Improve the Bottom Line with Business Intelligence

 The EU is looking at slow economic growth for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean that your company needs to be too. Companies that look towards business intelligence to inform business practices and identify opportunities can improve efficiency, productivity and best of all improve the bottom line during a time of economic hardship.

As consumers operate and interact online greater sets of data is accessible to businesses that can help to inform business practice and identify opportunities for growth, innovation and investment. To utilise this data it needs to processed, analysed and distributed. Business intelligence software and tools help to make this data manageable and actionable. Understanding this data enables employees to make informed decisions regarding customers making them easier to market to and retain.

To benefit from business intelligence companies need to be selective on the type of tools and software that they use. Too little data and companies could make ill-informed decisions, too much data and they can be overwhelmed, missing out on valuable insights and trends. This makes it hard to provide efficient, actionable processes and goals. Business intelligence software and tools need to be available to not only those analysing the data but also employees who will benefit from these insights. Business intelligence needs to be understood by more than just the data scientists. Companies should look towards business intelligence software that focuses on the usability and functionality for an end user who wants to interact and understand the data rather than software that solely focuses on the IT needs.

Spending time on implementing and integrating the tools with existing processes will also be valuable to the company. For managers that are often laid down with large amounts of work automated reports and notifications will ensure that new reports don’t get missed. Reports that have the data set out in a simple template with key visuals will make it easier to identify trends at a glance.

All this data needs to be stored on a secure server that can be accessible to key employees. Companies that invest in IT infrastructure and cloud services will be able to weather the economic storm and come out on top. Using cloud services that are flexible, scalable and secure to store valuable business information has helped businesses to develop resilience against loss of data, data duplication and redundancy. Data losses can impact the bottom line with missed sales, poor customer management and disrupt supply lines. Storing business intelligences tools, software and data on cloud services will allow companies to access the data from anywhere at any time.

For businesses to look towards the future they need to make informed decisions that improve business practices, provides flexible and scalable IT infrastructure and solutions and improves the bottom-line.