Business Intelligence is the applications and collection practices, technologies, integrating, analyzing, and presenting business information. It is a term used in supporting the better decision making, hence also known as decision support system. The goals of business intelligence projects are very specific in terms of decision making. These goals are such as; Doing customer profitability, enhancing revenue, reduction in product defect, and saving money.
For example, in the case of customer profitability, the lifetime value scoring can be taken as the theme. First, lifetime value is the significant element of understanding the customers in the business. It will help when it comes to making pertinent business decisions in regards to marketing, development of the product sales, customer support and many more. For instance, in marketing, a question like, “How much is required to be spent in acquiring a customer?” and determining the ways of offering products and services which will be best for the customers. It includes knowing how much can be used in supporting the customers in order to retain them and also sales reps to spend on what kinds of the customers.
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"Role of Business Intelligence".
Business intelligence applied in the increment of the revenue which then leads to the creation of a more effective product mix. In this project, its goals are to optimize the techniques used in the distribution which helps in easing the way customers will be reached and how they are going to use the services. When proper strategies are put in place for the distribution then it is likely that the project will be successful following the factors of proper distribution strategies. Another goal is to find better marketing partners; in fact the distribution techniques are connected to it as these techniques can as well be used in getting the right marketing partners. The purported partners will be pleased with the kind of distribution techniques put and that is how they will be influenced to get into partnership.
The business intelligence in controlling costs of a business; this kind of program helps in reducing the wastage and scrap, with the goal of increasing the materials and labor productivity. This is a typical business intelligence project in the manufacturing companies where the shareholders need to find partners and conduct evaluation of their costs in manufacturing; those who are less costly are most preferred. Getting the less costly partners is good in investments and savings, more so when it comes to sharing the interests. It is also significant in finding out how plant capacities used in manufacturing can be fully utilized.
The ability of respondents delivering self-service reporting has been problem in their organization. Almost 35.8% have admitted that this has been a problem to them. The traditional business intelligence tools are difficult to use and only few people in the organization can operate them, and thus can lead to the slowness in the whole process of reporting. Therefore, delivering self-service analysis becomes a challenge because at first, the tools are not user-friendly which means that the expected reporting may not be delivered.
With the high rate at which companies collect a lot of data within the business operation, these data spread across various systems and software, resulting to difficulties in gathering them. It is hectic getting the required information when already the data is spread across such multiple systems. The systems through which data can be stored include; CRMs, ERP systems and Excel. Getting the exact information when it is really needed, can be a problem due to uneasiness in the accessibility. For instance, when unlocking the data in between the complex systems is really a painful process. In addition, reduction in the producing cost of the reports is a problem because large amounts are used in ensuring that the software are up and running as required and as well as putting into consideration the maintenance and the associated tools used in business intelligence projects.
Treating the initiatives of business intelligence as business projects is important because the users can recognize the project’s success or failure. In bringing up the project to be seen as the initiative led by business; the information needed must be identified, the format, storage and the relationship of the data. Lastly, the way data should be provided and when it is needed and who is allowed to access the data.