Using business intelligence for process improvements

Companies often use business intelligence tools to gain insight into improving customer experience, retention, and sales. But what about leveraging it for internal process improvements?

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We hear a lot about business intelligence tools and how beneficial it can be for understanding customers and competitors. Why not take advantage of business intelligence to improve how your company works internally for operational efficiency? This may sound obvious to some, but not every company uses the full power of this tool. 

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Business intelligence is a well-discussed topic these days, and while companies are almost always on a quest to improve their internal processes, they’re not always sure how to go about it. If this sounds like your company, now’s the perfect time to harness the full capabilities of business intelligence to create internal efficiencies. Let’s start with understanding business intelligence.

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence (BI) is software and services that take raw data and turn it into relevant and practical insights that companies can use to strengthen their positions and business decisions. BI tools analyze large sets of data based on queries that are written to fetch specific types of information. The results are then formatted and displayed as summaries, graphs, reports, charts, and maps for further analysis for decision making. 

There are many company benefits when it comes to gathering customer and competitor data. Let’s explore the benefits of using BI for improving internal workflows. 

Benefits of using business intelligence for internal process improvements

Change in your industry and even global changes will affect business processes at some point, and this means your business will need to evolve its processes to remain competitive. Using BI to gather workflow-based information offers many benefits, including these:

  • Reducing the time it takes to make decisions

  • Optimizing internal processes to help your employees focus on higher-value work

  • Reducing the time it takes to get your product or service to market

  • Increasing customer satisfaction through improved efficiencies and better service

  • Freeing up more time to focus on other things, like quality and customer retention initiatives

  • Overall improved operational efficiency and agility

How to leverage business intelligence to take advantage of benefits

To become more agile as a company, it’s critical to ensure your BI solution can deliver the benefits needed to improve your processes. These are things you should look for in a BI solution. 

A platform that can easily integrate with your existing systems to make timely process-related information accessible to all areas of your businessBI about a process means BI that focuses on the process itself to determine how the process is working and how it can be improved.

Business intelligence tools for process improvements

When it comes to finding the right BI tool to improve your processes, there are different ones to choose from. We’ve listed some that stand out, based on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant

Process-based business intelligence can help you gather insights that help your teams become more productive and your customers more content. Before you select one, make sure you identify the processes that need to be improved, isolate your goals, and then find the BI solution that will best meet your intended purpose. 

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