Business Intelligence

Business intelligence is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, providing access to, and analyzing data for the purpose of helping enterprise users make better business decisions. The term implies having a comprehensive knowledge of all of the factors that affect your business. It is imperative that you have an in depth knowledge about factors such as your customers, competitors, business partners, economic environment, and internal operations to make effective and good quality business decisions. Business intelligence enables you to make these kinds of decisions.

Objective of Business intelligence:
The ultimate objective of business intelligence is to improve the timeliness and quality of information. Timely and good quality information is like having a crystal ball that can give you an indication of what's the best course to take. Business intelligence reveals to you:

• The position of your firm as in comparison to its competitors i.e. market share
• Changes in customer behaviour and spending patterns
• Customers' preferences
• The capabilities of your firm
• Market conditions, future trends, demographic and economic information
• The social, regulatory, and political environment
• What the other firms in the market are doing

Benefits of Business intelligence:
BI provides many benefits to companies utilizing it. It can eliminate a lot of the guesswork within an organization, enhance communication among departments while coordinating activities, and enable companies to respond quickly to changes in financial conditions, customer preferences, and supply chain operations. BI improves the overall performance of the company using it.

Information is often regarded as the second most important resource a company has. So when a company can make decisions based on timely and accurate information, the company can improve its performance. BI also expedites decision-making, as acting quickly and correctly on information before competing businesses do, which can often result in competitively superior performance. It can also improve customer experience, allowing for the timely and appropriate response to customer problems and priorities.

Factors Influencing Business Intelligence

Customers
Customers are the most critical aspect to a company's success. Without them a company cannot exist. So it is very important that you have information on their preferences. You must quickly adapt to their changing demands. Business Intelligence enables you to gather information on the trends in the marketplace and come up with innovative products or services in anticipation of customer's changing demands.

Competitors
Competitors can be a huge hurdle on your way to success. Their objectives are the same as yours and that is to maximize profits and customer satisfaction. In order to be successful you must stay one step ahead of your competitors. In business you don't want to play the catch up game because you would have lost valuable market share. Business Intelligence tells you what actions your competitors are taking, so you can make better informed decisions.

Business Partners
Business Partners must possess the same strategic information you have so that there is no miscommunication that can lead to inefficiencies. For example it is common now for businesses to allow their suppliers to see their inventory levels, performance metrics, and other supply chain data in order to collaborate to improve supply chain management. With Business Intelligence you and your business partners can share the same information.

Economic Environment
Economic Environment such as the state of the economy and other key economic indicators are important considerations when making business decisions. You don't want to roll out a new line of products during an economic recession. BI gives you information on the state of the economy so that you can make prudent decisions as to when be the right time to maybe expand or scale back your business operations.

Internal Operations
Internal Operations are the day to day activities that go on in your business. You need an in depth knowledge about the internal workings of your business from top to bottom. If you make an arbitrary decision without knowing how your entire organization works it could have negative effects on your business. BI gives you information on how your entire organization works. Cost monitoring to ensure bottom line is one such internal operation where BI can add a lot of value to the organisation.

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