Tips for using BI tools

Why organizations use BI tools

Organizations of all sizes and industries use BI tools and dashboards for a variety of reasons. Here are some of the most common benefits gained by companies that use this technology:

• Gather data more efficiently. Using BI tools helps you focus on growing your business rather than just running it. By eliminating the need for data entry, BI tools help companies save time, reduce human error, and free employees to perform more urgent tasks.
  
  
• Improve the reporting process. BI tools use automation and AI to make reporting on and drawing insights from data much faster, simpler, and more accurate. Plus, BI tools and dashboards enable you to create vibrant, customized reports that feature charts, graphs, pivot tables, and other visual representations.
  
  
• Streamline data analysis. Rather than pore over paper reports or hire an outside firm to make sense of your data for you, you can quickly analyze your data the way that makes the most sense to you by using self-serve dashboards. You can even use conversational language to ask your business questions and get quick, AI-generated answers.
  
  
• See how well you’re selling. Access all data about your internal sales representatives, external sales partners, and products from one dashboard—and use BI to identify top and low performers and praise, train, or adjust sales tactics accordingly. You also can track customer demographics and incorporate your findings into your marketing efforts.
  
  
• Identify opportunities to boost revenue. Having faster access to more accurate data enables you to quickly and faithfully pinpoint market trends, determine ways to increase your earnings, and even predict future wins in the marketplace.
  
  
• Optimize business spending. BI tools enable you to monitor your operating expenses more easily with all your relevant data accessible from one dashboard. They also enable you to quickly detect places to trim costs, like excess inventory and unused equipment and subscriptions.
  
  
• Collect and analyze customer feedback. BI tools make it easy to learn what your customers really think of your products, services, and overall brand—valuable information to drive business decisions.
  
  
• Improve corporate culture. Poll your employees on what they think of your organization, its products, workflow, and the company culture. Then use that information to improve your business operations, products, and worker satisfaction.
  
  
• Boost your brand online. Many BI tools have social media capabilities that enable you to interact with leads, customers, and influencers from within the tool. You can also use BI tools to understand how your customer base uses social media, which can help strengthen your social strategy.
  
  
• Forecast future figures. Using built-in AI functionality, BI tools can draw on past and present data to help you predict essential numbers, including customer conversion rates, product sales, and revenues. Equipping yourself with this knowledge helps you make more relevant business decisions, whether you’re ordering inventory, budgeting for new hires, or planning upcoming marketing campaigns.

Everyday business applications for BI tools

There’s no shortage of ways to use BI tools to help run and grow your business. Some of the most popular uses are:

• Data collection. Built-in features like online surveys and questionnaires help you easily capture data from your customers, employees, business partners, and other stakeholders.
  
  
• Data mining. Locate sales, revenue, and customer patterns in your datasets with the help of BI, machine learning, and statistics.
  
  
• Querying. Use self-service BI dashboards to get answers to specific questions, like Which of our products drive the most revenue? and What’s the primary way our customers learn about us?
  
  
• Benchmarking. Customize data dashboards to track your performance over a specified period of time against your target goals or metrics.
  
  
• Analysis. Discover trends and patterns in your data and understand why they happened and how you can repeat them or improve upon them.
  
  
• Data visualization. Create visual representations of your findings that are easy for others to absorb by using charts, graphs, and maps—regardless of your technical skills.
  
  
• Reporting. Package your findings into easily digestible formats and share them with colleagues, leaders, and advisors to help make more informed decisions.

Tracking meaningful data

BI software tools can radically transform how your company analyzes the past and present and predicts the future. But without a comprehensive plan for collecting and interpreting your data, even the best BI tools will fall short of helping your organization mine its data for the insights needed to make well-informed decisions.

To make sure that all the sales, marketing, customer, financial, and other business data you collect is as meaningful as possible:

• Ensure your BI tool plays nice with the data you want to track. Before you make a purchase, determine whether a BI tool will easily connect with all of your existing systems, standardize data pulled from disparate sources, and offer the level of security you need.
  
  
• Use KPIs to drive business decisions. Let your data free you from throwing spaghetti at the wall or “spraying and praying.” Create realistic, data-based KPIs on your BI dashboard to measure the efficacy of your business initiatives and strategies. For example, based on what you learned from last year’s data, you might set a KPI of increasing your net profit by 10 percent this year.
  
  
• Involve key stakeholders. Reach across departments rather than working in silos. For instance, your sales team will likely have input on how to track and report on your top-selling products for the quarter, so be sure to include them when setting up KPIs and distributing reports.
  
  
• Outline your project goals. Carefully consider and map out your project timeline and milestones. Outline the steps that you’ll need to perform for each phase of the project, the expected results for each, and what a successful project would look like.