How to Get the Most from Your Business Intelligence Platform

Implementing the use of a business intelligence platform can do a lot for your business. It can help you dig deeper into your data to identify new revenue streams, reduce waste, increase productivity, and get ahead of industry trends. 

With the best business intelligence platforms, you can apply artificial intelligence to the data to enhance the efforts of your analytics teams and make data-driven insights more accessible to more people. With this meeting of AI and analytics, you can get so much more from your data.

While most businesses do recognize the value of business intelligence tools, so many have outdated views on the ways to use them. In this post, we are going to look at some of the things you can do to get the most from your business intelligence platform.

Save Time on Data Processing

Modern businesses collect a lot of data from a multitude of sources. With so much information, the processing and input of the data can be a bit of a bottleneck in the system. The work of accessing different data sources and filling out spreadsheets can be a time-consuming task for employees. That is why you should take advantage of new business intelligence tools that automate data processing tasks.

Along with saving time and reducing costs, the automation of data processing can unlock new powers for your business intelligence platform. With data streaming in and being processed as it is collected, many of these systems can provide real-time analytics. That means you can get insights about what is happening right now instead of just looking at data that may be days or weeks old.

Connect as Many Sources as Possible

The more data you feed your business intelligence tools, the more useful they can be. You shouldn’t have it just looking at one dataset – it should be working with data from as many sources as possible. Connect your business intelligence platform with your CRM, social media data, email marketing, inventory management, sales team data and more. 

With data from more sources, the business intelligence tool will be able to give you insights concerning more areas of the company. Along with that, many of these tools can integrate the data from many sources to allow it to work together. When you have data from multiple sources unified and working together, your business intelligence software will be able to provide powerful insights for your business.

Get to Know Your BI Tools

One issue for many businesses is that they buy business intelligence tools but never take the time to get familiar with all of the features and capabilities. You might learn to work with the basic features you were interested in when you started, but there is probably so much more you can do.

Many BI providers offer a free demo to help you get started. If they have one, you should take advantage of it. The demo is more than just a sales tool. During the demo, they can walk you through different features and teach you how to get more from the platform. You can also ask for support from the platform provider. They should have support staff ready to help you achieve your goals with the system.

Empower Employees Across the Organization

Many businesses hold the outdated view that business intelligence is just for leadership. If people at the top of the organization are the only ones using the platform, you are not getting the most out of the tools it provides. 

You have employees making decisions at all levels. They can all be more productive and make better decisions when they have the data and insights they need. Allow access to employees in different departments, train them to use the platform and teach them about the ways it can be used to make them more effective.

Look to the Future

Another issue for many businesses is that they see business intelligence only as a way to get information and insights about the past. These insights can be valuable, but the best business intelligence platforms can offer a window into the future.

Many of the newest business intelligence tools use AI to offer predictive analytics. With predictive analytics, you can forecast future events and find trends before the competition. With some systems, they can even look at the predictions and then run models based on different actions you might take to help you find the right course moving forward.

When you know how to use a business intelligence platform, it can help you improve your organization in so many ways. It can make your organization more efficient, help you serve your customers better and keep your company ahead of the competition. You just need to provide it with the necessary data and understand the capabilities of the platform.