Data and Business Intelligence are everything for many modern businesses. Data tells where customers are coming from, how the market’s changing, and where to consolidate. Also, Data can give better insight into employee performance, help streamline services, and make more agile deployments. Data’s also useless unless you know how to handle it. In the mad rush toward Big Data, it’s easy to forget that understanding information isn’t always a simple task. In simpler terms, it doesn’t matter how much data you have unless you can extract results from it. Fortunately, business intelligence and things like Bi certifications for software vendors like Oracle and SAP make it easier to handle data and get meaningful results.

What Are Business Intelligence Tools?

Business intelligence tools are software suites that take data sets and let users interact with them to ask questions and get understandable results. However, the catch is that many tools are better for specific groups of users. Marketers may care about the nuances of how customers behave on a website, while executives often prefer understanding trends.

What Makes Some Business Intelligence Tools Better?

Business intelligence tools are not equal, and no tool is perfect for every company at all times. Some businesses may want to have several assets, allowing groups to manipulate data sets differently instead of having everyone train on the same tool. If we look below the surface level, we can identify a few common points that make tools valuable. First, a business intelligence tool should work with the kind of data you have. If your data is incompatible with your toolset, it’s not going to work. Second, a BI solution should display data relevant to your business. The best systems don’t just tell you the results; they help you figure out why things are happening in several ways. Armed with that knowledge, you can make better decisions. Third, BI tools should help forecast future performance. With enough data, it’s often possible to estimate the results of actions with uncanny precision. If you can do this well, you can almost always make the best decisions for the company, maximizing its performance.

The Limits of Business Intelligence

Some platforms might want you to believe that you should base every part of your business on BI tools, but that’s not true. Intelligence only goes so far. For example, UPS trucks take as few left turns as possible. Intelligence and analysis show that, in the United States, left turns add to delivery and idling times, whereas right-hand turns are faster. When you have tens of thousands of vehicles, the costs of left-hand turns add up to a lot of money over time. You can use data to optimize routes and which packages to put on each truck, but you also have to deal with the fact that delivery vehicles have a hard maximum for what they can carry. Customer orders are often unpredictable, so you don’t know what to put on a truck until right before you do it. In short, real-world limitations mean that the theoretical best routes are sometimes impossible, so delivery companies have to settle for routes that are good enough given the various constraints. Business intelligence is valuable, but there are limits, so you need to figure out how your company can best leverage it.

The Best Applications of Business Intelligence

Here are some of the best areas to use business intelligence.

Goals

Business intelligence can help you define realistic and reasonable goals for your company. Most businesses want to keep growing; but setting impossible goals can lead to unrealistic expectations, burnout, and loss of otherwise-excellent personnel. By applying business intelligence, you can determine minimal performance goals, then successive levels of higher performance employees can try to reach. Tying achievable goals to appropriate rewards can encourage employees to work harder; increasing the likelihood they reach the company’s (and their own) objectives.

Reporting and Analysis

Reporting and analysis are fundamentally similar, using data to provide information to the company. However, they have different end goals. Reporting focuses on documenting things and clarifying how they’re going. This category includes sales reports, compliance with relevant legislation, and employee performance evaluations. Analysis is the predictive sector, leveraging data to guide for improving future activities. Proper analysis can provide insights on decisions like when you should expand a marketing team or the best times to invest in direct marketing.

Sales

Sales are the eternal favorite for BI. With analysis, you can understand how customers find you and how they’re likely to behave. You can also search for key decision points that help determine if someone will become a customer. If you work on improving in those areas, you can often have an outsized effect on performance. In this context, business intelligence is like a lubricant that makes target consumers flow through the sales pipeline with ease.

Visualization

Business intelligence is particularly effective for data visualization. For example, you can use business intelligence to prepare charts, graphs, and other evidence when trying to sell directly to customers. Buyers like it when you keep things simple; so facts you can back with clear evidence are fundamentally more appealing than vague promises.

Getting Better at Using Business Intelligence

There are many ways to leverage business intelligence more effectively. SAP is one of the most popular platforms, and courses like SAP BI certifications can help you learn more ways to use their most recent releases. There’s no substitute for proper training on a platform; so taking courses and pursuing additional certifications as time allows is always a good idea. Proper training can also help you on a more personal level. Familiarity with business intelligence can make others see you as more of a leader on projects. If you come to meetings and presentations with suggestions backed by data; other people are far more likely to agree with you and value your input on future projects. In short, leveraging business intelligence can help you make informed decisions for the company and your career.

Final Thoughts

Business intelligence is a powerful tool, and support systems like SAP BI certifications make it easy to train yourself to use those tools. Implementing business intelligence processes can take time; so the sooner you start on that, the sooner you can take advantage of its power.