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Making the Most of Your Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Tools in Time of Pandemic

The world today is experiencing a major shift – from overseeing an organization’s digital transformation to the quick and effective response to a health crisis. Uncertain economic times have led business leaders, policy makers, and government organizations to look for feasible ways not just to safeguard their people and customers, but also to make sure that their businesses will survive the pandemic in the long-run.

The coronavirus outbreak has damaged not just the healthcare system of most countries, but also proved to be a major contributing factor in the downsizing and closure of some businesses in many countries. It has become an unprecedented event that has caused profound effects on both our personal and professional lives. While several industry leaders and government agencies are trying to revive the economy, businesses are also doing all the necessary measures to preserve cash flows and maintain their operational procedures.

The pandemic, though proven to be deadly, has become an opportunity for most business leaders and decision makers to not just reassess their strategies but also to highlight the challenges and make room for improvement in their business processes and infrastructures.

In times like this, businesses need to quickly identify inefficiencies and weaknesses to increase their operational efficiency and protect their assets. This is where business intelligence comes into place.

Business Intelligence plays a vital role in an organization’s success. It provides valuable insights to make data-driven and well-informed business decisions.

When we scour the internet, you will find lots of meanings and definitions for business intelligence. But essentially, it is a software or service that transforms data into actionable insights to come up with an informed business decision. Known to industry leaders as BI, it is a catch-all term that encompasses different procedures on how businesses or organizations capture data, analyze it, and turn it into valuable insights to derive at a strategic action plan and decision.

Business intelligence tools vary depending on the organization’s overall goal. Some organizations are looking forward to gain insight on customer behavior, while some would use BI tools to augment their inventory management. It varies from businesses and industries, but generally, BI helps elevate your company by making fact-based decisions, identify market trends and opportunities, analyze customer behavior, increase operational efficiency, and predict future successes and challenges.

For one, BI allows the company to explore and invest more in technology for cost efficiency and higher business success rate. While some BI tools would not necessarily give you a definite prediction on what will happen after the pandemic or even a few years from now, it could generate certain insights that would help you prepare for the future. Businesses and organizations that have invested in business intelligence have higher chances of identifying threats and challenges, thus allowing them to respond in an appropriate fashion.

Some businesses find it tedious to collate all necessary data and information for a quarter or year-end report, especially after the pandemic when most companies would have suffered some financial losses. Aside from gaining more valuable insights, investing on a BI tool could also sharpen their process, efficiently track profitability, and identify positive and negative trends at the soonest possible time. Nonetheless, it is also imperative for any businesses to work with a good quality data because BI tools are as good as the data it is working with.  BI tools also help businesses understand how their consumers behave in the time of pandemic, especially with the change of lifestyle brought by the sudden health crisis. For instance, an e-commerce business would like to find out the pattern in which customers buy and consume their products online. Through BI tools, they would know the essential items that they need to have high inventories to meet the demand of the market.

Unforeseen incidences are hounding many organizations in time of pandemic, allowing them to give value to business intelligence and analytics now more than ever. Aside from the long-term beneficial effects of BI to the overall business operation, BI can also be the key to an organization’s survival and has the capacity to increase its profitability once the economy steadies again. In time of pandemic, business intelligence plays a vital role in making informed decisions to minimize and mitigate its long-term negative effect in the business landscape.

Proper BI solutions in an economically challenged environment allows organizations and businesses to thrive and make informed and calculated decisions. It makes them more flexible, thus allowing them to operate normally even under a global pandemic. In a nutshell, embracing the many uses and advantages of business intelligence and making use of a data-rich landscape enable any organizations, both small and large in scale, to solve complex challenges and ensure a positioned growth for future profitable growth.

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References:

https://smartbridge.com/prioritizing-business-intelligence-objectives-amidst-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

https://www.unleashedsoftware.com/blog/business-intelligence-your-ticket-out-of-a-crisis

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