Business Intelligence: A Step-By-Step Guide to Success

With Business Intelligence (BI) platforms at your disposal, your organization can use data analytics to make better decisions regarding its future. However, using business intelligence platforms requires certain steps so that you can make the most of it. Here’s what you need to do to make proper use of your data.

Define Your Objectives

To get the most out of your business intelligence tools, you should first establish some goals and objectives that you’ll want to work toward. This can include goals as vague as operational efficiency, increasing revenue, reducing costs, and providing better customer support options. You can also work toward more specific and measurable goals, which is what we recommend.

Identify Your Key Metrics

How are you measuring progress toward your goals? You’ll want to carefully consider these so that you can get the most accurate representation of your goals and your business.

Collect the Data

Now that you understand your goals and how you want to measure progress, it’s time to start thinking about where you’re getting the data from. Assets such as databases, spreadsheets, CRM systems, websites, and so on all provide your business access to vital data. That said, you must also take care not to corrupt your data with duplicate records, missing values, or inconsistencies that could misrepresent your data and, by extension, your business intelligence efforts. Integrating data from various sources into a unified data repository is no small feat, and it will likely become a major expense for your business–at least in terms of BI.

Implement the Right Tools

The moment you have been waiting for has arrived. Now you get to think about what tool will work best given your specific needs. You can expect largely similar features from BI platforms, but the devil is in the details. BNMC can help ensure you implement a BI platform that delivers on its promises.

To learn more about BI platforms and the technology that enables them, be sure to contact us at (978) 482-2020 today.