How Can Business Intelligence Help Small Businesses?
Analytics, data, and technology are the primary components for long-term growth in a small organisation. However, this raises a number of questions: what types of data do you need to analyse? What technology should you use to help your company grow? What are the most effective tools for your company?
Finding all of the proper answers can be difficult, especially if you don't have the resources, manpower, or know-how to put complex technologies in place. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Small firms can obtain useful business analytics that help them reach their objectives with the correct tools and strategy. Let's look at how small businesses can use business intelligence to acquire a complete picture of their operations and improve their performance.
Business Intelligence Examples
Because there are so many ways to use BI, your individual use case will be determined by your company's industry and needs. BI is used in a variety of ways by small businesses, including:
Analyse financial data to keep track of revenue, earnings, and other key performance indicators.
Examine the tastes and behaviour of your customers.
Keep track of your sales and marketing results.
Identify operational concerns and bottlenecks.
Determine which operations need to be improved.
Recognize trends within the company and in the market.
For example, an ecommerce company could utilise BI to identify at a glance which of their products are the most popular with customers, if customers are having common problems with their goods or services, or if there are disruptions or obstacles in goods delivery.
You may also utilise BI to automate sales performance reports if you want to streamline your sales process. You can optimise your sales and lead creation tactics by analysing sales data in real time. You could also construct a dashboard to track customer happiness and discover the most prevalent reasons for customer churn so that you can prevent it from happening in the first place.
Furthermore, many firms utilise BI to track financial KPIs like MRR and ARR to ensure they're on track to meet their goals. If they don't, they can immediately change their strategy to boost revenue.
Using Business Intelligence Data to Its Full Potential
Choosing the best BI software is just the beginning. Follow these best practises for reliable and transparent data analysis while establishing BI procedures in your organisation:
Make sure the data you're working with is of good quality and worth. Every data-driven approach starts with good data. To begin with, make sure you're collecting correct and relevant data; if you can't trust your data, you can't trust any insights you derive from it.
Organise your information. Make sure you're not only collecting good data, but also organising and keeping it effectively and safely.
Don't use solutions that are overly complicated or costly. When looking for a business intelligence solution, it's tempting to choose a tool that offers the world with a plethora of features and add-ons. But, more often than not, less is more: concentrate on your company's needs and locate a product that fits them, not the other way around.
Find a short-term solution that works for you. While thinking for the future is crucial, your BI solution must work for you now in order to work in the future. The average company utilises four different BI tools, but that doesn't imply you have to buy all of them right away. Look for a product that starts out simple and meets your immediate needs, but that you can expand as your business grows.
Data silos should be avoided at all costs. Because your data is compartmentalised across separate apps, your data strategy may not always function. If you keep some of your client data in one application and another in another, you won't have a complete picture of the data, and your analysis will be fragmented and incomplete.
Integrated data is the foundation of business intelligence.
Integrating your data is necessary if you want to get trustworthy and reliable insights into your business. Keeping all of your data up to date gives you a unified, full, and richer view of your data, which you can turn into useful data and actionable insights.
Using native connections like Operations Hub or iPaaS solutions like Zapier or Automate.io is one of the simplest ways for small businesses to combine their data. These solutions can automate workflows, synchronise data in two directions, automate operations, and much more.
By integrating your customer support software with your CRM in real-time, for example, you can ensure that your CRM always has the most up-to-date information about your customers, such as churn risk, pain points, and previous purchases. This type of connectivity allows you to swiftly access all of your dashboard's data and make smart decisions.
While it's understandable that small businesses have difficulty acquiring transparent and accurate data, the appropriate combination of processes, people, and tools may help you enhance your data strategy and ensure that your data reports are dependable and trustworthy.