In this section, we’re going to take a look at how different firms and companies have used the advantages of business intelligence for their benefit.

1. Decentralization

In the past, data creation was mostly overseen by IT teams who would receive data and decide what they could do with it. This often caused several problems. First of all, it was a waste of effort and time put in by the IT team as they didn't have the knowledge or resources to understand how and where the data could be used, therefore, shooting in the dark.

It also caused waste and mishandling of data. The data would either end up in the hands of the wrong person or would be tossed aside even though it was incredibly valuable to certain teams.

In some of today’s leading startups, like GetYourGuide in Berlin, data became decentralized and shared throughout the entire company. This led to different teams picking up the data that was interesting to them and creating business intelligence strategies that have a positive impact on the company as a whole. 

2. Increase in productivity

To explain this better, I'm going to use the 80-20 theory by Italian economist Pareto. What it describes is that 20% of our efforts are the ones that are going to give us fruits or sales at the end of the road, whereas we dedicate 80% on strategies that aren't going to provide us with any value at all.

By using the data analysis that comes with business intelligence, we're able to see what our 20% objectives are and what's giving us the best results. This means a company can avoid investing 80% of its time on useless tasks, which leads to a massive increase in productivity.

3. Creation of customer profiles

By collecting the data of customers that come to your firm to make a purchase, it’s possible to start forming their profiles. But don’t get me wrong – this doesn't mean that a company is selling your data (well, unless you’re Facebook). Customer profiles are meant to make the customer's life more comfortable and keep them coming back to you.

This is known as brand loyalty, and there's nothing better to create an increase in brand loyalty than to play precisely into what customers want. By using the profiles created through their purchase data, it is extremely easy to do. Companies like Amazon are completely built around this idea, and it’s the main reason why we keep coming back to them even though we know they can be a little bit evil.

4. KPI creation

KPIs are the backbone of the startup culture. Not only do they keep employees on a tight structure in the world of chaos, but they also manage to create achievable goals for employees to take on with ownership.

Using Business Intelligence strategies, there's a possibility to gain further insight into what exactly is an achievable goal for your employees, based on data obtained from previous KPIs. KPIs are amazing, setting goals is a necessity, but if they're not reachable targets or if they're not high enough, an employee can quickly become disengaged.

5. Financial controly

As tight as your finances department might be, it’s not a match for big data. Business intelligence has strategies that can provide you with more visual representations of what is happening with your money. Instead of just providing you with an overview of what's going out and what's coming in, you can get a complete spread of what it all means.

Let’s say that for October, a company releases a deal offering a $15 discount on the next purchase. Without business intelligence, what you're going to see is a financial update for October that states that each sale generated less income. However, with business intelligence, you're going to be able to see broader results generated by this discount (i.e., higher sales value, upselling opportunities, prospective analysis of future earnings, and more).

Source: WATAGRAPH