Wondering whether your small or mid-sized business could benefit from BI? Find out how BI can drive business growth, boost revenue, and improve your decision-making.
Business Intelligence or BI is a set of processes and methods that collect, store and analyze business data to optimize performance. Raw data is processed and transformed into actionable insights, metrics, and dashboards that give you a complete view of your business.
Many small and mid-sized business owners may erroneously think that BI solutions are too costly, difficult to integrate, or too advanced for a business of their size. However, that is not the case. Thanks to simple-to-use, self-serve BI tools, small and mid-sized businesses can leverage the key benefits of BI for themselves.
Top Benefits of Business Intelligence (BI) for SMBs
📈 BI Benefit 1: More Operational Efficiency
Do your employees spend hours on end gathering and consolidating data from different sources, such as Google Analytics, your CRM, and more? Is a lot of time wasted on compiling reports? Many BI tools handle data consolidation for you which means that with just a couple of clicks, you can gather information from all your data sources. This, in turn, will streamline your reporting process and make your company more efficient. That time saved can be better used to innovate and focus on revenue-generating activities.
Results:
Better data quality
Fast and accurate reporting
📈 BI Benefit 2: Smarter Business Decisions
Imagine having all your historical and real-time company data at your fingertips. Your BI tool will provide you with actionable insights on performance, trends, comparisons, and projections. You will be able to view the overall performance of your company and instantly see what is working and what is not. This leads to better decision making, as you have a 360-degree view into business performance, accurate data to rely on, and will also be able to forecast and spot trends or patterns.
Results:
Access to actionable business insights
Improved speed and accuracy in the decision-making process
📈 BI Benefit 3: More Insights into Consumer Behaviour
To turn profits, you need to be in tune with your customers and meet their needs. When you use business intelligence, you will be able to discover and analyze the behavioral and buying patterns of your customers. When you understand what they are purchasing, at what margins, and when, you can use this information to anticipate their needs, deliver better service, or improve your offerings. You will also be able to take advantage of unidentified opportunities.
Results:
Improved customer experience
Increased competitive advantage
📈 BI Benefit 4: Optimize Supply Chain and Inventory
If you are a manufacturing company, BI can help you streamline and optimize your supply chain. By providing insights into things like deliveries, supply, and expenditures, you'll have more control over shipments, costs, and carrier performance. A BI solution could also help you track inventory across time and location, as well as inventory turnover, margins, and more so you can avoid overstocks or under-stock situations.
Results:
Reduced inventory costs and errors
Reduce wasteful spending
Getting Started with BI
If you decide to invest in BI so you can grow your revenue, improve decision-making, and increase your competitive edge, you will need to evaluate and select a BI solution that is right for your business. While there are numerous options available, a decent platform should offer these common features listed below.
Customizable dashboards – lets you create and customize your own dashboards that are updated in real-time.
Data visualization - lets you transform data into visual graphs, charts, bars, and more with an intuitive interface.
Integrated data sources - allow you to seamlessly connect with all your data sources with little to no coding effort on your part.
Collaboration options – lets you easily share reports and dashboards and work with your coworkers, so everyone is on the same page.
Got questions? Contact our team of Power BI experts about your data projects, reporting needs, or evaluating a BI solution for your SMB.
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