What is Business Intelligence with Example?

Several successful companies utilize BI tools and software for their decision-making process to optimize their production process. Real business problems require thorough data analysis and report generation, which can only be provided through BI software and tools.  

Business Intelligence is a technology-driven suite of processes and software that analyses and converts raw data regarding an organizations operations into understandable and profitable knowledge. The BI industry has grown multiple folds over the last 2 decades. 

Owing to the great contribution of BI technologies in handling and organizing huge amounts of raw and unorganized data into developing new business strategies and providing predictive analysis of business operations, the industry has experienced significant growth.

According to the Zion Market Research report, the Global BI market has attained a revenue of $22.16 billion USD in 2020 with a forecast of it reaching $42.95 billion USD by 2028. 

Business Intelligence improves business process by aiding them in multiple ways, such as:

• Improved productivity: Enabling the quick and easy generation of ad-hoc reports, BI increases the productivity of businesses by allowing employees to focus on other tasks, for instance a report shows that Univision experienced an 80% growth in yield in the first quarter alone, owing to BI.
• Enhanced visibility: A BI program enhances visibility and highlights areas that require attention and improvement.
• Real-time insights: A BI system allows organizations to make well-informed decisions based on real-time data available on holistic dashboards and scorecards, regarding real-time circumstances. 
• Real-time analytics: By making use of BI analytics even non-technical staff can access data and custom reports. This way a vast number of the workforce is aided with the power of analytics.
• Better accountability: The successful implementation of a BI program enhances accountability and ownership among employees.
• Optimized business processes: BI programs ease and automate analytics through advanced methodologies such as computer modeling and predictive analysis.

As explained earlier in the article, Business Intelligence refers to a suite of software, processes, technologies, and architectures that aid in the easy and precise conversion of abundant raw data into meaningful and profitable information for devising strategies regarding business actions.

A BI system helps to spot business problems, identifies market trends, and improves business performance, visibility, accountability, and productivity. BI systems can be used both by the heads of a business company as well as business users, for providing better customer experience.

Many companies even have analysts on the team who use business intelligence tools to create predictive, prescriptive, and highly visualized data. The difference between a business analyst and business analytics in simple words is that an analyst is a data-related position in a company and analytics is the tools, systems, and processes uses to process, report, and visualize company data. 

Business Intelligence or BI is a combination of various technologies, software, services and processes, that help in carrying out business operations with ease and in generating profits. Business Intelligence tools process raw data into useful information. BI promotes making fact-based and data-driven decisions by studying previous performance trends, and it impacts the strategic as well as operational decision of an organization.

An example of using business intelligence is the use of BI analytics by a holiday lodge owner. The owner/manager will use BI applications for gathering information regarding peak holiday times, room rates, customer preferences, and average revenue generated per room. The hotel manager can also make use of business intelligence software to analyze customer surveys, understand the competitive position in the market and offer prices and discounts accordingly. 

Following are two real-life scenarios where business intelligence is used for making informed decisions and devising strategies:

• BI tools are used in big organizations for generating analytical reports for the various departments, thereby allowing the IT staff to focus on other tasks. 
• BI is used in banks. Branch managers have access to BI applications, helping them identify their most profitable customers. 

A cycle is a series of steps that keep coming back to the same point of action while reaching and exploring new horizons. The business intelligence life cycle is as follows:

• It begins with a problem.
• Available data sources are identified. 
• The raw and organized data is organized and assembled into understandable and useful information. 
• Reports and charts are developed. 
• The collected data is verified, and the same steps are again conducted. 

The business intelligence strategy works by gathering the necessary relevant data, storing it in data warehouses and analyzing it to identify the steps needed to be taken to optimize the operations and increase the productivity and profitability. Successful companies frequently conduct business analytics as an essential component of their business intelligence strategy. Business intelligence strategy comprises of a cyclic, analytic process that answers questions and the questions found from these answers too, leading to further exploration and discovery of crucial information.  

‘Business intelligence’ is an umbrella term that refers to a suite of software and processes used for collecting, storing, and analyzing raw data into profitable information that is used to devise business strategies and optimize business performance. Over time, business intelligence has included more performance improvement processes under its umbrella that aim to help in solving multiple problems aiding the engineering team, sales team, and others in a business. 

• BI can solve problems in reporting by sharing data analysis for making crucial business decisions.
• With BI tools descriptive analytics and statistical analysis can be performed so business owners can understand the causes and reasons behind various market trends.  
• BI helps in finding answers to queries from the datasets.
• Problems with data compiling and preparation can be sorted with BI software, as it compiles multiple data sources, and helps in identifying and preparing for the various dimensions of business.

As business intelligence tools helps business in compiling and analyzing huge amounts of data for making well-informed and strategic business decisions, it can be used in various domains of an organization.

BI is used to analyze the historical context of market trends and business performance to forecast demand accordingly, to monitor current performance, to optimize and streamline operations, to accelerate the decision-making process, and for identifying and removing redundant tasks and inefficiencies in business operations.

All of this leads to BI driving more and new revenues, increase productivity and profitability, and developing customer loyalty through customer relationship management by analyzing customer behavior, and thereby gaining an edge over competitors. 

Business intelligence is the future for companies who want to leverage the power of the past and existing data to make more informed, data-driven decisions for the future of the business.