The business world is highly competitive. Data plays a particularly crucial role, especially in decision-making. Every day, companies generate vast amounts of information – from sales data, through customer behaviors, to market trends. The problem arises when there is so much data that it becomes difficult to analyze and draw conclusions from it. This is exactly where business intelligence (BI) comes in.
This article will answer the question “What is BI?” and how it can help your company. We will show you how BI works, what benefits it offers, and how you can use it in practice to gain an advantage over the competition.
What is Business Intelligence? – Definition
Business Intelligence (BI) is a set of technologies, processes, and tools designed to collect, process, and analyze data in order to support business decision-making. In practice, this means that BI transforms large volumes of raw data into clear reports, visualizations, and metrics that deliver concrete and measurable insights. This makes it easier to understand the company’s situation, identify strengths and weaknesses, and anticipate what may happen in the future.
BI is not limited to reporting historical results – its role is also to highlight relationships and patterns that can be crucial for a company’s growth. BI tools analyze data from various sources, such as ERP systems, CRM platforms, databases, or spreadsheets, and integrate them into a coherent view of the business. As a result, you gain not only data but also actionable knowledge that can be directly applied to optimize processes, increase sales, and improve customer service.
How does Business Intelligence work?
Business Intelligence works in several stages that together create a complete process of data analysis. The first step is collecting information from different sources – such as sales systems, CRM, transaction databases, marketing activities, or even Excel files. These data sets are often scattered and inconsistent, so they need to be cleaned and organized. At this stage, errors, duplicates, and inconsistencies are removed to ensure reliable analysis.
The next step is storing the data in dedicated repositories, known as data warehouses. These serve as the central hub from which BI retrieves information for further analysis. The data is then processed and transformed into reports, charts, and clear dashboards. Thanks to such visualizations, it becomes much easier to spot trends, deviations, or important patterns that would be hard to detect in raw data.
The final stage is presenting the results in a form tailored to the audience – whether it’s the management board, sales, marketing, or operations teams. Each department receives the information most relevant to its needs. For founders and investors, BI is not only knowledge about what has already happened in the company but also an understanding of the reasons behind it and possible future scenarios. This makes BI a tool not just for analyzing the past but also for predicting trends and planning the company’s future growth.
How can you benefit from Business Intelligence?
Implementing Business Intelligence brings companies a range of tangible benefits that directly improve efficiency and competitiveness. So, how can you benefit from BI? Here are 4 examples:
- Better decision-making – with BI you gain access to reliable, up-to-date, and clearly presented data. Instead of relying on intuition, you can act based on facts, solid analysis, and make conscious business decisions.
- Saving time and resources – instead of manually preparing reports, you receive automatically generated dashboards and visualizations that update in real time. This allows you to react faster to market changes, optimize processes, and eliminate inefficiencies.
- Increased transparency in the organization – thanks to reports tailored to each department, every team has a clear view of its work and its impact on the overall business. This strengthens collaboration between departments and makes it easier to achieve common goals.
- Forecasting and strategic planning – analyzing trends and historical data enables you to predict future outcomes, which in turn allows for better budget management, inventory control, and marketing campaigns. As a result, BI becomes not just an analytical tool, but also a strategic compass pointing the way for your company’s growth.
Business Intelligence vs Artificial Intelligence
Although Business Intelligence (BI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are often confused, in reality they play very different roles in data analysis and business support. BI focuses mainly on analyzing historical and current data, presenting it in the form of reports, dashboards, and visualizations. Its main goal is to deliver clear information that makes fact-based decision-making easier.
AI, on the other hand, goes a step further – it uses machine learning algorithms, predictive models, and automation to not only analyze data but also forecast future events or even make decisions independently. In other words, BI answers the question “what happened and why?”, while AI answers “what is likely to happen and how should we respond?”.
In practice, the two technologies complement each other. BI provides solid analytical foundations and data transparency, while AI enriches this with prediction and automation. Companies that manage to combine BI with AI gain comprehensive tools for managing both the present and the future of their business.
What are the Business Intelligence tools?
There is a wide range of Business Intelligence tools available on the market that support data analysis, reporting, and forecasting. Below are some of the most commonly used BI tools:
- Microsoft Power BI – one of the most popular tools, offering intuitive dashboards, integration with Microsoft 365, and Azure cloud.
- Tableau – valued for its clear, interactive data visualizations and ease of use.
- Qlik Sense – a tool that uses associative analysis to uncover hidden relationships in data.
- SAP BusinessObjects – a comprehensive solution for large companies, supporting reporting and integration with other ERP systems.
- Looker (Google Cloud) – a cloud-based BI platform that integrates seamlessly with Google services.
- Oracle BI – an advanced analytics system, mainly used in large corporations, offering a wide range of reporting and predictive functions.
- Sisense – a BI tool that integrates large datasets from multiple sources and turns them into clear visualizations.
- Domo – a cloud platform that connects data from various systems and provides real-time reports.
- Zoho Analytics – a cloud-based tool, particularly popular among small and medium-sized businesses, enabling fast reporting and analysis.
- IBM Cognos Analytics – a solution that incorporates elements of artificial intelligence to automate reporting and forecasting.
- MicroStrategy – a BI platform focused on advanced analytics for large enterprises.
Each of these tools has its strengths – some prioritize simplicity and speed of implementation, while others focus on scalability and integration with enterprise-level systems. Choosing the right solution depends on the size of the company, available budget, and analytical needs.
Which companies can implement Business Intelligence, and when?
Business Intelligence is not reserved only for large corporations. Its capabilities can be used by startups, medium-sized businesses, as well as mature organizations. The key factor is whether the company has data worth analyzing – the more sources of information, the greater the need to organize and use them strategically.
- Startups and young companies often turn to BI when they begin to grow rapidly. This is the moment when sales, marketing, or financial data become too scattered to analyze manually. Implementing BI then helps streamline processes, react faster to changes, and scale the business in a controlled way.
- Medium-sized companies most often implement BI when they want to optimize operations and improve profitability. BI analyses help them better understand their customers, control costs, and plan budgets more effectively. This allows them to compete with larger players in the market.
- Large organizations use BI as a tool for strategic management. It gives executives insight into the entire business – from finance and sales to human resources – and allows them to make decisions based on reliable data rather than intuition.
BI is worth implementing once a company has enough data to support real business decisions. Regardless of the organization’s size, the turning point usually comes with business growth, the need to optimize costs, or the desire to better forecast the future.
Incro – what support can we offer you with BI?
At incro, we help companies unlock the full potential of Business Intelligence. We integrate data from various sources and create a central BI platform that becomes the main hub for analysis and reporting. We build real-time financial dashboards and KPIs, allowing you to continuously monitor your key business metrics.
We don’t leave you alone with the data – our analysts and financial managers support you in interpreting it so you can make better decisions. We also implement an AI chatbot that instantly organizes information and answers questions, eliminating the need for time-consuming report preparation.
Our focus is to let you analyze and act, rather than waste time on technical data preparation. We also offer benchmarking that allows you to compare your company’s results with historical data and best practices in the industry. The entire implementation process is carried out quickly and in a structured way.
If you’d like to implement BI in your company, get in touch with us and schedule a free consultation at https://incro.us/contact/
