Competitive Intelligence

What is Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence is a bit of a buzzword, which is banded about when people are talking about improving the corporate decision making process. Business intelligence software packages are available, but before you go running in to buy anything and implement it into your business, you should take a while to figure out exactly what business intelligence is. Can business intelligence truly improve the way that your company is run, and if so, how?

Business Intelligence actually covers a pretty broad spectrum of business practices and IT functions which are together designed to enhance the decision making process of your company. When implemented correctly it should be able to help your company to achieve both its long term and short term goals as quickly as possible.

Business Intelligence can really be divided into three major components:

1. Data- in order to effectively analyse data, the business intelligence system will need to have access to both past and present data, ie some form of data warehousing. If you don’t have this then the vast amount of data which needs analyzing will really slow down the systems.
2. Goals – will need to be clearly identified in order to utilize your business intelligence system. In many businesses this could be something as simple as an average dollar amount per sale or the average number of units for every sale. In a call center this could be something like the number of calls each agent deals with every hour.
3. Reporting – it’s no good gathering lots of business intelligence if it isn’t reported and acted upon is it? Many of the business intelligence software solutions include a simple dashboard which can give a snapshot of the company performance at any time.

Potential Problems with Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence can only be as good as the goals they are designed to define. If these are not set sufficiently well, important information or trends can easily be missed. If a company is measuring its success by the wrong things, then maybe its success won’t be so successful in real terms. If you track the wrong pieces of  information then the information will inevitably be useless in the end.

Business Intelligence really can help a company to meet its objectives and its goals, just as long as it is used correctly. Unfortunately a business intelligence software vendor might understand his product very well, but if he doesn’t also have sufficient understanding of your business it can all be of little consequence.  When used in conjunction with existing tracking practices, however, it really can help to show the bigger picture.