BAASS Insights Technology Blog

Business intelligence is an all-encompassing tool for analyzing data. This raw data is transformed into meaningful and useful information for business purposes. The implementation of business intelligence provides a complete view of your business, helping individuals make better, actionable decisions. Not convinced about BI yet? Don’t worry - we have compiled a list of reasons as to how BI can be useful for your organization.

The big question is: What is the importance of business intelligence? Before diving into this, it’s important to understand the topic in itself. Business intelligence is the transformation of raw data into meaningful information for your business; the term encompasses the processes and methods of analyzing, displaying, and reporting from your business operations for the goal of performance optimization. Through business intelligence, organizations can have an all-around view of their business, allowing for better decisions to be made.

As Chief Financial Officer (CFO), it is your responsibility to ensure the financial health and stability of your business organization. This requires a lot of time and energy spent searching for and analyzing business data, compiling information into tables and charts, and presenting facts to the rest of the C-level suite.

Business intelligence software can improve many aspects of your business. One area where it makes forecasting easier is sales. By using the data derived from multiple areas in your company, business intelligence software can provide accurate sales information that facilitates forecasting.

The new buzzword in business intelligence is collaborative analytics. This is the method by which many people, rather than one single person in a company, can review, analyze, and compare data from business operations. Companies which use collaborative analytics follow the old adage “two heads are better than one” but extend the concept to many people; allowing many minds to examine business data to find solutions.

Any time you launch a new system, there’s a learning curve. It can be challenging to get employees excited and enthusiastic about a new software system, no matter how wonderful it is. Many companies spend considerable time and effort choosing a new business intelligence system only to wonder why they’re not getting the most from it later on.

Small businesses new to business intelligence systems may feel overwhelmed at first by all the data coming in. It’s a “kid in the candy store” feeling where you don’t know what to look at first because it’s all so wonderful. After struggling for a long time with different data sources and no easy way to access data, a new business intelligence system can be cause for celebration. Yet knowing how to use your new BI system to its fullest capacity can be a challenge.

When you’re starting a business intelligence project, certain departments within your company may seem essential to the project’s success. Some departments immediately come to mind as key players in the creation and execution of the project’s deliverables. But the importance of cross-organizational collaboration cannot be underestimated.