Business intelligence is a set of methods and tools that help analyze whether the company as a whole is working successfully or not.
Business intelligence tools are used to:
Understand whether or not the business is achieving its goals. With the help of tools, they collect numerical data and use them to study whether the sales plan is being fulfilled, whether employees are coping with the load, and whether advertising pays off.
Find out what the company needs to improve. For example, which advertising channels are profitable to use in the future, and which ones are better to disable. Or which product is more actively sold, and which one should be excluded from the assortment due to low demand.
Make decisions that are based not on assumptions and hypotheses, but on exact numbers. For example, if a company sees in business intelligence reports from which advertising channels more requests come from, even more money is spent on these channels.
Improve business strategies. If it is clear from the analytics that the company sells little, then it can revise the sales scripts, the response time of managers, and hire additional employees. If it is clear that advertising does not pay off, change the settings in the advertising account, landing page, advertising banners.
During analytics, they process data from different sources, and then they translate everything into graphs, diagrams, charts, so that it is easier to perceive and study them.
How business intelligence works
Collects and processes data from multiple sources
To do this, use BI-systems – Business Intelligence. They are integrated with any sources in which the business collects data: Excel files, CRM, SQL servers and various programs – 1C, SAP.
Further, through the API connection, BI generates reports, instantly “pulling up” already loaded data from sources and those that are entered in real time.
Looking for patterns and deviations
Business analytics uses programs and applications for exploratory, statistical, and predictive analysis. The analysis takes place using algorithms or pre-created templates. These algorithms detect:
What goods or services are in demand, what should always be available and at what price.
Possible risks that can reduce the company’s profits and revenues. After the algorithms offer solutions that will help avoid risks.
Future behavior of buyers. This happens on the basis of available information about past purchases of buyers, about their behavior on the site and interaction with the company.
What indicators directly affect profit. The business takes control of these indicators, because if they change, the company will lose money.
Discrepancies between actual and planned sales figures. When the cause is found, the algorithms determine the cause, after which the business eliminates it.
Creates reports and graphs
When there is a lot of data and all of it is represented as numbers, it is difficult to study them. To make things simple, BI systems translate arrays of numbers into graphs, charts, flowcharts, and maps.
Further, graphs and charts are adjusted for themselves: they change the period, filter indicators, add display of metrics or hide them.
After the analytics is ready, managers study the reports and make decisions:
- how to plan an advertising budget;
- whether or not to change the sales plan, KPI, sales scripts;
- whether it is necessary to connect additional advertising channels and make changes to the settings of those that are already running;
- Is it profitable to expand the staff?