Data is the cornerstone of a successful business. By collecting essential information about your company, you can initiate action items to improve processes and maximize profit margins. Business Intelligence (BI) is a solution that leverages software to access and analyze business data to create essential insights.

BI is often displayed via interactive charts, custom dashboards, and statistics collected from various sources. These visualizations allow teams to present and analyze data quickly and efficiently.

As technology and day-to-day business become more intertwined, it becomes increasingly important to leverage these solutions. Implementing Business Intelligence into your company provides many benefits such as:

• Fast, accurate reporting
• Valuable business insights
• Competitive analysis
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Identifying market trends
• Increased operational efficiency
• Improved decision-making.
• Increased revenue and higher margins.

Business Intelligence can provide the foundation for any organization’s long and short-term business strategy. Without a centralized BI platform, companies may find it difficult to access and analyze data across a variety of platforms. Business Intelligence tools offer users the ability to extrapolate insights from gathered data and pool the information from these sources into a central location.

Various BI applications can be integrated with other software solutions for specific purposes or verticals. For instance, a single team that works in multiple different vertical markets may benefit from a BI solution. This team can utilize Business Intelligence to analyze data specific to each vertical and identify trends to create a sales strategy.

Like all new software, it’s important to identify a plan of integration for Business Intelligence solutions. Determining a strategy for deployment is an essential aspect of BI— from rollout schedules to staff training— it’s important for each department to know which tools they will be utilizing. Customized applications can also be implemented to create a more optimized solution for inter-departmental flexibility.

There are several software options available, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. The best way to determine the optimal Business Intelligence Solution for your organization is to create a list of priorities and key areas of interest. Below is a list of some of the most popular ones and some key points about each system.

Each Business Intelligence solution has different benefits and advantages. To discover which solution is best, it’s essential to outline priorities and goals of implementation. All BI solutions presented above can be integrated with other applications, and with the assistance of a custom software company, can improve operations exponentially.