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It is highly likely that as the owner of a small business you’re already using business intelligence every day, whether you realize it or not. And the better you understand it, the more effectively you’ll be able to wield this powerful tool.

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Running a business is full of challenges. One of them, for example, is the almost overwhelming amount of data. You must effectively analyze data from customers, data from product sales and production, and data from all aspects of your operation in order to drive better business decisions. That’s where business intelligence tools swoop in to save the day.

Business analysis tools work to provide organizations with a foundation for making strategic marketing decisions. Without decent tools, you may overlook a particular key insight that can later lead to success. Automating the process can drive better insights and help you steer your organization in the right direction. Moreover, incorporating automated business analysis (ABA) into your normal business intelligence routine is a modern way to leverage results and key insights. Here are just a few of the amazing benefits ABA can provide:

Business Intelligence Gives You Daily Insight

It’s extremely likely that you’re using some form of business intelligence every day. Perhaps you have human analysts combing through data for insights. Or maybe you already use analysis software to assess data. Either way, you’re probably not getting the best insights on a regular basis.

With automation, a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning collects data and identifies several key metrics. Then, these data stories identify what’s happening with the data and why it’s happening. Finally, the automated processes make recommendations for systematic actions based on that data.

The data could tell stories about trends. This business intelligence revealed by the data could inform the company owner about relationships and patterns that change over time. These stories could reveal risks while also providing early signs of a looming opportunity.

Since you don’t have to set parameters for finding trends, the software does it automatically. This allows you to focus on acting upon the data instead of gazing endlessly at streams of information. Sometimes data points are scattered across numerous databases, making understanding relationships at a glance practically impossible. But automation tracks stories of relationships that start, thrive, fail, and end as you run your operation.

Other stories might cover milestones. They might reveal a spike or a drop in your ad or your product performance. Regardless of what the data show, daily insights are designed to be pragmatic and useful—not overwhelming. Therefore, users can make good decisions fast.

Take Advantage of Analysis on Demand

Detecting subtle changes across a large swath of raw data isn’t always the simplest or most intuitive thing. Worse, it can be easy to miss out on key insights due to an overwhelming amount of raw data unless the business owner has some sort of automated tool to help.

Customer information, analytical data, website traffic analysis, financials, and more all live within your data flow. This valuable information supplies a deep well of potential insights. Unfortunately, going through all of it manually isn’t simple or practical.

But with a robust business intelligence platform at your disposal, you can leverage your data practically effortlessly. Moreover, the ABA platform’s built-in tools come with new features that analyze financial, organizational, or customer-related key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time.



Understand Emerging Trends

Understanding trends can mean the difference between failure and success. Gathering trend data allows you to chart progress over time. This gives you the ability to discover milestones and act on them appropriately.

The period of time you take into account for gathering trend data could be as brief as only a few days. Or you could choose to expand that period into weeks, months, and years.

Consumer behavior is always changing and can be quite unpredictable at times. Therefore, understanding trends within your data set is vital. It is a valuable means to improve your business, your engagement, and your customer conversions.

What’s more, with quality trend analysis comes a better understanding of any negative effects trends can have on your organization. Use these analyses to identify possible financial problems and gain insight into how to improve.

Once you know where your business might be underperforming, you can make an action plan for improvement. Conversely, if you know where you’re performing well, you can duplicate those actions in hope of future success. That’s the power of trend analysis: It is a means to accomplish company goals through acquiring evidence and making informed decisions.

Find Hidden Opportunities by Analyzing Business Intelligence

Perhaps the most advantageous benefit of powerful business intelligence tools lies in their ability to uncover hidden opportunities. What does this mean for your organization?

To give an example, a data story might inform you about a sudden shift in interest for a product. Or you might suddenly see an issue with your website or your supply chain. In these cases, you can use the data to quickly react to the situation or take advantage of an unexpected opportunity.

For instance, if the product is now selling better online, you can increase your ad spending. If it’s selling better in a particular market, you can develop a strategy to build more awareness and customer rapport in those areas. Alternatively, you might want to appeal to another market for your product entirely or figure out a way to gently increase profits while driving sales up.

Data insights can also reveal potential growth opportunities. AI and automated tools make finding hidden opportunities easier. However, it’s up to your business to use that data to its greatest advantage.

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Use Business Intelligence to Create Successful Strategies

Data is a powerful tool, but it’s only as good as what your business does with it. Discovering spikes, milestones, and trends in your data is great for understanding what’s working and what isn’t. You can use that information to create successful strategies. For example, you can utilize the insights your data reveals to create an alternate marketing plan or to take advantage of an emerging sales trend.

The examples we give here provide only a glimpse of what your data can do for you. But first, you have to make use of it effectively. And to do that you need powerful automated tools that give you an advantage.

Fluid marketing strategies don’t just happen organically or overnight. Discovering a spike or drop in interest through these tools, devising a working strategy, or even dropping a product entirely are all valuable strategies made possible by better business analysis and modern data tools. With them, you can ultimately create better customer conversion opportunities and lead your business toward greater success.

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