Business Intelligence (BI) is a process for analyzing data and presenting relevant information to business executives. It’s meant to help them make better business decisions and improve their overall performance. There are many benefits to using Business Intelligence for every business. Despite that, it’s still important to know what it can and cannot do for your venture.
While BI used to be exclusively for the ‘big boys’ (since they had the money for IT specialists and data centers), it’s now possible for small businesses to utilize BI to fulfill their different needs. This guide will cover some of the benefits your small business would get from using BI tools.
Large corps are no longer the sole users of BI
Times have changed since only large corporations could utilize BI to make more informed business decisions. It’s quite simple – if it can help large corporations make better decisions, why wouldn’t it be able to help small businesses do the same?
Technological boom in the past ten years has made this possible. Now, small businesses can successfully utilize BI to help their growth and financial decisions.
BI’s impact on business growth
Every small business owner should be interested to know which products/services are successful and where. This is particularly important if expansion is in the plan. Business Intelligence allows you to this and more, by pinpointing popular trends in certain areas or within a certain population.
By relying on raw data instead on your instincts, you’ll be sure to lower the risks of decision making. It’ll be quite easier for your small business to reach that next stage of expansion.
Future planning
The best thing about utilizing Business Intelligence platforms is that it allows you to prepare yourself for the future. Adjusting your small business in line with the data you get from BI can help you reach your business’ full potential.
It’s also important to note that some businesses are already shifting from traditional BI towards predictive analytics. Being very cost effective, it’s no wonder that firms like Picnet software development company started using predictive analytics instead of the classical BI. It also saves a lot of time since it only uses extracts of internal data to get the same results.
BI helps you organize
You can easily deduct what’s working and what’s not regarding your management and staffing structure through BI analytics. You can also use it to better control your inventory since it will point out which products/services are most popular in a certain time frame. It will allow you to stock up on certain items and avoid any chaotic situations. This will ensure that your business stays cost efficient.
And if you ever reach that point where you no longer consider your venture to be a ‘small business’, then you can consider creating an analytics team to help you process the data.
The security aspect
The security of most SMBs today is highly dependent on the exploitation of Big Data, though not directly. The thing is, many cyber security companies today employ big data analytics to battle the ever-growing stream of cyber-attacks.
What started out as a military technology aimed at battling terrorism has lately been commercialized and available to a broad spectrum of public companies. The system is based on a machine-learning model that analyze vast amounts of data, looking for suspicious patterns in “behavior”. Though it comes with a price, it is nothing compared to the price of losing one’s business in the aftermath of a major cyber-attack.
The importance of such systems is emphasized by the fact that 60% of all cyber-attacks are aimed at small businesses. The reason being the lack of defensive possibilities. Malware, DDoS and plain hacks can lead to customer distrust, loss of important data and hefty legal fines.
See Also: 9 Stats About Small Business Digital Marketing in 2017
Conclusion
Investing in Business Intelligence will make it much easier for you to understand how your business is progressing, why it’s progressing at that rate and where you’ll be if you don’t make any changes. This will make decision making so much easier and you’ll never have to rely on your business intuition. As you already know, low risk and high reward is the winning recipe for most startups and that’s exactly what BI brings to the table.
See Also: How to Ensure Growth in Small Business
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Author: Blake Davies
Blake Davies is an IT specialist and a growth hacker. He's the editor @ Media Gurus. He's also a webdesign enthusiast and WordPress wiz.
