Is Your Business Intelligence Software Meeting Your Needs?

Are you in the market to pick a business intelligence software but don’t know how to go about it? Business intelligence software includes data visualization, data warehousing, dashboards, and reporting. Loosely speaking, business intelligence refers to tools that can help you retrieve, analyze, and transform data into meaningful information. You can thereby use this information to make better business decisions and stay ahead of your competition.

Why is Business Intelligence Important?

You can’t always make decisions based on your intuition, no matter how intuitive you are. Backing up your decisions with data is a wise path to follow. Data that you gather from using business intelligence software provides you with evidence that you can base decisions on and share with your key stakeholders as well as your customers. It can help you set appropriate budgets, generate higher revenues, and pursue better customer satisfaction.

How to Choose Your Business Intelligence Software?

It can become overwhelming if it is your first time choosing business intelligence software. You may not know what to look for and where to start. It all depends on your needs and goals. Are you looking for self-service tools or advanced tools? Is data discovery your goal, or is it predictive analysis? Are you interested in creating customized dashboards, or are you looking to generate weekly reports based on your data? You should answer these questions in order to choose the software that best suits your needs.

Different Types of Data

Data can come in various forms, such as structured and unstructured. Unstructured data includes text documents and other files that don’t have an easily readable format. Most companies deal with unstructured data. It can't be captured in rows or columns and may be difficult for traditional software to analyze. You should understand the specifics of the software that you are purchasing so that it can process the type of data that you have in your organization.

Reports and Dashboards

The fundamental goal of using business intelligence software is to be able to create intelligent reports and dashboards that you and your colleagues can utilize to improve your operations. A significant criterion in choosing your software should be that it enables you to create the kind of reporting you want.

Business intelligence software can streamline your business operations and make sense of all your raw data. Once you put some thought into picking up the right software, you will find that it will make your workload so much more manageable and help you make better decisions for your company.