Importance of Business Intelligence in B2C companies

We are living in a digital era where technological developments have completely revolutionised our everyday lives. If any business has to survive and progress, then the adoption of digital technologies is a must. Timely and accurate decisions are vital for any firm to become competitive in the market. Therefore, companies have to use data-driven tools and technologies which can help them know their customers and themselves better than ever before. These tools will help them design better strategies to not just serve their customers better but also improve their business processes.  Companies can be benefitted by using business intelligence tools and platforms.  

What is Business Intelligence? 

in a way that it can easily be used by strategists in a business to take effective decisions. Business intelligence in consumer companies provides information that is critical to the success of multiple areas of business including sales, marketing, production, finance, etc. The benefits of business intelligence include empowering businesses with actionable data, providing prodigious insights into industry trends, and facilitating a more strategically geared decision-making model. 

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Benefits of Business Intelligence to consumer companies 

As we have understood what business intelligence is, let us now look at some of the business intelligence benefits: 

• Gain customer insights: One of the primary reasons that consumer companies are using business intelligence tools is because it helps to provide the great ability to understand the consumers’ buying behaviour and trends. This information helps consumer companies to design products and improve the existing products to meet the customers’ expectations and needs. Once the customers are satisfied the consumer company’s business motive is fulfilled.  
• Quick and precise reporting: All business intelligence programmes are connected with real-time data. Employees are provided with templates and customised reports to monitor the KPIs using a variety of data sources collecting data from sales, finance, operations and other departments. As these reports are generated in real-time using the most relevant data so the decision-making can be faster than ever before. The reports include easy-to-read visualisations, interactive tables, graphs, and charts.  
• Competitive analysis: 
• Business Intelligence can help you get insights into the competitors’ moves in the market, allowing your organisation to make informed decisions and plan for future endeavours. Therefore, it helps in attaining competitive advantage for businesses.  
• Valuable business insights: Business intelligence tools help businesses to get internal insights about how the employees are performing, how the sales have been moving in the last few years, the revenue status as well as department-specific performances. So, the company’s strengths and weaknesses can be unveiled as BI tools facilitate consumer companies to understand what is working and what is not.  
• Improve proactiveness: Due to the visibility of various business functions’ performance in the BI tools, the consumer companies have better control over their business processes and SOPs. The decision-makers no longer need to go through hundred pages of the report to assess the performance of their business rather they can just see the infographics provided in the business analysis dashboards and take the decisions. Therefore, BI helps organisations to become proactive rather than reactive by providing real-time and beforehand insights about the business and industry. 
• Efficiency improvements: Another business intelligence benefit is improvement in efficiency. BI systems facilitate vital information sharing across various departments with ease and help save time on reporting, data mining, and interpretation. It further helps consumer companies eliminate redundant roles and duties. Now, the employees can focus on their primary roles rather than focusing on processing data. As a result, the operational efficiency improves which consequently increases productivity, and the organisation’s revenue also increases.  
• Identifying market trends: Business intelligence benefits also include identifying market trends. Using the market data, consumer companies can identify new opportunities and build a strategy accordingly. This will help consumer companies build their existing business as well as expand their business in new markets, directly impacting long-term profitability. Employees can utilise external market data with internal data to find out new sales patterns by analysing customer data and market insights, as well as identifying business problems. 

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What are Business Intelligence tools? 

BI tools are types of software used to collect, process, analyse, and create visuals of large volumes of past, and current data to generate actionable business insights and predictions, produce interactive reports, and ease out the decision-making processes. 

These business intelligence platforms include vital features such as data visualisation, visual analytics, interactive dashboarding, and KPI scorecards. Additionally, they enable users to utilise real-time reporting and predictive analytics features, which makes the analysis process efficient. 

Some most popular Business Intelligence tools 

• Tableau 
• PowerBI 
• SAS Business Intelligence 
• Zoho Analytics 
• Datapine 

• Oracle Business Intelligence 
• IBM Cognos Analytics 
• Qlikview 
• Dundas BI, etc. 

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Conclusion

In a nutshell, business intelligence in consumer companies provides organisations with market insights, competitors’ strategies, identifying new business opportunities, identifying strengths and weaknesses of the companies, and customers’ buying behaviours and market trends. This information can be utilised to make appropriate strategies and decisions, which leads to better revenue and growth for the company. By availing business intelligence benefits, consumer companies can create a competitive advantage.