What is Business Intelligence and how is it improving SMEs

WHAT IS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE?

Assuming that everyone reading is not familiar with the term, we will try to explain it in an elementary fashion. Business intelligence is the collateral use of data generated by the enterprise and the tools with the ability to modify as well as use that data in a way that the following needs are fulfilled, namely:-

• Analysis of current situation of the organization’s business activities
• Devising possible plans of action as per the situational analysis
• AI assisted decision making through judgement of complex, multi-variable trends

Other interesting yet less complex features of a BI tool include visualization of data and creation of dashboards for generating multiple reports.

WHY BI IS ADVISABLE?

Effective reporting is the essence of managerial decision making. We’ve been learning the phrase by heart since senior school years but only a few have witnessed empirical evidence. To quote a real-life example, last month we had the opportunity to engage in a risk management project for a new service enterprise. They had every IT tool in place except one which was a CRM System. Upon thorough assessment of the impact of lacking a CRM System it was found that the company was losing a huge amount of opportunities as well as revenue.

Considering it was an SME, this was fairly steep. Our intent with this example is to establish that failure in reporting of conversions/non-conversions etc. to the top management resulted in hefty losses to the stakeholders.

Business Intelligence software’s integrates all systems in an entity and employs tools ranging from data warehousing to complex analytics for effective as well as efficient decision making. The other key merits include real-time visualization with integrated scenario making tools too.

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