When working in any business, looking at changes and developments in the external market is an essential part of making well-informed decisions for the future.

This collated data allows you to discover the most up to date information about the market and your customers.

And if your business can adopt and utilise this insight in a timely manner, it will also be best placed to hold a strong competitive advantage within the sector.

And this is how ‘Business Intelligence’, or ‘BI’ for short, can hold great value when trying to maintain or grow your position within your chosen market.

‘BI’ has become the overarching term used to describe this analytic practice in today’s business world. It typically involves the collection, storage and interpretation of such data for use in business decision making.

When all this key evidence works together, a business focuses not only on one area of its operations. Instead, it establishes an all-encompassing picture of its current position to understand where actions need to be taken.

And whatever your position in a company, the awareness of external factors allows for a greater level of adaptability within any role, which can drive positive change in your field.

So, what type of processes are needed to adopt BI in your decision making successfully?

As technology advances continue to impact all areas of a business, there are now various solutions available to allow firms to utilise BI into its decision-making process.

These include:

Data mining

Data mining is the process involving data sets, which are analysed electronically to establish trends or anomalies and predict future outcomes.

This process utilises different data collection methods to help with business decisions, analysing where costs can be cut or how to increase revenue, for example.

Benchmarking

A prevalent process within business analytics, benchmarking, or performance metrics, is used across teams to compare historical and current data against set goals.

This is again an effective process to see how the market responds to changes and can justify decisions when pitching to senior management.

Descriptive analytics

Descriptive analytics is the gathering of raw data that will be analysed to understand trends in the market.

The process typically involves looking at historical data to inform future decisions.

Statistical analysis

This process follows the collection of descriptive analytics. 

The data collected will be explored using statistics, helping teams to understand why a particular trend or anomaly has occurred, and the reasons for this.

Data visualisation

Any data collated through Business Intelligence processes can often be in data form; numerical figures that require additional analysis to understand any trends or fluctuations.

By using data visualisation, teams can transform this data into more visually-appealing forms such as graphs and charts. 

This process makes the data more digestible in most cases, and can visually showcase any trends to those who need the information instantaneously. 

Querying

Querying is another vital part of the Business Intelligence process, where a set of data-specific questions are created to influence important decisions within an organisation.

The answers are taken from the information collected from the datasets to allow for more informed data-driven decisions.

Reporting

Reporting can often be the ‘final’ step in the decision-making process. It allows management teams and stakeholders to make decisions on the data provided to them through the analysis.

With so many processes involved within BI, this highlights the value and importance businesses should place on this ‘real-time’ data,

With market changes happening so rapidly in today’s world, this data can form a hugely important part of a business strategy, ensuring your customer’s needs are met.

So, how can a business utilise BI in its decision making?

BI isn’t just a way of seeing what’s happening right now within the market. 

It’s a chance for businesses to uncover details that will allow for optimal performance surrounding operations for the future.

This, of course, makes it an effective solution to aid in the decision-making process.

But, as we’ve explored, Business Intelligence involves a substantial amount of data analysis, which can be a heavily time-consuming task for all those involved.

Is your business in a position where it sees great value in investing in Business Intelligence and its associated processes? Then it’s worth considering integrating software that can benefit internal teams by simplifying and streamlining the process.

The most recent PCI module has been created to do just that, all via our popular Prof.IT software package.

The Prof.IT BI module has been designed to support all internal staff, from senior management to stock controllers and production planners, to gain an up to date understanding of their business.

With BI allowing for a collaborative approach to data mining, teams can utilise this new optional module to analyse hundreds of different data sets at a time. 

This process allows each area of a business to stay updated with the latest data intelligence, as the Prof.IT database highlights this information via an easily accessible, visually-informative user dashboard.

And the benefits this Business Intelligence provides undoubtedly allows for an early competitive advantage, helping to make a real impact in their industry.

With data visualisation in mind, the software offers ready-made queries, dashboards and visuals via a clean, user-friendly interface to help staff efficiently analyse and identify data sets across departments.

Accessible anywhere, any time via a smartphone, tablet or laptop, the Prof.IT BI module is here to make it even easier for teams to share information and stay informed of their business at their convenience.

Since its launch, the system has empowered management teams to embrace the brilliance of Business Intelligence, making the arduous process more streamlined, interactive and therefore effective.

If you’d like to find out more about the Prof.IT software, along with the new BI module, with a member of the PCI team, we’d love to hear from you. 

Why not give us a call on 0114 201 2200, send us an email on [email protected] or message us directly via our website at www.pcisystems.co.uk and a member of the team will get back to you shortly.