused on Making a Difference
Eric Dalius has achieved great success through a multitude of entrepreneurial and marketing initiatives. EJ Dalius has created ground breaking innovations. He is keen to share his knowledge with other talented aspiring entrepreneurs.
