Never before have businesses known so much about themselves. Even smaller companies have access to data about everything from internal operations to external market trends. However, analyzing it poses a challenge.
As a result, many companies have turned toward business intelligence automation. The software automatically analyzes and extracts data to provide valuable insights.
Business Intelligence Automation Explained
As of 2021, “the U.S. is the leading country in the big data and business analytics market, with 51% market share.”
Business intelligence automation aims to solve two problems. First, it can speed up the analysis process and automatically comb through data to find hidden metrics. Unlike traditional data reporting, business intelligence can conduct deeper analysis on multiple datasets. As a result, data from different sources can be processed to uncover previously unidentified relationships and insights.
Second, business intelligence automation aims to increase efficiency and produce more insight. As a result, business executives and specialists outside of data science can understand these metrics quickly and easily. In turn, they can make better operational decisions, develop strategies, improve performance, and address problems.
Leading companies such as American Express have used business intelligence automation to improve customer retention. For example, with the help of business intelligence software, American Express was able to identify that 24% of Australian customers closed their accounts within four months. As a result of this information, the company implemented retention strategies that improved these numbers.
How Is It Used?
Business intelligence automation can allow businesses to unlock quality data more quickly. These insights can be extremely valuable to sales, marketing, and finance companies to discover:
- quantitative data.
- measure company performance against its goals.
- analyze data to find new growth opportunities.
For instance, operation managers and sales analysts use business intelligence to access information about discount programs, customer retention, sales rep performance, and targets revenues. In addition, to quickly provide this real-time data, the business intelligence tools can also compare information from different sectors to reveal unidentified trends.
For example, business intelligence in sales can compare the effectiveness of discount programs for overall revenue. It can also analyze customer retention and average transaction amounts resulting from discount programs.
Similarly, marketing teams can utilize business intelligence alongside marketing automation tools. Like business intelligence, marketing automation helps companies streamline marketing tasks by automating lead generation, email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaign management.
Business Intelligence Tools
Business intelligence software offers several tools that allow users to leverage and implement insights. Some of these tools include:
- Dashboards: Insights and performance can be viewed in a centralized and easy-to-navigate place. All the metrics pertaining to revenue, sales, and productivity can be accessed by various team members simultaneously. These dashboards can also be customized by users to display data that is more pertinent to them.
- Reporting: Provides detailed data on specific inquiries and analysis from multiple sources. These reports can find connections between data and provide insight into future projections.
- Data visualizations: Pictorial representations can depict performance and numerical insights. This allows individuals to better visualize the raw data through colour-coded graphs and charts.
- Search engine: Users can search for data using everyday language. This allows individuals to find and interpret insights easier and quicker without the help of professionals.
Applying Business Intelligence
The three tips of analysis offered by business intelligence automation include:
- Descriptive analytics evaluates past and present data to determine areas that can be improved to meet company goals.
- Predictive analytics assesses past and present data to predict possible future projections or events.
- Prescriptive analytics offers a deeper analysis of past and present data to determine why a particular action or strategy should be implemented.
Business intelligence automation can be utilized to increase profitability, efficiency, and growth; however, it can also be implemented to give your company a competitive edge. For example, New York Shipping Exchange (NYSHEX) implemented business intelligence automation to improve overall company performance, which tripled its shipping volume in 2019.
NYSHEX is a shipping-technology company that specializes in international shipping. Before business intelligence automation, the company manually transferred data from its main software and apps to Excel. The tedious process only allowed limited access to the data, resulting in bottlenecks. After investing in business intelligence automation, the company consolidated data into one software and allowed company-wide access, giving employees with no coding knowledge insight into data.
Similarly, Univision, an American-Spanish television network, achieved 80% growth after implementing business intelligence automation. The company utilized business intelligence to gain an advantage over television and mobile device advertising campaigns.
Automating Tasks
Many data-related tasks conducted manually can be automated using a business intelligence software.
Auto-Discover Insights
With business intelligence automation, data analysts no longer need to sift through large volumes of data manually. Instead, business intelligence tools automatically analyze and interpret data to find valuable insights.
Automate Ranking
Business intelligence software can automatically compare data from various sources to find new connections. Additionally, these tools can highlight the most important insights, presenting analysts with actionable information quickly and in order of importance.
Extracting Bias
Automating the data analysis process through business intelligence software may diminish human error. With the help of business intelligence tools, data may be less subject to biased interpretations, flawed observations, or outdated analytical processes.
Universal Accessibility
Business intelligence automation can also cut out the middlemen, reducing bottlenecks and increasing the availability of data to all departments. Users may no longer require analysts to interpret data.
What to Consider
Business intelligence automation can provide valuable insight into business operations that can stimulate growth. However, as with all automated and technological software, it is important to weigh both sides of the coin before investing in it. Here are some factors to consider:
Advantages of Automation
| Business Intelligence Advantage | What it Does |
| Efficiency |
|
| Discover new insights |
|
| Ranking insights |
|
| Accessibility |
|
| Customer satisfaction |
|
Risks of Automation
| Business Intelligence Risk | How it Can Affect Businesses |
| Process failure |
|
| Data loss |
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| Data breach |
|
Final Thoughts
Business intelligence software is still in its infancy; however, it can be the key to improving business operations, refocusing goals, and ensuring a competitive edge.
