5 Reasons Why Understanding Business Intelligence is So Important Today

We are living in an increasingly data-centric world and businesses that can’t keep up will eventually fall behind.

14:03 02 February 2021

Gathering data is not enough. You have to find ways to properly monitor it, compile it, and come to meaningful conclusions. Understanding yesterday’s data will also make you better at forecasting what could happen one month, quarter, or a year from now. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why understanding business intelligence is so important today.

 

Make Better Decisions

 

Business owners need to be able to have a grasp on their data. Information only becomes intelligence when you can structure it to provide meaningful insights that can influence business decisions. Having data-driven up-to-date intelligence and acting on it will eventually translate to superior financial in the long run.

 

This doesn’t have to be in the form of sales either. The area where business intelligence will often have the biggest impact is on productivity. In many cases, business intelligence is used to improve the efficiency of processes in a company. Used in conjunction with a lean project management tool like Kanban, for instance, every process can be monitored in detail.

 

You can identify bottlenecks and see which part of the chain is responsible, or you may find out that your work in progress limit is too high and your employees are overloaded. Without business intelligence, you’re leaving all of this to guesswork, which is a sure recipe for failure.

 

Monitoring performance at every level is essential if you want to eliminate waste and make sure that you have accountability. Not only that, but you might find out that certain tasks are unnecessary or that your employees’ time is not being used properly.

 

It Makes You More Employable

 

For those who are thinking of getting a business education, going for a concentration that is centered around data or business intelligence can put you in a prime position for employment in the future. As a matter of fact, it was estimated that the demand for those with an MBA in business intelligence could skyrocket in the next few years. Openings for operations research analysts are set to increase by 25% by 2029. There are also tons of other positions that you could fill such as business analyst, marketing manager, or consultant.

 

If you want to know more about the benefits of a business intelligence MBA, we suggest you click here. You’ll learn how much some of the entry-level positions pay as well as how the business intelligence MBA compares to other MBAs.

 

Exceed Sales and Marketing Goals

 

Understanding business intelligence is also essential if you want to not only meet, but exceed your sales and marketing goals. Having advanced metrics on how well your sales team is working or identifying trends in customer behavior will make a world of difference. Being able to decipher, organize, and act upon the torrents of data collected by your CRM will also give any business an edge.

 

You’ll also be able to facilitate collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. Your marketing team will have better visibility of your sales information, which will allow them to fine-tune and target their campaigns better. They can also use advanced tracking features to measure every campaign and use data to make sure that future initiatives are as profitable or more.

 

You’ll Understand Your Customers Better

 

One of the principal reasons behind the rise of business intelligence as a science is that it’s now more important than ever to know how your customers interact with you. There are so many entryways through which they can connect with your brand nowadays, and if you don’t know what these are, you will eventually lag behind your competition.

 

Understanding how your customers interact with your brand will be crucial in knowing where you need to put in more effort. You will also be able to stop spending money on channels that aren’t getting any results. Customers today are less receptive to being sold outright, hence why it’s important to focus on having an inbound marketing strategy these days. And being able to implement one is largely dependent on your ability to engage with your customer.

 

CRM solutions allow you to gather the data necessary to guide clients through a more complex customer journey. Spreading your tools as widely as you can allows you to form well-defined customer profiles. You will then be able to use trends and buyer behavior to hone your sales, business growth, and marketing strategies.

 

Improve Customer Experience

 

Gartner recently called customer experience the “final frontier” in marketing, and we have to agree with them. In their survey, more than two thirds of marketers stated that their companies competed on that front alone. And business intelligence plays a crucial role in objectively improving this experience.

 

Business intelligence can be used to improve not only customer satisfaction, but loyalty as well, which is like gold in this day and age. Again, this is where having a complete profile of your customer is imperative.

 

Your sales reps need to be able to get an at-a-glance view of a customer at the touch of a button. They need to be able to see things like what stage of the sales cycle they’re in, ongoing service cases, and previous purchases. This will allow you to improve the quality of your customer service and know when a customer is in a buying state.

 

Having more information on your customers will also allow you to do some segmentation work. For instance, you'll be able to quickly identify your most profitable clients and client profiles. This will allow you to target these clients with tailormade offers and will also allow you to know which segments you should be targeting in your marketing efforts.

 

As you can see, business intelligence is more important than ever and has to be a priority for your organization if it isn’t already. Thankfully, this is something most owners can grasp if they have a solid foundation.