What Is Enterprise Business Intelligence (BI)?
Enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) is a set of tools and processes for analyzing data from business operations for companies to gain a competitive advantage. Analyzing data in this way reveals opportunities to improve customer satisfaction, increase revenue, and raise profit margins. According to Tech Jury, 56% of organizations leveraged BI in 2020 and reported faster and more effective decision-making.
How Enterprise Business Intelligence Helps Uncover Hidden Value In Business Operations Data
Enterprise Business Intelligence can help uncover hidden value by using historical information and predictive analytics to:
- Recognize Current Trends
- Predict Future Trends
- Identify business Opportunities
- Identify Business Risks
- Assess Customer Sentiment
BI analytics leverages operational data from many areas throughout the company. For example:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Social Media
- Website Analytics
- Helpdesk Ticketing System
This operational data encompasses transactional information (orders, bills, support tickets, etc.) and associated assets such as chat transcripts, images, videos, PDF documents, etc.
The data in these systems is helpful. However, in isolation, they only tell a partial story. BI combines information from these systems to permit holistic analysis and development of a unified perspective on particular customers, questions, issues, problems or theses. All of which ultimately drives decisions on how to improve your company by developing strategies to be a market leader, gaining a competitive edge or serving an unserved market.
How Enterprise Business Intelligence Helps Companies Gain A Competitive Edge
In today’s digital-first world, gaining a competitive edge is more complex than it has historically been. BI uncovers opportunities to position your company as a market leader.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
BI provides information that helps companies deliver personalized experiences that have a significant customer impact. Today’s technology-aware customers are used to the “wow” factor. They want to interact with brands that prioritize using technology to deliver meaningful experiences. They expect personalized digital experiences that make them feel special and valued. A few examples are:
- Improved Customer Support: When a customer contacts support, whoever helps them would be able to see a complete picture of the customer such as Their purchase history, what areas of the website they spent the longest, what types of questions they viewed in the FAQ section, what other support contact they’ve made or even the sales rep they worked with. Having access to this information in one system helps the support person provide customized support service based on the customer’s history with the company.
- Identifying Customers Who Are Likely to Abandon a Service Or Product: A BI system can analyze information to determine whether a customer will cancel services. Using that information, the company can offer a special incentive to encourage them to stay.
- Resource Planning: Effective BI can predict demand for a product or service. That way, companies can identify days that are most likely to need additional staff to meet demand.
Drives Innovation for New Products
There are tremendous opportunities to innovate and provide new solutions to customers’ problems. Finding these opportunities is easier with information that reveals what matters most to them. It highlights areas where customers could benefit from new products. That’s why in a recent Forbes study, nearly 90% of R&D departments rate Cloud Business Intelligence as critical and important to current and new initiatives.
Innovation is what pushes a company to the front of the market. Without it, they are simply playing “catch up” to their competitors.
Improve Existing Products
Sometimes improving an existing product has the biggest impact on sales. Analyzing customer information such as help desk tickets or the most commonly viewed FAQ section of the website provides valuable insight. The opportunity lies in taking that information and developing solutions to address those items. Customers are more likely to stay with a company that addresses their needs.
Helps Inform Marketing Strategies
Marketing campaigns are only effective when they “speak to the customer.” The only way to improve the conversation is to communicate the information they find important. You can find out what’s important to them by analyzing your data. Using the insights from a BI tool, you’ll be able to:
- Enhance segmentation
- Measure marketing campaign effectiveness across channels
- Identify which products are selling the most in each market
- Identify new engagement tactics
How Enterprise Business Intelligence Impacts The Bottom Line
Ultimately, the real value in BI is the opportunity to improve the bottom line. Analytics tools keep you from wasting money. It helps you make decisions based on accurate information. When you use this information to understand customer needs, you only spend money on things that can address real needs and deliver positive results. Improving customer satisfaction improves the chances current customers will remain loyal customers. It also improves the chances of referral to other prospective customers. These types of data-driven opportunities and decisions are difficult to spot and make without a comprehensive data-oriented view of your company.
Next Steps
There’s a wealth of value in your operations data. Enterprise Business Intelligence is the key to understanding it and using it to inform your business strategy and operations decision-making. Contact us to connect with an Aezion BI expert to discuss how to use your data to uncover hidden value in your business operations data and leverage it to drive growth.
