How business intelligence can help you gain competitive advantage

Business intelligence is the process of collecting information from data that can be used to guide an organisation's business decisions.

It is often mistaken for business analytics - the main difference between the two lies within the questions they aim to answer. Business intelligence focuses on descriptive information that provides a summary of historical and current activities within the business. It answers the ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ questions.

Business analytics, on the other hand, uses data mining and modelling to predict future occurrences. Business analytics is used to make educated predictions and answer ‘why?’ questions.

Often overlooked when conducting business research, however, it can provide business owners with valuable information about the performance of their business. This information can be crucial in deciding what aspects are working well and what needs to be improved, which is all part of creating a successful business model. This article will tell you exactly how business intelligence software can help you to gain a competitive advantage.

The benefits of business intelligence

Business intelligence allows companies to answer key questions about their performance, which gives them a competitive advantage in the market. There are many ways in which investing in business intelligence can benefit your business.

Fast reporting

Business intelligence software provides employees with access to highly accurate report templates that can save tons of time. Reports can then be condensed into single, easy to read, data dashboards, making it easy to quickly scan through the reports and spot areas that need improvement. This means that your business can keep on top of problems and keep ahead of the game.

High-quality data

The most successful businesses are the ones that can collect and create high-quality data that is free of errors. Business intelligence software can minimise the errors that can occur in a data set, giving your business a better view of what is happening.

Operational efficiency

Business intelligence software can improve your company's organisation by unifying data sources. Unifying data means that employees can spend less time searching for various pieces of information, which will give them more time to analyse the data and produce reports.

Identifying market trends

Identifying trends in the market and building a strategy around these trends is what will give your business a competitive advantage. Business intelligence software helps employees to gather relevant market data and generate analysis quickly.

Profit margins

It can be used to analyse inefficiencies and improve your businesses profit margins. The data produced by business intelligence software can help sales teams gather a deeper insight into their customers. Using this insight, informed decisions about the budget or which product lines to buy can be decided.

Competitor analysis

It provides businesses with the opportunity to track competitors performance - this is incredibly helpful in understanding how you can gain an edge over your competition.

Business intelligence in ERP

Having business intelligence built-in or linked to your ERP will prevent you from reacting to out-of-date reports and will keep you up-to-date with relevant insights. This will not only lead to a better customer experience, but it will make your businesses more agile than your competition.

Customer satisfaction

Improved performance with the help of business intelligence software will ultimately create a better experience for your customers. This will lead to improved customer satisfaction and will encourage more people to use your business for their needs.

If you're looking for an all-in-one ERP solution, contact the team at WinMan today.