Digital transformation is a global phenomenon in which most companies are immersed. In addition, technological implementation brings multiple advantages to the organizations. This macro-process allows, as one of several aspects, to optimize and simplify the entire process and the way tasks are carried out in each of the company’s departments. To achieve this, one of the technologies that plays a key role in the course of this transformation is BI or Business Intelligence, as it provides solid information to the decision-making process.
Understanding Business Intelligence
BI is part of the so-called group known as Information Technology. As such, it combines various applications – such as Business Analytics, Data Mining, Data Visualization, and others – in order to transform the vast amount of data a company has into practical information that can be applied to the organization’s strategic and tactical decisions. Decisions that help make the right changes, eliminate inefficiencies, and quickly adapt the organization to environmental changes.
BI tools analyze databases and present their results in the form of reports, summaries, dashboards, charts and maps that provide users with detailed information about the state of the business.
How Business Intelligence works?
Each company and each organization has its own questions and goals, which are always related to information management. Hence the importance of applying IT tools in the right way to be able to answer these questions and achieve these goals in the most efficient way possible. It is therefore necessary to find the right data, analyze it and in that way determine the most suitable action to take.
All this is made possible by collecting the company’s raw data about its activities. This data is then processed and classified in various databases. Once stored, users can access them for analysis to guide their decisions.
How are Business Intelligence and Digital Transformation connected?
Starting a digital transformation journey within a company can have different goals, again depending on the type of organization and the problems or challenges that need to be addressed. However, beyond the form that the digital transformation strategy may take, there is always a common goal, which is the optimization and elimination of inefficiencies that may be found in different parts of the process or in different departments.
For this, it is essential to have a solid database from both inside and outside the organization that will allow you to describe its present and past reality, as well as indicate new and potential development alternatives. This is where Business Intelligence plays a key role, thanks to the support it provides to the decision-making process through concrete, real and accessible data analysis.
Why is it important to apply Business Intelligence to my company?
BI can help organizations in taking better decisions by properly describing current and past realities. An analyst can leverage BI information to uncover where business performance can be improved, considering the market and allowing the organization to move forward. Ensuring that the tools for managing this data are working properly is therefore essential when defining a digital transformation strategy.
Business Intelligence Application Examples
BI allows people to examine data and understand the trend, optimizing the required effort to search, aggregate and analyze the data that is essential for solid decision making.
For instance, a company that wants to improve its supply chain management will need BI to determine where delays occur and the irregularities in the shipping process. The company can also use BI to find out which products experience the greatest delays and which transportation modes are most related to those delays.
In general, some of the areas where BI can help business make more efficient data-driven decisions are:
- Identify ways to increase sales,
- Analyze customer behavior,
- Benchmark data against competitors,
- Measuring performance,
- Optimize operations,
- Detect market trends,
- Discover new issues or problems to research.
Business intelligence and business analytics
BI helps users to make conclusions based on real data. Data scientists investigate specific data using advanced statistical and predictive tools in order to identify patterns or trends and thereby predict the future. BI uses these patterns and algorithms to arrive at real results in a usable language.
The border between the descriptive power of BI and the predictive/descriptive power of business analytics goes beyond the temporal horizon, and reaches the question of who is the user of the system. Precisely in this sense, BI is responsible for providing accurate, concise and direct information, taking a picture of the company’s current situation, so it can be useful for managers. The application of business analytics, on the other hand, requires the work of more specialized users, such as data science professionals, to be able to analyze and translate the projections and trends that may emerge from the data.
How important is the role of Dashboards?
One of the most common ways to represent a company’s data is through visualization, as people tend to be more visually perceptive.
Visualization is often based on dashboards that can easily “tell the story” of the organization and highlight trends or patterns that would be impossible to access by analyzing raw data manually. Creating dashboards therefore makes information more accessible and understandable.
Find out what we do and ask for more information
moltosenso provides a consulting service focused on process optimization and digital transformation through the application of ICT solutions.
Our solutions include the design and development of customized business intelligence systems allowing the creation of monitoring dashboards designed for different levels of users.
Contact us to learn more or to simply get more information.
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