5 Reasons Why Business Intelligence is Critical In Strategic Business Planning

Technological progression has completely revolutionized how we approach things in our everyday lives, and it is especially true in the business industry, which felt the most significant impact. Big data is called the “new oil” now, as information is a precious resource in the 21st century. As a result, companies are looking for new ways to utilize data to get ahead of their competitors and increase profit. To address this, they incorporate business intelligence in their strategic planning.

Here Is An Eye-Opening Statistic:

• Organizations leave 97% of the collected data unused.
• “Bad” data costs the United States economy $3.1 trillion annually.
• Companies that use BI are five times more likely to make decisions faster than those that don’t.
• About 90% of R&D departments consider BI as “very important” or “mission critical”.

So, suppose you’re a company owner, and BI is already on top of your mind. In that case, this article will help you immensely as we will tackle what BI means and why it is critical in strategic business planning. Read on.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence is an efficient way to access and gather extensive data sets from many sources, and they present them through graphs, dashboards, charts, summaries, and maps. As a result, BI benefits companies by enhancing productivity and optimizing operational efficiency as it extracts essential data and transforms them into valuable insights.

Companies can use every extracted information to strategize how they will market their brand based on customers’ buying habits, the latest market trend, etc. Because of this, BI has become an integral part of every company’s operation. How does BI help an organisation?

How Can Business Intelligence Help Different Departments?

The primary business intelligence role is to drive corporate managers or even startup owners to make informed business decisions. However, applying BI isn’t just limited to company leaders. They are also effective in different areas of the company.

BI for Human Resources

In any business, people are always the most significant asset. Absence and vacation management are all use cases that BI can support. Also, BI supports ensuring that all employees have all the information they need to fulfil their roles. BI helps utilize payroll tracking, employee productivity analysis, and compensation to meet employees’ satisfaction. 

BI for Finance

You can benefit from BI by improving how to track company budgets, identify possible issues, and gain in-depth insight into financial data, resulting in stable finances and security in the firm. For example, financial services company Charles Schwab used BI to get a complete view of all of its departments in the US to understand performance metrics and identify areas of opportunity.

BI for Sales

If you have a sales-related business, using BI for strategic business planning is crucial! With data visualization, the sales team can see in real-time insights and understand where the business is performing best. It helps to analyze sales numbers, accurately plan sales budgets and achieve company goals. In addition, BI provides sales cycle visuals, in-depth conversion rate analytics, and comprehensive revenue analysis.

BI for Marketing

An effective marketing campaign is a key to a successful business plan, which is why strategic business intelligence has become so important. With real-time data and dashboards, you can quickly assess your marketing spend and determine where your budget should go. In addition, BI can show the results of marketing campaigns and essential metrics like cost per lead (CPL), customer acquisition cost (CAC), and campaign click-through rates (CTR), which can lead to a higher return on investment.

Learn more about “How Can Business Intelligence Be Applied to Marketing?”

BI for Internal Operations

Most companies don’t consider using the BI system to optimize internal processes. Such as inventory turnover analysis or tracking operations in the supply chain. The accounting department may also use BI to prepare weekly, monthly, and out-of-date reports. For example, the food parcel service HelloFresh, automated its reporting processes because its digital marketing team spent too much time on it each month.

What Is Strategic Business Planning?

It is an organizational management activity used by businesses to prioritize processes and focus skills and resources to improve operational efficiency. It ensures everyone, from management to entry-level employees, is working towards a common goal.

You may ask: “How can we use business intelligence for strategic planning? How do they work together?” BI provides you with relevant data to make informed decisions about your business planning approach.

5 Reasons Why Business Intelligence is Critical in Strategic Business Planning

Faster Decision-Making

Integrating business intelligence in strategic planning can speed up extracting information from many unorganized data and various sources. It also helps keep the employees up-to-date with the latest market trends and establish business goals for the company’s benefit. Role of business intelligence in organizations very essential in the current time.  With BI, a company gets real-time business reports to use the information effectively to achieve a better result. Given these, you can make quick and better decisions without compromising the quality of how your company operates.

Seamless Marketing Activities

Most (if not all) companies are already transitioning to digital marketing, which is why business intelligence is crucial in streamlining marketing activities. Unfortunately, many marketers face the challenge of not understanding what marketing campaign is effective and is worthy of including in the company’s budget. However, with BI, you can identify what marketing campaign is effective and what is not, so you can quickly decide where to spend money. Moreover, BI also helps in helping conduct experiments, find a market fit, and keep up with updated marketing strategies so you can stay ahead of your competitors.

Optimize Sales Strategy

BI can help your sales department to know where your company is performing better through visual presentations of the data acquired. That way, they will be able to analyze how they can perform better, where to allocate the company’s budget, and ensure that they meet all the targets.

360-Degree Customer View

One of the reasons why companies use BI in their strategic business planning is to stay up-to-date on customers’ purchases. By using BI, you will be able to observe and analyze the buying motives of your customers, which you can use to create future products that specifically cater to their needs. Furthermore, you can use BI to understand your competitors: what works for them and whether you’re implementing the same techniques. Then, you will be able to enhance the areas in your strategy that is not present in your competitors’.

Improve Productivity And Efficiency

Automating processes can help boost productivity and efficiency in the company. It includes report generation and real-time updates, which you can seamlessly share across departments. Thus, BI planning helps save time on doing redundant duties and allows your employees to focus on more critical tasks.

Saving Time And Money

Today we are all part of the business world where organizations collect and store vast amounts of data from various sources. If data is not used correctly, it will become a burden on your business and a cost. So, BI is useful for saving time and money in strategic business planning. You don’t need to spend precious resources collecting, analyzing and visualizing data – it’s all done for you.

Final Thoughts

Manually gathering data from various sources can be time-consuming and costly. But with BI, processes are readily optimized and automated to help companies make informed and strategic business decisions. 

There are a lot of advantages business intelligence has. BI can help eliminates time spent collecting and reporting analysis. It also efficiently optimizes and transforms business insights into usable data. Thus, resulting in a significant return on investment every time. If you’re keen to take the new step, we at Broscorp can help you with your business intelligence journey. We offer to develop ETL & business intelligence solutions that help companies crunch vast amounts of data, discover potential trends, and increase profit.