The worldwide business intelligence (BI) market will have an estimated value of more than $33.3 billion by 2025. This growth is relatively rapid because businesses across many sectors realize that business intelligence technologies are crucial to long-term success.
Despite the widespread adoption of business intelligence solutions, there is still a misconception that these technologies are only for large-scale enterprises. However, that is simply not the case. Small businesses need business intelligence solutions just as much as, if not more than, massive organizations. This article examines why.
What Is Business Intelligence?
Before we explore how business intelligence solutions can revolutionize the day-to-day operations of small and medium-sized organizations, let’s recap what BI is.
Business intelligence is a field that combines data tools, data mining techniques, business analytics methodologies, and advanced reporting software to propel an organization forward.
Modern BI solutions enable businesses to harness big data to reveal important insights that small business owners can use to guide decision-making. Business intelligence solutions can take the guesswork out of various planning processes.
3 Benefits of Business Intelligence
By implementing business intelligence solutions, small business owners can:
Replace ‘Gut Instinct’ with Fact-Based Decisioning
Small business owners typically have a low margin of error when making critical organizational decisions. A single misstep could hinder a company’s long-term growth trajectory or put the organization entirely out of business. Unfortunately, many small business owners still rely on “gut feelings,” “intuition,” or other subjective concepts when making important decisions.
Business intelligence solutions allow owners to tap into massive amounts of data and sort through this information using dynamic analytics tools. These tools can reveal actionable insights that business owners can use to guide decision-making. Business intelligence solutions include advanced reporting tools. Small business owners can use these tools to generate comprehensive but easy-to-digest reports. These reports can be used to relay important information to employees, business partners, stakeholders, and other parties. In short, business owners can share their vision more effectively with others using real-world data.
Business intelligence solutions will reveal valuable insights that organizational leaders can use to streamline operations. Modern BI technologies can help business owners zero in on sources of waste, excessive expenses, and operational inefficiencies that are hindering long-term growth. From there, they can use predictive analytics to identify ways to remedy these shortcomings and pave the way for better business performance. Providing business intelligence data to everyone will also maximize transparency and build trust between leadership and line-level staff.
Boost Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Among other things, business intelligence tools can provide valuable customer experience (CX) information. Small businesses can use BI technologies to learn more about what customers think of their products, support models, services, and processes. They can then use this information to enhance the customer experience and improve brand image.
Ultimately, higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) will lead to a better brand reputation. It will also improve sales figures and drive up profits. Regardless of what industry a small business operates within, customer satisfaction strongly correlates to the company’s overall success. The modern marketplace is more crowded and competitive than ever before. Small businesses of today not only have to contend with countless competitors, but they must also navigate volatile market conditions.
Business intelligence technologies can help small business owners address a broad range of concerns effectively. Modern BI solutions provide insights regarding business continuity threats, including shrinking market shares, increased competition, or rising costs of materials, just to name a few.
Improve Forecasting Accuracy
Budgeting and financial planning are some of the most challenging aspects of operating a small business. Owners must ensure that they have stable revenue streams, an adequate amount of liquid working capital, and sufficient profit margins. Even a slight miscalculation can have dire consequences for small business owners. Business intelligence solutions can optimize an individual’s budgeting and financial planning capabilities. These solutions can harvest data from other systems and applications to create comprehensive financial reports. Business owners can use these reports to inform financial planning efforts and make fiscally savvy decisions.
Like budgeting, market forecasting can be incredibly complex and challenging. However, it is also critical to the success of a small business. Organizational leaders who can accurately forecast impending market conditions will be positioned to capitalize on them. Conversely, inaccurate forecasts can lead small business owners to make detrimental decisions that threaten business continuity.
For instance, let’s say that a small business owner believes that demand for their product will peak in Q4 of this year. In response, they bolster their inventory in Q3 so that they have enough products in stock to fulfill customer orders. If the small business owner’s forecast was accurate, they stand to generate a good profit at the tail end of the year. However, if they were not using effective BI solutions and made inaccurate predictions, they have just tied up much of their working capital in inventory that they are unable to sell.
With so much at stake, small business owners must invest in quality business intelligence technologies, like those offered by Goodbay Technologies.
Goodbay Technologies’ Business Intelligence Solutions
At Goodbay Technologies, we understand how critical business intelligence is to the success of our clients. With that in mind, we have made business intelligence services a standard component of our delivery model. Our business intelligence services can provide you with actionable insights that you can use to make timely decisions and enhance the customer experience. When you partner with Goodbay Technologies, you can access CRM setup and configuration consulting, A/B content testing, Quality Assurance scoring, workforce management analytics, and many other benefits.
Contact our team today to learn more about how we can help you tap into the power of business intelligence and data analytics.
