The Importance of Business Intelligence Software and Why It’s Integral for Business Success

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article | The Importance of Business Intelligence Software and Why It’s Integral for Business SuccessIn the digital-first, customer-centric world we live in today, managers and business owners must deal with information overload. That is the reason why they are always looking for ways to derive greater intelligence, control, and understanding from their data. Adopting a business intelligence (BI) strategy is one of the best ways to deal with this problem, but most organizations have been slow to integrate it within their business systems. This is mainly down to a lack of knowledge, as businesses still don’t know, where to start, what it involves, and how long it’ll take for them to see any benefits.

There’s no denying that business intelligence software is crucial in helping organizations make reliable and timely decisions about their operations. It ensures that the business can access reliable information and make insightful decisions by reacting in real time. Business intelligence software has played a major role in helping organizations meet their challenges like narrowing margins, high customer expectations, and global competition.

Most businesses are still using traditional methods, which makes it harder for them to make decisions, as the information is stored in separate applications and databases. How quickly and accurately a company responds in this technology-driven competitive market is the main difference between success and failure. Business intelligence technologies have several functions that improve their performance, and one of them is reporting. It plays a key role in business intelligence, as it allows the decision makers of the enterprise to support their work. The discovery of essential data patterns (analytics) is also done through reporting, which is another key role of business intelligence.

Some of the standard functions of business intelligence technologies include predictive and prescriptive analysis, business performance management, text mining, benchmarking, and online analytic processing. Business intelligence refers to the application, tools, and good practices that are used to access and analyze data to optimize or improve the performance of the business. It converts raw data into relevant information that enables tactical and strategic insights to make effective decisions.

Business intelligence software is a technological process, which collects and processes data to attain actionable information. It allows users to acquire information quickly and transfer them to the proper personnel to make the right decision. Business intelligence tools have been around for a long time, but it was only accessible to large enterprise, who had the infrastructure and resources to implement this technology.

However, thanks to the advancement of technology, even small enterprises now can access business intelligence software through cloud computing.

The Main Benefits of Business Intelligence Software

Any organization that wants to remain relevant in the competitive market of today must adapt fast and real-time integration of business intelligence software. Most organizations today have changed their modes of operation so they can adapt to modern business intelligence technologies. However, there are still plenty of organizations that are under the assumption that business intelligence software isn’t user-friendly and is complicated.

That’s a misconception about business intelligence software since it is user-friendly and can be adopted quickly by an organization, while it ensures maximum profitability by smoothing the decision-making process. Businesses that have adopted this technology in their systems are thriving in all the challenges they are facing at any stage of their projects. Business intelligence software also allows small and medium-sized enterprises to reduce their cost of operations by identifying areas that have higher costs of expenses and finding measures to reduce them.

The best thing about business intelligence software is that it allows businesses to have agile operations and is often the difference between operating on profits or losses. To give you a better idea, we are going to discuss some of the main benefits offered by business intelligence software:

1. Better Business Decisions

When a business adopts business intelligence software, its management can easily identify all the financial and customer data, production data, current data, and business aspects of the organization. This information will allow the management to synthesize and analyze the products and investment reports, which will help them make better business decisions that benefit the organization.

2. Enables Faster and Accurate Planning, Reporting, and Analysis

Business intelligence software offers real-time information, which helps it provide accurate reporting solutions as it can connect with an extensive range of data. The software can plan and analyze informed business solutions, which reduce potential risks and allow a business to achieve faster growth. Not only that, software solutions like Conexiom can import unstructured data from multiple sources into your system of records streamlining your workflow and improving efficiency. 

3. Enhanced Speed of Decision-Making

Business intelligence software not only helps businesses make better decisions but also helps increase their decision-making speed as well. Without business intelligence software, an organization will be spending a lot of time implementing decisions, since they’ll need to cover business aspects one by one before making any decision. This is a time-consuming process, and with business intelligence software you cut down on the speed of decision-making.

4. Increased Business User Satisfaction

There is increased user satisfaction for the software because business intelligence offers better decision-making, reporting, and accurate analysis. It helps the business maximize its limited resources by using cost-effective solutions that allow business growth and enhance user satisfaction.

5. Customer Behavior Insights

Business intelligence software holds the key for identifying customer behavior patterns, as it determines customer responses and helps the business achieve market profitability by helping it retain customers and attract new clients.

6. Accurate Decision-Making

The best part about the business intelligence software is that it not only allows real-time decision-making but also enables accurate decisions to be made that will benefit the business. For instance, if your competitor decides to reduce the prices of their products, you’ll need to come up with a counter price for your product that is lower or similar. This decision will take some time to be implemented, as you’ll need to determine the impact of your profits after the price reduction. However, when you’re using business intelligence software, you get rapid and informed decisions that allow your business to stay on top of its game.

7. Increased Collaboration between Business & IT Units

Business intelligence software and systems have enabled growth collaborations between IT and business units. Any organization that aims to grow its operation must ensure that its business and IT units are working together, and this can be achieved easily with business intelligence software.

8. Offer Personalized Services

Business intelligence software is user-friendly and comes with a feature that personalizes information or data by making it easier to use and understand. The feature also ensures smoother collaboration between users in the organization and ensures a smoother transfer of data.

9. Track KPIs with Notifications and Alerts

The business intelligence software tracks the KPI by evaluating the current status and metric value against a target using specific measures that will send alerts to the user. These notifications allow users to come up with the right solutions or measures.

10. Identify Opportunities for Revenue

Revenue growth is essential to all organizations, and it is one of the main purposes of business intelligence software. Finding new revenue opportunities opens new doors for business and allows it to thrive and transform its operations. The software analyzes marketing strategies and campaigns to create important reports and insights on the best sources of high returns on investment.

11. Reduced Cost

Enterprises that struggle to sort out their financial statements are going to struggle in the long-run, and that is where business intelligence software plays such a major role. It helps find areas where the organization can cut down its costs, and the software helps to collect raw data on areas where there are high expenses and provides solutions to bring them down.

12. Better Operational Efficiency

Every business is striving to improve its operations, as it helps them take the next step in their development. However, to do that, businesses must monitor and measure their performance, and business intelligence software helps businesses come up with different activities that help drive business success. The software covers highly used metrics like productivity, performance, and employee satisfaction to ensure better operations in the organization.

13. Higher Quality Data

Data comes in all shapes and sizes, and some can be more complicated to understand and operate, which makes it difficult for organizations to take advantage of data-driven insights. There is a data visualization tool in business intelligence software, which allows for easier recognition of data. This feature is incredibly useful since it allows data to be converted into a better method or quality, which can be easily accessed.

14. Create a Data Culture in the Organization

A lot of organizations are guilty of data clustering, which leads to data manipulation and data loss. Business intelligence software is extremely useful when it comes to handling the data of a business since it allows easy collaboration and communications among members whenever data is updated. Users can also track data and its changes since notifications are sent to everyone.

15. Self-Service Culture

One of the biggest things about business intelligence software is that it promotes a culture of self-service in the business. Users can easily access data and easily manage it even if they aren’t familiar with the statistical analytics. Adding, creating, and manipulating data is easy, and this ensures cooperation between the different departments in the business.

5 Steps To A Running A Better Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Running a Business|5 Steps To A Running A Better BusinessBeing a business owner is a great career to have, but the position can also be stressful and overwhelming at times. What will help you succeed is if you don’t ever get too comfortable in one place and are always striving to better yourself and your business.

The five steps below will give you more insight into what you can be doing on a regular basis to improve your office environment and run a smoother operation overall. Set goals and track your progress so you can see what changes are working well and what you should be doing more of going forward.

Monitor Your Employee’s Actions

Ultimately, what goes on under the roof of your business is your responsibility and people will be turning to you for answers on all sorts of matters. Take the time not only to get to know your employees on a personal and individual basis but also be proactive and continuously monitor your employee’s actions. Should you suspect criminal activity in your office, then contact a local law firm that can help you win your case and prosecute the offender.

Track Your Finances

How successful your business is over the long-term essentially depends on how profitable you are or not. Be aware of what money is going out and coming in by consistently tracking and monitoring your finances. What you want to avoid is encountering surprises when it comes to your money and budgets. You may even want to consider hiring a financial director to help you with this task if you’re too busy attending to other important matters.

Find A Partner or Mentor

You can run a better business by bouncing ideas off of other people who you trust. One option is to hire a partner to help you run your company or a mentor who can advise you on how to approach your future. Keep in mind you don’t have to do all the work yourself and that sometimes having an outside or different perspective can be helpful.

Delegate out Tasks

One way to free up some of your time so you can focus on the more important and higher level business initiatives is to learn how to delegate tasks to your employees. What’s most important is that you trust them to get the job done right and avoid micromanaging them and acting like you don’t think they can handle the assignment you give them. You’ll be able to run a better business when the work is evenly distributed to the appropriate people based on skill level.

Request Information in Writing

While it’s okay to make verbal deals, it’s essentially not a done deal until you have it in writing. Get in the habit of documenting all that goes on with your business, vendors, and clients, so you always have records of your conversations and contracts. You will be able to run a better business when you’re wise about making sure all that is said on any given day is written down, especially if it’s important to you and how your business functions.

How To Find People To Connect With In Your Industry

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Connection in Business|How To Find People To Connect With In Your IndustryWhen it comes to owning your own business, one of the best things you can do in terms of growth is to connect with people in your industry. When people say ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’, they are 100% right. Connecting with people within your industry could not only lead you to incredible opportunities, but also to making some lifelong friends that understand what you’re going through on a daily basis. It will help grow your business, give you a better understanding of the industry and allow you to enjoy what you do even more than you already do. With that in mind, here are a number of ways to find people to connect with in your industry:

Use LinkedIn To Search For People In Your Industry

One of the best ways to find people that are in the same industry as you is to use LinkedIn. As a social network that has been designed for professionals, this is a great way to connect with people that follow the same line as work as you. Whilst you may find it difficult to build your connections up at first, once you start having meaningful interactions with people your followers will grow. Once connected, you can regularly engage with the content they share or open up a private discussion in their messages. For a guide to using LinkedIn as a business owner, you can visit this site here.

See Who Else Is Using Your Popular Industry Hashtags

Within your industry, the chances are there will probably be some popular hashtags that are used. The best thing to do is do some research into what hashtags your competitors are using on popular social platforms, following them so you can interact and engage with people in your industry. If you’re looking to follow more people in your industry, you can scroll through the hashtags and connect with people that you think sit perfectly within in your niche. Whilst it does take time, it is one of the best ways to connect with people in your industry. For a guide to finding people using hashtags, you can visit this site here.

Use Public Directories And Search By Occupation

If you want to find people in your industry but you don’t feel as though they will have a strong presence on social media, it may be worth using public directories to search by occupation. With directories that provide both email and phone numbers, you will be able to reach out to anyone that you feel may be a worthwhile connection. For an example of a public directory page, you can visit the Aubrey Ferrao page here.

Think About Attending Industry Events And Conferences

Finally, attending industry events and conferences is one of the best ways to connect with new people. You will have plenty of options to meet with people in person, giving you much more of a starting point that if you were to meet someone online. It may be daunting, but it’s the best way to find people that have things in common with you.

Taking Care of Your Small Business’ Tech

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Tech|Taking Care of Your Small Businesses' TechNowadays, we are becoming increasingly dependent on technology. In our day to day lives, we use it to communicate with our loved ones, schedule our lives, and find answers to pretty much any question that pops into our head – to name just a few tasks. Business, in a similar way, are incorporating increasing amounts of tech into their functioning. Many workers spend most of their day behind a computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone screen to get all the necessary facets of their work complete. We use it to communicate with customers, clients, and our target demographic too. So, it’s extremely important that you ensure your small business’ tech is up and running at all times. Without it, work wouldn’t get done and you could lose out on significant profits. So, here are a few things that you can do to keep everything running smoothly!

IT Support

Every small business should have IT support of some sort. IT workers can survey your systems, making sure everything is ticking over properly. They can monitor your tech and identify any problems that may be in the pipeline, working to eradicate them before they establish themselves. If problems do occur, they can help to rectify them as quickly as possible – minimising disruption to your working day and operations. You may want to have your IT support team in house. This means taking on a team to work within your company and only for your company. But this tends to be the territory of larger businesses who can provide IT support workers with space and a base to operate from. If you’re operating on a smaller scale, you might want to consider outsourcing this work. Reliable companies like ClearFuze Networks, Inc. can take the hard work off your hands, a weight from your shoulders and do the work to an extremely high standard!

Update Software

Make sure to run regular software updates on any of the devices that are being used in your workplace. The majority of us are lazy and are easily tempted into clicking the “ignore” or “remind me in an hour” options when software updates are presented to us. But make the time to update. There are so many benefits that come hand in hand with updating – the updates are there for a reason, not just for the sake of it. You will generally end up with a better version of the software that you are using – it has been improved, may be easier to use, more aesthetically pleasing, or more functional. Software updates can also help you to become less prone to being hacked by individuals with bad intentions. The longer a particular piece of software has been running, the longer people have had to figure it out and try to break into it. If you have the latest version, fewer people are going to be able to break in. So, this is a security measure too!

These are just two different ways to take care of your small business’ tech. They’re simple to implement and will make all of the difference to your business and how it runs. So, take a look into the area today and start making changes!

Tips for Creating Successful Small Business Websites

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Websites for Small Businesses|Tips for Creating Successful Small Business WebsitesThe trick to making a great website is sound planning. This is the case for small personal sites and the websites of large businesses that see hundreds of thousands of visitors per day. Your small business’ website should be set up on the same ethos – with your visibility, find-ability, and navigability in the forefront of your mind as you develop your own corner of the world wide web.

This article features some crucial tips to help you make the most of the opportunities for small businesses brought about by hosting your own site on the global and open-access internet.

Select a Host

First thing’s first; your host will determine the success of your website by providing cheap, reliable and efficient hosting for you and your company’s website. Partnering with reliable hosts means you’re able to focus on the day-to-day of business without worrying about how your site will be appearing on the internet. Use Hosting Foundry to compare and select the hosts that’ll be best-suited to your needs.

Create a Site Map

Your site map is the blueprint of your website. It’s a kind of bird’s eye view that oversees all the pages that you will create, and how they’ll be linked together. Ordinarily, websites will have a set of the following pages, as standard:

  • A home page
  • An about page
  • A contact page
  • A products page
  • A staff/hiring page
  • A press/PR page

Of course, you might find that you require more pages or less, depending on the nature of your website. However, it’s important to remember that website visitors are used to receiving a certain set of information from the sites they browse, meaning your site will feel abnormal if it doesn’t provide this vital information. It might discourage sales if your website isn’t uniform with the high standards of business sites across the web.

Partner with Software

Possibly the most important tip to help you make the most out of your experimentation with web design and site hosting as a small business – software partnerships can truly be the difference between a successful website and an unsuccessful one. Here, you’ll be able to explore a very busy and impressive marketplace of selling solutions to benefit any business, with especially product hosting options for you to promote your goods or payment software that’ll help you process the wide variety of payments that your company will receive.

Modern Design Trends

The world of graphic design and web design is ever-changing, with innovations and creativity making older styles obsolete and boring to the web users who’re frequently browsing hundreds of different websites per week. To be eye-catching and bold, as well as reliable and trustworthy to your consumer, it’s important to strike the right balance here between striking design and ergonomic design. You’ll no doubt be helped in making design-based decisions by the individual or agency you choose to partner with when creating your site; they’ll be able to throw around ideas in a sandbox with you to see what sticks.

Creating a site can be a long journey, but it’s a vital asset in the digital age of commerce. Your small business site can benefit from the tips outlined above, in order to draw traffic and sales into its own online entity.