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Strategic Decisions with Business Intelligence (BI)

What is Business Intelligence? Making the right decisions is at the heart of a successful business – it’s what defines whether you seize opportunities or miss them. But with the volume of data growing every day, this can seem like an overwhelming challenge. Therefore, we will dedicate this article to answer the following question: How can Business Intelligence help us make strategic decisions?

We will see what methods are used to collect information, their benefits, how to implement an effective Business Intelligence strategy and the most popular tools that can help us with this task.

What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

We know how frustrating it can be for companies to make critical decisions based on intuition or scattered data. It’s a common problem: too much information, but not enough clarity on how to use it to drive growth.

This is where Business Intelligence (BI)or Business Intelligence, has become an indispensable ally. This approach combines processes, technologies and strategies designed to analyze data and transform it into valuable information for decision making.

In other words, BI helps you get a clear and complete picture of what’s really going on in your business, eliminating guesswork and relying on solid data.

How does it do it? BI integrates a number of key components:

  • Data collection: From your internal bases to external sources such as social networks or financial markets.
  • Storage and organization: Centralizing everything in one place through data warehouses and data lakes.
  • Advanced analysis: Identifying patterns, trends and hidden opportunities.
  • Visualization: Presenting information in a clear and practical way with dashboards and interactive graphics.

With this, companies can solve essential questions such as Which products are driving sales? Which processes need adjustments to become more efficient? How do you measure actual performance against targets?

If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, read on. In the next section, we’ll explain the most effective methods for gathering the information you need to transform your business.

What methods are used to collect information?

The first step to get the most out of Business Intelligence is to collect the right data. And for that, we’ve identified the most effective methods for gathering quality information that really drives strategic decisions:

  1. Internal sources: Data generated within your company, such as sales records, inventories, customer bases and financial performance. These sources are the backbone of any BI strategy.
  2. External sources: Market information, social media, industry trends and competitor data. These sources enrich your analysis, giving you a broader perspective.
  3. Collection automation: Tools such as ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) streamline the process by extracting data from multiple sources, transforming it for analysis and loading it into centralized storage.
  4. Customer surveys and feedback: Listening to your customers will always be key. Surveys, forms and online feedback are excellent ways to understand their needs and improve your offer.
  5. IoT and real-time data: In industries such as retail or logistics, IoT devices enable real-time data collection, providing immediate insights into operations and consumer behavior.

Benefits of applying Business Intelligence

In the current context of digital transformation, companies that do not leverage the potential of BI are falling behind. With the volume and complexity of data available today, it is essential to have tools that turn it into clear and useful information. If you still need information to convince you, here are the 6 key benefits:

  1. Improved decision making: BI enables companies to make decisions based on data, not assumptions. This improves the accuracy and effectiveness of every strategy implemented, which can make the difference between success and failure.
  2. Trend and pattern detection: Through the analysis of large volumes of data, BI helps to identify hidden patterns that are not always obvious to the naked eye. This can be crucial to anticipate market trends or customer needs before they become widespread demand.
  3. Process optimization: A correct implementation of BI allows the detection of inefficiencies within the company’s processes. Optimizing these processes can generate substantial savings and improve overall performance.
  4. Personalization and customer focus: Thanks to customer data analysis, companies can create more personalized experiences. By better understanding their behaviors, preferences and expectations, it is easier to offer products or services that are truly aligned with what they need, improving satisfaction and loyalty.
  5. Increased competitiveness: In a saturated market, companies that are able to use their data effectively gain a competitive advantage. BI helps to better understand internal and competitive strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to make informed decisions to better position oneself in the marketplace.
  6. Performance measurement: With BI, it is easier to measure the performance of different areas of the company. From sales analysis to the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, having accurate and updated indicators allows for quick and strategic adjustments.

How to make a BI strategy step by step?

It’s time to put everything we’ve talked about into practice. We can tell you in advance that, while designing a strategy of Business Intelligence (BI) While effective BI is not an instantaneous process, the results can completely transform the way your company makes decisions in the future.

1. Define clear objectives

Before you start, it is essential to establish what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase sales? Or perhaps improve the customer experience? Having clear objectives will help you focus your efforts and choose the right tools.

For example, if your goal is to improve customer retention, you can use BI to analyze behavioral patterns and segment your customers according to their preferences.

Identify relevant data sources

Once you have your objectives clear, it’s time to decide what data is most relevant to achieve them. Does it come from your internal systems such as CRM? Or from external sources such as social media or market research?

In our case, if we are looking to optimize marketing campaigns, we will analyze, for example, user behavior data on the web.

3. Collect and store data

Gathering the right data is a critical task. Many companies face the challenge of having scattered or hard-to-access data. The key here is to integrate and store the information efficiently in data warehouses or data lakes. This will allow you to have everything centralized and organized, ready for analysis.

4. Analyze the data

This is where the magic of BI happens. This is the time when we use analytics tools to find patterns, correlations and trends. This is where the BI tools tools, such as Power BI or Tableau, which allow for deep and detailed analysis.

By analyzing your product sales you could, for example, discover that certain customer segments buy more at certain times of the year, allowing you to customize offers to maximize sales.

5. Display the information

Once the data have been analyzed, it is crucial to represent them visually. The dashboards and graphs allow us to understand the results quickly and clearly. Good visualization makes it easy for any team member to interpret the data and make informed decisions.

6. Make data-driven decisions

Ultimately, the goal of this whole strategy is to make more informed decisions. By having a clear view of the data, we can make strategic adjustments, improve processes and make faster and better decisions.

The most popular BI tools

Choosing the right tool depends on your specific needs, the volume of data you work with and, of course, the resources available.

Here are some of the main BI tools:

Power BI (Microsoft)

Power BI has established itself as one of the most popular BI tools, thanks to its easy integration with other Microsoft tools, such as Excel and Azure. This tool allows you to create interactive visualizations, dashboards and reports from data from various sources.

Advantages:

  • User friendly and easy to use interface.
  • Integration with other Microsoft platforms.
  • Advanced analysis capabilities.

Tableau

Tableau is known for its powerful data visualization capabilities. It allows you to create interactive dashboards and real-time graphs that enable quick and clear understanding of data. It is especially useful for companies that need to perform complex analysis with large volumes of data.

Advantages:

  • Powerful data visualizations.
  • User-friendly interface.
  • High capacity to handle large volumes of data.
  1. Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense is distinguished by its ability to deliver real-time data analysis and its focus on associative analysis. Unlike other tools, Qlik Sense allows users to explore data and find connections between them in a freer and more flexible way.

Advantages:

  • Associative analysis to find hidden relationships between data.
  • Advanced customization.
  • Ability to integrate data from various sources.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a free tool that integrates seamlessly with other Google products, such as Google Analytics and Google Sheets. It allows you to create customizable reports and dashboards that can be easily shared with other users.

Advantages:

  • Free and easy to use.
  • Integration with other Google tools.
  • Ideal for small and medium-sized companies.

5. Looker

Looker, part of Google Cloud, focuses on data analytics and information discovery by creating customizable data models. It is ideal for companies that need to perform deep analytics on large volumes of data.

Advantages:

  • In-depth data analysis.
  • Integration with Google Cloud.
  • Flexible data modeling.

6. SAP BusinessObjects

SAP BusinessObjects is a robust BI platform designed for large organizations that require large-scale data analysis. It allows you to create reports and perform complex analysis on large volumes of data.

Advantages:

  • High customization capacity.
  • Supports large volumes of data.
  • Integration with other SAP solutions.

How to choose the right BI tool for your company?

When choosing the right BI tool for your company, one of the first factors to consider is your organization’s size and data needs. size of your organization and data needs. If you are a small or medium-sized company, tools such as Google Data Studio o Power BI may be ideal, as they offer intuitive interfaces and affordable solutions to get you started with BI without a large investment.

On the other hand, if you have a larger enterprise, with complex data volumes or deep analysis needs, solutions such as SAP BusinessObjects o Qlik Sense might be more suitable, as they are designed to handle large volumes of data and offer advanced analytics capabilities.

The budget available also plays an important role in choosing the right tool. Some tools, such as Power BI y Google Data Studiooffer free or low-cost plans, making them an attractive option for companies with limited resources.

However, if your company is willing to make a larger investment for deeper analytics and advanced customization, tools such as Looker y SAP BusinessObjects offer powerful capabilities, albeit at a considerable cost.

Another crucial factor is integration with other platforms. If you already use specific tools such as Microsoft o GoogleBy choosing a BI solution that integrates easily with these platforms, you can save time and effort. For example, Power BI integrates seamlessly with the Microsoft, y Google Data Studio synchronizes with Googleproducts, making it easy to consolidate and analyze data without additional complications.

Traditional BI vs Modern BI

Business Intelligence has evolved from traditional methods to more agile and dynamic solutions. In the Traditional BIcompanies collected and stored data in data warehouses. data warehousesanalyzing historical information to generate reports.

However, this reactive approach often limited the ability to make quick decisions.

With the modern BIBI, companies now leverage advanced artificial intelligence artificial intelligence y machine learning to obtain real-time analysis and predict future trends. In addition, the interactive dashboards pThis change has made BI more accessible to everyone in the organization, not just data experts. This change has made BI more accessible to everyone in the organization, not just data experts.

Business Intelligence vs Business Analytics

Although they are often used interchangeably, Business Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) have different, yet complementary, approaches. While BI focuses on collect and analyze historical data to understand to understand past and current performance, the Business Analytics goes a step further by predicting future results through advanced techniques, such as predictive analytics.

In summary, the BI helps to understand what happened and why, whereas the BA provides insight into what might happen and how to act on it. Both are essential, but each plays a different role in the business strategy: BI provides solid and reliable information for tactical for tactical decisions, while the BA is oriented towards strategic decision strategic decision making and the future of the company.

Conclusion

The Business Intelligence is no longer just an optional tool for companies; it has become a strategic necessity. In a competitive market where data-driven decisions are at the heart of business growth, BI offers a key advantage: the ability to make informed, fast and, above all, accurate decisions.

As performance experts, we know that the best way to generate value is not just by capturing data, but by knowing what to do with it. The right analysis can mean the difference between a successful campaign and one that doesn’t deliver results.

Companies that are able to integrate BI effectively are those that not only understand their past performance, but anticipate the future with greater clarity.

Implementing a BI strategy is an investment in the future. It’s not just about tools, it’s about creating a data-centric mindset. It’s about transforming raw information into actionable insights to optimize every step: from focusing on lead acquisition to personalizing the user experience. If your company has not yet taken this step, you may be missing valuable opportunities that your competitors are already taking advantage of.

At Boomitwe have the experience and the tools to help you build a BI strategy that not only collects data, but turns it into decisions that really impact your bottom line.

Vero Wiedemann

Vero Wiedemann

CRM & Automation Expert | Performance Leader, Boomit. 6 años de experiencia en el incansable mundo del marketing digital, 4 que nos acompaña a nosotros.

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