What Is Business Intelligence?

Updated on 5 February 2025

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What Is Business Intelligence?

Business owners deal with a lot of data within their business. This data is typically scattered across multiple systems. Without technology, these systems can get out of hand and could lead to data inconsistencies which make it harder for strategic planning.

With so much data going around businesses, you need to be able to do a deep analysis of all types of data to get the best insights. To do this properly, you need comprehensive business intelligence.

Business intelligence (BI) is defined as a set of technological processes for collecting, managing and analysing organisational data. This is done to get insights that inform business strategies and operations.

In this article, we look at what BI is and how you can do it for your business.

How Does the Business Intelligence Process Work?

Business intelligence platforms traditionally rely on data warehouses for baseline information. The data warehouse aggregates data from multiple data sources into one centralised system to support business data analytics and reporting.

The business intelligence platform then presents the results to the user in the form of reports, charts and maps, which are displayed through a dashboard.

The steps taken in the BI process follow this order:

1. Data Sources

First step is to identify the data that needs to be reviewed and analysed. This can be data from a data warehouse, data lake, cloud, Hadoop, industry insights and statistics, supply chain, CRM, inventory, pricing, sales, marketing or social media.

2. Data Collection

Step two involves the gathering and cleaning of data collected from various sources. This data preparation can be manually gathering information in a spreadsheet or an automatic extract, transform and load (ETL) programme.

3. Analysis

Step three involves looking at the data to spot trends or unexpected results in the data. This process might use data mining, data discovery or data modelling tools.

4. Visualisation

Create data visualisation, graphs and dashboards that use business intelligence tools. Some business intelligence tools include Tableau, Cognos Analytics, Microsoft Excel or SAP. The visualisation includes drill-down, drill-through, and drill-up features to enable users to investigate a range of data levels.

5. Action Plan

Develop actionable insights based on analysis of historical data versus key performance indicators. Actions in this process include more efficient processes, changes in marketing, fixing supply chain issues or adapting customer experience issues.

Benefits of Business Intelligence

Here are some benefits of having business intelligence solutions within your organisation.

Informed Decision-making

BI tools provide you with timely access to information which is validated for accuracy, giving executives and operational workers a better picture of the business when it’s needed for decision-making.

Increased Efficiency

Business intelligence tools are there to automate regular data collection and processing. This saves you time from doing manual data handling. Instead, you can focus on more strategic tasks and stakeholder relations.

Additionally, BI tools through features such as process mining, can identify inefficiencies in your business intelligence workflows and provide you with actionable insights which will guide you in optimising and reducing costs.

Improved Financial and Strategy Performance

Business intelligence tools can be used with budgeting and planning applications to give you analytical insights that drive budgeting decisions. Most of these tools include features for setting KPIs and monitoring and reporting on them to enable managers to see the current state of the business against the strategic plan.

Better Customer Insights

Using business intelligence tools you can gain a deeper understanding of your customers and market trends. The tools can provide a structured framework for analysing customer interactions at various touchpoints.

The insights gained from the BI tools can help you develop new products and marketing strategies for more personalised recommendations for individual customers.

Improve Market Intelligence

Inputting external data into BI software allows you to analyse your current business performance against the external data. This helps you make more informed decisions. Also, BI technology enables you to adapt your strategies easily while also finding opportunities for new product or service offerings.

Compliance and Risk Management

You can use BI tools to track your compliance metrics and generate automated reports and benchmarks needed to meet regulatory obligations. Furthermore, the software can help monitor potential business risks as they come in real-time.

Business Intelligence Tools for Small Businesses

Here are some BI tools you should consider for your business.

Teamwork

Teamwork is a project and resource management tool. The platform collects and analyses data from tasks, finances, tickets and other integrations within your business.

Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI integrates with your Microsoft Office suite to allow you to send data visualisations over to PowerPoint presentations or Teams. Additionally, the platform has a history tool that lets you roll data back if something goes wrong.

Tableau

Tableau is one of the most highly rated business intelligence tools in the world for its collaboration and data visualisation features. Also, the platform has prebuilt workbooks for data sources such as Salesforce.

Note: Tableau does require some data visualisation skills for you to be able to work it.

Klipfolio

Klipfolio is a KPI-tracking data analytics tool. You can use it to pull datasets from various sources and feed them into the metrics KPIs you have set out for your business.

You need to pick the right BI platform for your business. Outline what your business intelligence needs are and from there you can find the right platform.

To speak to an expert about tech integration, visit SME Advice for more information.

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