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.
Businesses are typically inundated with information – from client data to purchasing analytics, supply chain metrics and more. To stay competitive in today’s data-driven world, companies need to transform this data into actionable insights. And they can do this through business intelligence (BI). BI helps companies of all sizes and industries analyze their data effectively, make informed decisions, and ultimately drive growth.
With BI, companies can enhance marketing and sales strategies, better understand customer needs, and unlock new market opportunities. It also empowers businesses to identify risks, address weaknesses, and improve overall resilience. In short, BI turns your data into a strategic asset, enabling companies to navigate change and pursue sustainable growth.
In this article, we highlight the crucial benefits of using BI, especially for a small or mid-sized business.
What is Business Intelligence (BI)?
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. BI goes beyond generating reports – it helps companies analyze their data to help them understand trends, extract insights, and enables them to understand what they should do next.
Many small and mid-sized companies 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 for Small & Mid-Sized Businesses
📈 Improves 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:
Consolidated data
Better data quality
Fast and accurate reporting
📈 Better & Quicker Decision Making
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. Modern BI solutions offer built-in artificial intelligence (AI) features that streamline data interpretation, discerning patterns, anomalies, and trends within vast datasets. Predictive analytics powered by AI not only forecast future trends but also empower businesses to proactively respond to emerging opportunities and challenges. 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, accelerated by AI
Improved speed and accuracy in the decision-making process
📈 Actionable Insights into Consumer Behavior
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
📈 Optimized 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
Business Use Cases of BI
Wondering how BI will fit into your small or mid-sized business? BI brings value in almost every department. Here are some use case examples to highlight this:
Customer Service: With a unified data source, customer service agents can quickly access customer and product information, enabling faster resolution of inquiries and concerns.
Finance: Financial firms can assess organizational health, identify risks, and predict future performance by analyzing customer histories and market conditions, all through a single interface.
Sales and Marketing: Unified data on promotions, pricing, and customer behaviour helps sales and marketing teams better plan campaigns, target segments, and drive sales.
Supply Chain: A single view of global data accelerates the movement of goods and helps pinpoint inefficiencies or bottlenecks in the supply chain
Security and Compliance: Centralized data improves security by identifying issues faster and streamlining compliance reporting with a unified system.
Getting Started with BI
Considering BI for your organization? Here’s a brief snapshot of what you should keep in mind.
Selecting a BI Solution
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 robust 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.
AI Capabilities – in-built AI features offer advanced data analytics, predictive analysis, and intelligent automation features that expand traditional data insights exponentially.
BI Best Practices to Set in Place
Selecting a BI solution is just the first step. Applying BI in your business goes beyond software, it is also a culture shift. Here are some BI best practices to follow to create a data-driven culture.
Define your objectives – Determine what information is most useful to your business will help you set clear objectives and determine what data needs to be collected
Assess data quality – Assess your existing data is relevant and reliable and ensure your results are accurate by monitoring your data
Focus on training – Ensure employees are given proper training on the new BI system, tailored to the specific needs on each department.
Prioritize Access to Data – Ensure end-users have easy access to the relevant data
✨ Learn More: 7 Steps to Creating a Data-Driven Work Culture
Kwixand Solutions Can Help Your Business Transform with BI
Ready to transform your business with BI? Got questions about selecting BI software? The team at Kwixand Solutions can help. As trusted Power BI & Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partners, we dive deep to understand your business and design creative solutions and processes tailored to help you succeed. Book a free consultation to chat with our team about your data projects, reporting needs, or evaluating a BI solution for your SMB.
