Business Intelligence has changed the way we do business in almost all business niches. Robust tools like Office 365 Power BI have given enormous power in the hands of all businesses, including small businesses.
BI is converting raw data into actionable insights that can aid your decision-making process and improve all aspects of your business.
In this post, we discover how BI impacts the strategic decision-making process for businesses worldwide.
- Decisions for the sales department
Sales is one of your company’s most important departments, and optimizing sales processes can change your company’s fortune.
With neck throat competition in every niche, data and insights are what give you an edge over your competition. Power BI Consulting Company refer to some of the instances with which leading businesses use BI to impact their decision making –
- Past consumer purchase data is used to predict the customers who are most likely to buy a product or service. This filters the number of customers to target, which enables businesses to personalize their pitches further
- Social media trends help assess the products and services which are most in-demand so businesses can decide where to put the most efforts into operations
- Get conversion data from all parts of the funnel and identify the areas which need to be optimized to increase conversions
- Identify the products for cross-selling according to customer preference and surfing behavior in e-commerce
All this data can easily be analyzed in Power BI, and businesses can visualize the data and improve the results they get.
- Decision making in the marketing department
Another significant area that has been drastically changed by BI is marketing. All large corporations are leveraging data insights for marketing campaigns to increase reach and results.
The conventional methods of just checking a few metrics to decide on the future course of action are outdated. Features in Microsoft BI Tool like paginated report builder have impacted the decision making for marketing teams using reports, to such an extent that you can analyze hundreds of metrics for every marketing campaign.
Some of the examples are –
- You can easily analyze the reactions to every marketing campaign and drill down to the time a video is checked by a prospect, etc.
- Companies gather data including the number of impressions of ads, clicks, social media page visits, add to cart activities, purchases, and others to make decisions of selecting the best campaigns
- Compare data between all marketing platforms and channels to decide the budgets
- Study the data of your business’s social media engagement and understand the reaction to different types of creatives, copy, etc.
Better inventory decisions
Tens of thousands of companies lose millions of dollars every year because of inefficient inventory management. There are many hidden costs involved in managing excess inventory and the way you order stock for the future. But you can focus on improving your business with the BI technologies.
Data has changed that for companies, and using Power BI enables these companies to make each decision, including the quantity of stock to purchase based on data.
Some of the examples in which BI is helping the strategic decision-making process are –
- Data tells you to decrease the inventory of specific stock, which will directly decrease the cost to maintain it
- You can identify yearly trends for particular types of stock to make buying decisions in advance, so you don’t loose on lost sales because of low inventory problems
- Power BI will help you to decide on the price, time, quantity, and type of products to buy after analyzing all your data
- You can understand and change your pricing from time to time based on market demands to cease in every opportunity
- Following the model of pricing done by airline companies is now in the hands of small businesses as well with Power BI
- Streamlining the finance operations
BI can overtake all your financial departments and give the exact answers to the decisions you are making.
BI has replaced large accounting teams that constantly analyze your balance sheets, profit, and loss statements, and others to get insights.
BI, on the other hand, allows companies to import all the data and get insights and identify issues in seconds.
This helps businesses to make decisions on the areas which need immediate attention and increase overall efficiency.
- BI will tell you about your stores/offices’ particular locations, which you should work on instantly by replacing particular products and introducing new ones in others.
- Increasing the efficiency of the human resources department
Human resources is another challenging area for most businesses. BI has helped companies make quick decisions in HR with the insights they get from the past data.
Some of the examples are –
- Identifying the best performers in your company and helping others replicate the same is easier than ever
- You can identify the areas in your business which are bringing in the least productivity to help improve them
- BI helps companies improve the training process to induct new employees
- Data insights also help in increasing employee satisfaction and increase work productivity
- Increasing efficiency and operations
BI helps companies visualize the complete operations process and identify the areas that need work.
Testing new ways in operations and comparing the results is easy as a snap. It also helps predict the future changes needed in operations, which can increase profitability.
- Better business decisions
BI is not only used in streamlining the small processes within departments but also in making key business decisions defining the future of a company.
Business owners are able to identify trends early on in the Industry and steer the mission in accordance. A lot of business owners have been able to do this by enrolling themselves in a business analyst certification program and make better business decisions.
Making significant changes in certain locations/products/services is also easy when data clearly indicates the highest revenue-generating opportunities.
Conclusion
Business Intelligence is powering each division of businesses and helping them make crucial decisions. It is also helping the management prevent decision fatigue and using their gut feelings to make crucial decisions.
Making decisions based on your gut results in missed opportunities. Make sure to follow the examples given in this post and leverage BI’s impact on strategic business decisions.
