Do you have a store? Business Intelligence helps you to analyse your data

Nowadays, it is crucial to analyse the data of all actions that are carried out with the aim of improving business strategies. But it is not easy to identify relevant data and interpret it. For this reason, many companies choose to use Business Intelligence tools.

Knowing the data in a more visual and analytical way allows you to keep a clear view of what variables you want to measure. And, in this post, we show you how.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence, or Market Intelligence, is the set of tools, applications and practices that enable the collection and analysis of large amounts of business data. Its purpose is to interpret them in order to improve business management and optimise decision-making.

Although it may seem to be a concept only applicable to large companies, the development of technology has made it possible to incorporate these models in small companies.

What are the benefits of incorporating it into your SME?

Thanks to Business Intelligence, you will be able to have a clearer vision of your data, eliminating all those that do not add value. In addition, it will provide you with a series of advantages:

• Making decisions based on data: sometimes, we tend to make decisions based on intuition or the trends we observe. Business Intelligence gives us the opportunity to base those decisions on concise, quality data.
• Saving time and resources: this tool helps us not to get lost in huge amounts of data, which facilitates decision making.
• Competitiveness: having more efficient processes helps us to position ourselves quickly among the competition, analysing their strategies and implementing growth actions.
• Continuous improvement: it allows us to identify internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as market opportunities and threats. In this way, we can establish flexible strategies that allow us to adapt to changes.

How can you implement it in your business?

When starting to use Business Intelligence (BI) in your SME, you should follow a series of steps:

1. Analyse the environment: through an analysis of the factors affecting your business, you will be able to assess the current situation and establish a starting point for your strategy.
2. Set your objectives: select the most important points for your SME and the areas in which you expect to improve.
3. Define the KPIs: you must know what data influences the chosen areas and how you are going to measure them.
4. Choose the BI software according to your needs: there are several programmes and tools with which you can implement Business Intelligence, both free and paid. Selecting the most appropriate one according to your objectives and needs helps you to achieve your goals in an optimal way.
5. Measure and analyse data: once you have collected the data, it's time to add value to it! Business Intelligence tools help you to analyse and interpret them effectively.
6. Implement improvements: thanks to this information, you can make decisions according to the needs of your business. Also, identify failures in your data collection systems and update them so that they are more aligned with your objectives.

Which Business Intelligence software can you use?

As you have already seen, you can choose the type of Business Intelligence software and tools that best suit your SME. Here are some of them:

• Power BI: it is part of the Microsoft universe and it is, without a doubt, one of the most popular tools for analysing data visually. With this tool, interactive reports and dashboards can be generated in a matter of minutes. It also has extensive artificial intelligence functions and added security to keep your data safe.
• Tableau: This tool also allows you to analyse reports and dashboards in a simple and visual way. It has Tableau Public, a free version of online data analytics.
• QlikSense: This is an online tool that combines BI with Artificial Intelligence. Thanks to this, you can automatically find the most important insights from your data, automate tasks, include notifications about changes in the market and many other options.
• Looker Studio: belongs to the Google ecosystem, is free and allows you to create customised reports and data models. In addition, you can connect to numerous data sets such as Google Analytics, Google Ads or social media platforms.
• DigDash: this is a data management software that allows you to create visual and customised reports according to your sector of activity. It is a paid tool, but you can try a free demo.

Now that you know the basics to implement Business Intelligence in your SME, you can start analysing data effectively to make the best decisions.

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