Having almost taken over the professional world, Business Intelligence (BI) is now used by businesses large and small, with 85% of business leaders agreeing that BI has the potential to change the way businesses operate. So, having bypassed the question of if you should implement BI – and because you probably already have – here’s how you should implement a business intelligence strategy for your business.
BI strategy that aligns with your business goals
He shoots. He scores. Goals are what is important here.
There’s little to no point in developing a Business Intelligence strategy that doesn’t correlate with the aims of your business. The point of BI is to reveal areas where improvements can be made, but better yet, to make the process of finding out what those improvements are, simpler. Decision-making is made simple when you’ve got the data to back it up – and the end goals become easier to attain.
Aligning your strategy with the vision and values of the business is the first way to start setting a structure as to how your BI strategy will work. But what are your aims?
- Do you want to make work processes more efficient?
- Make data analysis quicker?
- Have a consistent overview of financial performance?
- See what areas of your business require the most attention.
- Make information sharing more transparent across the business.
Once you’ve done all the thinking and established your specific aims, what comes next?
A Business Intelligence roadmap
Your BI strategy roadmap is your sat nav to greatness. Making sure that you have a structured plan for how you’re going to actually utilize business intelligence for the growth and development of your enterprise is the best way to ensure its success.
Once you have planned how to proceed with your strategic Business Intelligence, you can go forward with actually implementing it. This will allow you to initiate corrective actions, discover new sales, predict potential challenges or roadblocks in the future, and more.
Our top tips to building your Business Intelligence roadmap:
- Assess your current state. What’s working? What’s not?
- What are your objectives? Do they need refining, and do they need to be signed off before you implement your new BI strategy?
- Decide what data you need to collect as part of your strategy and choose the right tool to enable you to collect it.
- Collate vital data. This is what BI is all about – getting the right data to make an informed decision on your roadmap going forward.
- Build out your roadmap in detail – don’t forget to include vital dates for your organization, seasonal peaks, and troughs, or changes in direction that could affect your roadmap.
- Take stock and assess the results of your roadmap. Is there anything that needs tweaking along the way?
What can strategic Business Intelligence actually do for me?
From real-time analytics that maximizes efficiency to allow the experimentation of new approaches and ideas, the power and freedom of a good BI strategy can give businesses the confidence to try new things. Real-time BI offers businesses an up-to-date snapshot of exactly what is going on, meaning that they can make informed, authoritative decisions on what to do next in order to maximize returns. Imagine how easy school would have been if our exams had a real-time marking system as we were putting pen to paper. Well, with BI, real-time analytics can provide answers to many a query quickly and easily.
BI can also help to discover new sales opportunities, manage existing relationships, and increase revenue by finding potential areas of growth. By enabling you to make informed business decisions quicker, implementing a Business Intelligence strategy could mean the difference between a record-breaking month and a month without commission.
Business Intelligence from sales-i can benefit your business decisions and your bottom line with the perfect BI strategy roadmap and professional approach to how you do business. But don’t just take our word for it…
