Business Intelligence: what it is, trends and how to apply

In an increasingly dynamic, volatile, uncertain and complex job market, business intelligence can be critical to business stability.

In reality, stability may not be the right word.

The way is to accept instability and work to build an adaptable company. It needs to respond with agility and intelligence to the challenges that are imposed.

And without business intelligence, this is not possible. Unless you prefer intuition and the method of trial and error. They have their validity, of course, but an approach that is based on just that is irresponsible.

Because with so much globalization, competition and rapid advancement in technology, it is not recommended to work with a high margin of error.

In this article, we will explain what business intelligence is and how it can contribute to increasing a company's chances of success.

See the topics we will cover:

What is Business Intelligence (BI) or business intelligence?

How important is it to companies?

What does a BI professional do?

Why should you work with Business Intelligence in your company?

BI concepts in business management decision making

Market intelligence course: what are my possibilities?

Business Intelligence principles and tools

The relationship between Business Intelligence and Big Data

Business Intelligence trends for 2021.

Good reading!

What is business intelligence (BI) or business intelligence?

Business intelligence (BI) is a process that assists a manager in problem solving and decision making.

It is based on the collection of raw data, which will be transformed into useful information to guide companies' actions.

An administrator of older generations may be asking, "cool, but what's new?"

It is a good question, because although the use of this term is recent in Brazil, it does not mean that, in previous times, entrepreneurs groped in the dark to make their decisions.

They had their means to collect useful information for their area of expertise.

But nothing compares to what exists today.

The technology advances at a fast pace every week, and the consequence of this is that the options for consultation tools and information sources are much wider.

And the amount of data available is also absurdly greater today.

To give you an idea, 90% of the internet content has been created since 2016, according to an IBM Marketing Cloud study.

This is big data, a concept that we will talk about later. Before that, you need to better understand the importance of business intelligence.

How important is Business Intelligence for companies?

As stated above, business intelligence processes are used to assist in decision making. In this way, the company reduces the risks to which it is exposed. And those who use business intelligence to base their decisions are always one step ahead of those who don't.

The result of data collection and analysis is the possibility of acting in a more strategic way, as each movement will have a reason for existing.

The insights obtained in the BI processes serve as a beacon to guide the company's actions. This approach is important both in a macro scenario - when it comes to positioning the company on the market or designing a new product, for example - and micro - as well as in the content of a publication on a social network.

In the end, in addition to the lower risk, the manager will see a higher return on investment (ROI), as he will bet less. Instead, he will make sure shots.

The decrease in costs will also happen because it will have more agility, streamlined processes and waste less time with unsuccessful analyzes.

And, if there is a mistake, measuring performance and results, another premise of business intelligence, will facilitate the correction of the direction of the project in question.

What does a Business Intelligence professional do?

First of all, it is worth noting that knowledge of business intelligence practices is useful for professionals in various areas.

You can be a human resources analyst, engineer or financial manager. Whatever direction you look at, there will be data to support your decisions.

But it is clear that, in certain contexts, having a professional focused on business intelligence allows several possibilities.

Its functions include the following:

• Assess business needs

The professional must have a full understanding of the company's purpose, values and mission.

These are the starting points for your strategic performance.

• Data collect

The business intelligence professional needs to know the data sources to extract the information needed for a particular job.

This goes far beyond Google searches.

There are a number of technologies and methods to be used to perform this collection.

• Treatment of information

The maelstrom of information collected needs to be filtered and organized so that it can be used in decision making.

• Data analysis

The next step is to analyze all the data collected to achieve the proposed objective.

• Trend research

One of the possible uses of the information collected is the research of market trends.

It can be done from consumer behavior analysis, for example.

• Investment analysis

The BI professional can also outline possible scenarios to support resource investments.

• Competition Analysis

The analysis of the numbers and actions of the competition is called benchmarking.

It is not about plagiarism, but about the knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of other companies in the area, which is fundamental to finding the best position in the market.

• Predictive analytics

"Prevention is better than cure" is a cliché. But it is still a great truth.

The BI professional can help you recognize patterns that will influence future results.

Monitor results

As important as collecting external data is to monitor internal data.

The measurement of results through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is essential to know if the work is being carried out well and if it is necessary to make changes or adaptations.

Why should you work with Business Intelligence in your company?

As the name suggests, business intelligence practices add intelligence to the business. The intelligence to know how to translate the information available in responses.

The professional who masters BI is able to see facts that others cannot.

First, because they dominate certain technologies and have knowledge in the field of data science. Some people with the most creative profile may turn up their noses at this, but that is where the basis for market intelligence lies.

It is necessary to know how to recognize patterns and build graphs that transform raw numbers into relevant information.

And that's only half the job.

It is necessary to give a function to this collected information. How do they fit into the reality of the company? How can the data obtained help to solve a problem or indicate a path?

For this, the professional needs to have a systemic view and understand at least a little of each process that occurs in the company.

And use that ability to see bottlenecks and opportunities.

In short, you must work with business intelligence to be able to see beyond the obvious.

BI concepts in business management decision making

And how are business intelligence concepts applied in decision making in a company in practice?

There is no cake recipe, as each company has a set of processes defined and shaped according to the leaders' thinking, always taking into account the organization's tradition, experiences and purpose.

Research based on the concept of business intelligence can succeed the creation of new products, HR hiring policies, communication plans for social networks, among others.

The possibilities are endless.

But we can divide BI's performance into two spheres.

One of them is the predictive, which we mentioned earlier, in the excerpt where we talked about the functions of a business intelligence professional.

A predictive analysis can, for example, indicate future trends, preparing the company to face a scenario change, whether in the short, medium or long term.

The other sphere is prescriptive.

In it, solutions are pointed out to correct and optimize processes that already occur today.

For example, the discovery that a particular sales channel has a low conversion rate and analysis of measures that would increase that index.

Market intelligence course: what are my possibilities?

In order to develop the necessary competencies to implement business intelligence processes in a company, it is necessary to invest in professional qualification.

Business Intelligence Principles

In order for you to be able to make increasingly informed decisions, it is important to become familiar with the principles of business intelligence.

Below, check out some important points that must be practiced to act with intelligence and strategy.

• Never set aside market intelligence

It is very important to understand the difference between starting a project with a previous phase of research and planning and establishing business intelligence as a permanent process in the company.

Real business intelligence is not only manifested in specific situations, such as the creation of content planning for inbound marketing, for example.

• Intelligence must be systematic.

In this example that we just gave, the ideal would be to adopt the collection of information as a step that is always carried out to support the production of any content.

Of course, the right conditions must be given for this to happen.

Instead of letting the responsible employee “get by”, provide the knowledge and structure necessary for agile research and data analysis.

• Anticipate what your competitors are going to do

Being more agile than the competition does not mean that you need to spy on companies in your area and steal your ideas.

You can keep an eye on ethics, learning from the mistakes they make or trying to understand the reasons behind their growth.

But just being able to identify trends more quickly is also a way to anticipate what the competition will do and thus gain a competitive advantage.

• Understand your audience: market research

When experiencing business intelligence in practice, many managers admit that before, they just thought they knew their target audience.

With market research strongly based on data, the analysis of consumer behavior becomes much less intuitive.

It is worth remembering that most companies have different profiles of customers and potential customers.

In this sense, it is also a smart action to know how to categorize the data related to each profile to enable more targeted and assertive actions.

• Using metrics to drive efficiency

As we mentioned earlier, business intelligence also involves monitoring information.

Metrics are crude measures of interest to the company, stored in the digital data warehouse.

For example, the number of sales for a given product, values, dates and other conditions relating to those sales.

• Indicators

But as business intelligence is not just about collecting information, the next step is to create indicators.

The indicators are not raw numbers like the metrics, but values calculated from the crossing between two or more metrics, which allows a different view.

For example, calculating the average ticket for a given customer profile, or the conversion rate for leads captured by a given channel.

With this, it is possible to accurately identify the bottlenecks of a product, service, process or project and realize the need for specific adjustments.

As it is more than one variable, it is possible to produce graphs that facilitate the visualization of the real meaning of the information and the generation of insights.

Business Intelligence Tools

Now it's time for you to understand what are the business intelligence tools we referred to earlier.

Know the main ones:

• Data Warehouse

It is an environment for storing digital data.

In it, the information that will support decision making is stored and organized.

• Data Mart

A larger company can rely on data marts, which are divisions of data repositories.

It is possible, for example, to have a specific data mart for inventory and another for sales.

• Data Mining

The deposits we are talking about serve to contemplate an immense amount of data.

The data mining process, or data mining, is designed to identify patterns in that data and organize them according to what has been predetermined.

OLAP

While data mining finds correlations and subdivides a large volume of data, OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) allows you to perform a specific action on that data, so that a situation can be simulated or a specific response can be obtained.

Which solution to use?

It is possible to purchase software that offers these tools.

But beware: they need to be integrated to compose an agile business intelligence system.

Depending on the need, there is the possibility to build specific technological solutions or to adapt open source tools.

The relationship between Business Intelligence and Big Data

The term big data refers to a large amount of stored data. It also serves to define a new reality in which we live.

In it, millions of data are produced and stored every second.

To see this better, take your cell phone. In just a few taps you can check the traffic and weather situation in your city.

Soon this information will change, but the data will continue to exist.

But when we talk about big data, we assume the use of this information for a particular purpose.

For this, the concept is based on five Vs: speed, volume, variety, truthfulness and value.

Business intelligence takes advantage of this reality to, as we have explained here, generate insights and influence decision making in the business environment to reduce the margin of error.

7 Business Intelligence trends for 2021

Business intelligence seems to be a path of no return for companies that value a more strategic approach.

But in addition to recognizing the importance of business intelligence processes, it is necessary to pay attention to the news related to these practices.

Check out 7 trends that should gain momentum in the business intelligence universe in 2021:

• Artificial intelligence

Automation in data processing is no longer a trend, but a reality and a necessity in business intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is a step forward, it has to do with the ability of machines to analyze this information.

Soon, this will also become a reality.

• Internet of Things (IoT)

The internet of things refers to intelligent equipment, connected to systems.

The trend here is more and more actions involving physical objects generating data for the company's data warehouse.

• Self service

Self-service in physical stores and chatbots on virtual channels is expected to increase.

And in order to be able to more efficiently meet customers' needs, there must be an integration with the collected data and an advance in artificial intelligence.

• Natural language processing

The advancement of artificial intelligence will also allow new uses for natural language processing (PLN).

That is, the computer recognizes the information of human speech and processes it so that it can be used in business intelligence processes.

• Data security

Information has long been said to be power.

The collected data has great value and, therefore, must be stored responsibly.

To prevent breaches that can cause millionaire losses, data insurance options must increasingly increase.

• New positions

The position of Chief Information Officer (CIO) may not be sufficient to account for the importance of data analysis in certain companies.

Thus, positions such as Chief Data Officer (CDO) or Chief Analytics Officer (CAO) emerge, which demonstrate how strategic performance in these processes is fundamental.

• New formations

These needs will demand new professional profiles.

The specific qualification in the area is still a differential, however, soon, it will be a requirement.

Successful cases using BI

Still not convinced that business intelligence practices are a necessity in your company?

Then, find out, below, three stories that show that the bet on intelligence pays off.

Not only in the business world, but also in politics and football.

• Obama

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.

His campaign was well known for the innovative use of social networks.

But few know that the Democratic candidate's team used a data warehouse to gain a range of insights into voter behavior, campaign finance, and more.

• 7 x 1

Football is a sport where anything can happen, but it is possible to use different data to reduce risks and increase the chances of victory.

This was what Germany did at the 2014 World Cup, with SAP software that scans the individual and collective behaviors of athletes (Germans and opponents), generating insights for the coaching staff to create training and game strategies.

• New Uno

To design a vehicle with the face of the Brazilian consumer, the auto giant used business intelligence.

The processes made it possible to collect and analyze a huge amount of data on consumer preference.

The result was a huge increase in sales, positive reviews and the receipt of several important awards.

Conclusion

Business intelligence (BI) is a set of processes based on the collection and analysis of data.

The objective is to make decision-making more agile and effective in companies.

Instead of using intuition, relevant and truthful information is used.

For this to be done in practice, it is necessary to have data warehouse, data mart, data mining and OLAP tools.

And, of course, with professionals who understand data science and know how to interpret and relate them to the company's challenges.

After all, for now artificial intelligence is still far from replacing a human's strategic thinking.

This view is increasingly important, as the market scenario has never been more uncertain and volatile than it is today.

MINIBIO: Engineer specialized in Customer Support, Technical Services, Production, Manufacturing and Maintenance, expertise developed over 16 years working for Embraer S.A, being the last position as Technical Support Engineer.