Business intelligence: your data gives you wings!
Business Intelligence (BI) was born in the hands of decision-makers in large companies between 1990 and 2000. The term is used to designate all the concepts, methods and tools that enable improved decision-making based on real facts. More concretely, these real facts are the data available in the company's information system, thanks to all digital exchanges.
Since around 2010, business intelligence has become widespread. So much so that many people, even in small businesses, are benefiting from it without even knowing it. We're going to tell you how you can take advantage of it in your business to accelerate your development, and give you our opinion on Business Intelligence for making the best decisions.
SUMMARY
Why has Business Intelligence become so widespread?
In the 90's, only large companies had two fundamental factors that drove the use of Business Intelligence:
- The volume of data available: in companies with over 500 employees, you systematically have business software such as ERP, CRM, HR software (payroll, HRIS) and cross-functional software such as ERP. The data passing through these information systems can be analyzed to diagnose, identify, forecast, project and decide.
- The need for information: managing a large group cuts you off from operations and the reality on the ground. This understanding of the internal situation (HR, finance and accounting) as well as the external situation (sales) is essential for decision-making. Data analysis is the only way to do this.
Two things have changed since the 2010s:
- The first is in the way managers and entrepreneurs use data. More and more, they are using online software that is more ergonomic and interconnected, making it easier to exploit the data collected. To give just two examples, invoicing software enables you to optimize your cash flow and reduce payment times; email marketing software analyzes your subscribers' behavior to help you build more relevant messages.
- The second parameter is Big Data. As you can see from the Google Trends graph, interest in this subject has exploded, as has the volume of data created and available on the Internet. Exploiting this data offers applications for everyone: entrepreneurs, managers, marketers, salespeople, etc. :
From data warehouse to business management
Business Intelligence (BI) is based on data present in the company's own information system and externally (Internet, external databases ).
This data is then stored in a data warehouse for analysis. These data warehouses can store very large volumes of structured or unstructured data.
The data is stored in relational databases, flat files or OLAP cubes, which can integrate several dimensions into the data.
The business intelligence tool then connects to these data sources, if it doesn't already integrate them. The strong trend in BI is to access data sources via the Internet, thanks to APIs. The BI software then reads the data it needs and renders it in the form of information (reports and dashboards).
BI projects are generally led by statisticians or data scientists, when it comes to analyzing and understanding very large volumes of unstructured data. This is known as data mining. However, new data analysis tools such as Vizzboard or Bime have made the creation of dashboards extremely simple. A manager can now build his or her own reports without necessarily calling on the services of a specialist.
Today, there are a number of software packages that do more than simply manage the data created by users in the course of their day-to-day activities. Indeed, many CRM and marketing software applications crawl the Web to enrich your databases with public information. This is a game-changer, as it multiplies the power of business intelligence. It enables you to make decisions with more and better data.
Business intelligence applications
Cash management
Cash flow is a fundamental indicator of a company's health. However, many entrepreneurs are unable to manage it to the best of their ability, given the amount of time they have to devote to their business. Sales management, invoicing and accounting software alert you if cash flow is too high or too low. These programs are often connected to your bank to synchronize bank accounts with the software. Last but not least, they allow you to monitor payment deadlines, so that you can follow up on customers who are behind schedule. This significantly improves cash flow.
Cost rationalization
Sales management software reduces costs to an absolute minimum by pooling company information: supplier and contract monitoring, inventory optimization, sales price management, inventory valuation, etc. All this data enables you to visualize the health of your business. All this data is used to visualize the company's health, so as to eliminate drifts, invoice at the right price, pay less, reduce storage space, etc.
Marketing actions
Business intelligence is increasingly benefiting marketers, as data collection and analysis has never been so abundant or so simple. Email marketing software, for example, enables subscribers to be tagged, located and segmented automatically. This segmentation makes it possible to target campaigns (more relevant messages) to increase conversion rates.
IT also assists marketers in their price positioning and strategic orientation of the marketing mix in general. Tools such as PriceComparator now make real-time competitive intelligence and market research possible.
There is also an abundance of solutions that allow you to cross-reference information to enrich the data you already have: with an email you can obtain a position, a company name, gender, etc.
Financial reports
From an information system composed of CRM, ERP and HR data, it's relatively simple to build financial reports. The strength of today's BI tools lies in the fact that they read information in real time: the analyst no longer has to extract and model data, but can immediately build a bor table, which is updated with each load.
Sales forecasting
Most CRM solutions enable you to track sales and the sales pipeline, but few offer realistic sales forecasts that take into account the company's context and sales history. Some BI solutions, however, enable this objective to be achieved, based on old data and seasonality. Example:
Screenshot Bime Analytics
How can BI rapidly facilitate decision support?
It's relatively simple to lay the right foundations to facilitate decision support and improve business management.
First of all, you need to choose open, online software to capitalize on your own data: CRM, billing software, HR software, email marketing software, and so on.
Secondly, you need to list the external data sources you can access, such as Google Analytics (website traffic), Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or external databases (Sparklane, data.gouv.fr, etc.).
Finally, an analyst (in the case of a global BI project) or a business person (HR manager, marketing manager) needs to draw up his or her KPIs and put the necessary data in front of them to build relevant dashboards.
Data visualization software such as Vizzboard or Bime will come in at the end of the chain to consolidate all the data and give it meaning.
The meaning you can give to your data is the key to good business management. By using modern tools, you'll see that you don't need a computer scientist or mathematician to set up your business intelligence system.
Article translated from French