Advancing your company means making informed decisions based on actionable data. It means staying ahead of trends and identifying strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Analytics and business intelligence are vital tools to help business owners understand and navigate rapidly evolving industries. These tools turn big data into valuable insights that give business owners a strategic advantage in the marketplace.
What is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) tools are a type of software that collect, organize, analyze, and visualize data to help companies manage business operations, identify trends and future projections, and make strategic decisions to improve profits. These tools may vary in presentation based on a company’s unique needs, but the common goal is gaining a competitive advantage based on data-driven insights. BI tools will centralize and integrate data from a variety of sources to provide a wholistic picture of your company’s past, present, and future.
Benefits of Analytics and BI
Businesses can experience several benefits from using modern BI tools that give them a significant advantage in their industry. An aging, but still insightful, report from Forbes identified that companies who use analytics are 5x faster at making decisions than their traditional counterparts. BI tools take large amounts of information and use machine learning algorithms to rapidly identify connections. Old-school spreadsheet style business analysis cannot keep up with these tools. Some benefits of modern BI tools include:
Improved Operations Management – Data analysis can help identify opportunities to streamline operations, improve workloads, and make the most out of your day-to-day business practices. Help your team work smarter, not harder.
Centralized Data – BI tools gather data from a variety of sources and compile a comprehensive analysis of the business, dramatically simplifying the task of business analysis and enabling faster, more efficient insights. Time is money. Increasing efficiency gives companies more opportunities to stay ahead of the curve and increase profits.
Identify Opportunities with Predictive Analysis – BI tools do not just show you the current business health, they also identify opportunities through trends and predictive analysis. BI tools and machine learning algorithms can perform rapid analyses of the consumer landscape, industry trends, human behavior identifiers, etc. to show opportunities for strategic marketing, business expansion, or even product redesign.
Microsoft and The Power BI Difference
Microsoft Power BI is a cloud-based analytics and business intelligence platform that creates data-driven opportunities via real-time data integrations, enterprise analytics, and industry-leading AI (artificial intelligence). Microsoft has been recognized by Gartner as a Magic Quadrant Leader in BI and analytics for 13 years running.
Seamless Integrations with Microsoft Products – Microsoft is an industry leader for a reason. From Azure to Excel, Microsoft’s array of products provides businesses with end-to-end data management. Adding Power BI to your lineup enables you to make the most of these products with simple connections to Excel queries and reports.
Personalized Dashboards – One of the keys to streamlined analytics is data visualization so that insights can be quickly and accurately understood by a variety of key players. Make sure you are seeing the right data at the right time with fully customizable dashboards that show you what you need to know just how you want it presented.
Balances Advanced Performance with Ease of Use – Analytics, BI, and machine learning are complicated concepts, but you should not have to be a business analyst to understand trends and insights. Thankfully, Power BI is designed with robust tools and advanced analytics that are intuitive and easy to use.
Act on your Insights – Microsoft takes your BI journey one step further with the option to add Power Apps and Power Automate to your roster, helping you quickly and efficiently act on your insights.
Continuing Advancements – Modern business intelligence is growing rapidly as the data landscape grows and shifts. The Microsoft team is continually learning from the industry and adapting Power BI to ensure it delivers industry-leading insights and performance.
Big data is here to stay, but big data means very little without strategic analysis. Utilizing a modern BI tool, like Power BI, can help your company understand its data, manage its operations, and make decisions based on data-driven insights. Dobler Consulting LLC is a leading provider of database services, premier software development, and information technology support, servicing clients ranging from small businesses to FORTUNE companies across multiple industry verticals. For more information about Microsoft Power BI and which analytics tool is right for you, visit DoblerConsulting.com or call us at +1 (813) 322-3240 (US) /+1 (416) 646-0651 (Canada).