17 Real-World Examples Where Business Intelligence Makes a Difference

Business intelligence (BI) isn’t just for data analysts anymore. Today, BI is a must-have for businesses looking to stay competitive, make faster decisions, and deliver better experiences for their customers. BI tools pull together data from across your organization and turn it into interactive dashboards, predictive analytics, and real-time insights. But what does it actually look like in practice?

BI has come a long way from static reports and spreadsheets. With the rise of cloud platforms, AI integrations, and no-code dashboarding tools, businesses of all sizes—from enterprise giants to small nonprofits—can harness data in powerful new ways. Real-time analytics have shifted from being a “nice to have” to an essential component for staying agile and responsive in an unpredictable world.

In this article, we’ll explore 17 real-world business intelligence examples across an array of industries, from retail and healthcare to e-commerce and agriculture. These stories showcase how organizations use BI to solve problems, streamline operations, and grow with confidence.

What BI can unlock by industry

Business intelligence doesn’t look the same for every organization—and that’s the point. The right BI tools adapt to your industry’s unique challenges and opportunities, whether you’re managing retail inventory, analyzing patient outcomes in healthcare, or tracking donor engagement in the nonprofit world. Here’s a snapshot of how BI creates value across different sectors:

• Retail: Inventory optimization, regional sales insights, customer retention tracking
• Manufacturing: Supply chain visibility, production efficiency, quality assurance
• Logistics: Real-time monitoring, compliance tracking, route optimization
• Telecommunications: Network health analytics, outage detection, service quality forecasting
• E-commerce: Conversion tracking, personalized marketing, churn reduction
• Healthcare: Patient outcome forecasting, resource planning, readmission reduction
• Financial services: Fraud detection, risk modeling, customer segmentation
• Hospitality: Sentiment analysis, staff performance insights, guest satisfaction metrics
• Nonprofits: Donor engagement, impact reporting, program effectiveness
• Agriculture: Crop performance insights, distribution logistics, business unit alignment

BI for small and midsize businesses (SMBs)

Business intelligence isn’t just for enterprises with massive IT budgets. Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are also leveraging BI to drive growth. Whether it’s a local retailer tracking sales trends across locations or a regional service provider optimizing staffing based on seasonal demand, modern BI platforms offer intuitive, self-service tools that don’t require a full data team to use.

In fact, many SMBs are seeing outsized returns on their BI investments. By using BI to automate reporting, track KPIs, and identify operational bottlenecks, small businesses can respond faster to market changes and make more confident, data-informed decisions.

Real-world examples of how companies are using BI

Here are some ways different industries use business intelligence to improve their operations:

1. Retail: streamlining reporting and improving visibility

European Wax Center turned to Domo to consolidate data from more than 900 franchise locations. Prior to Domo, the corporate team relied on spreadsheets and manual reporting, which delayed insights and limited visibility into store-level performance.

With Domo, European Wax Center integrated systems like Salesforce, Google Sheets, and its POS software into a single real-time dashboard. Executives and franchisees gained visibility into KPIs such as appointment volume, retail product sales, and customer retention by region. As a result, franchisees reported faster decision-making, while the corporate team reduced reporting time by more than 90 percent. The company’s VP of Business Intelligence stated, “Domo lets us see exactly what’s happening across our network, without waiting on static reports.”.

2. Manufacturing: creating a data-driven culture

Traeger Grills embraced Domo to bring real-time data visibility to every department, from finance to field sales. Before Domo, disconnected systems and manual processes created silos that slowed down the business.

With Domo’s centralized platform, Traeger connected Salesforce, NetSuite, and inventory data to monitor sales goals, gross margins, and inventory availability. Its finance team reduced time-to-close by 50 percent, while sales reps in the field accessed dashboards on mobile to manage territory performance in real time. As the Director of Business Intelligence put it, “Now, everyone—from our CEO to our reps—can see the same numbers, on the same platform, at the same time.”

3. Logistics: managing risk in real time

DHL relies on Domo to ensure the integrity of temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical shipments. With tens of thousands of data points streaming in from IoT sensors across global shipments, the company needed a way to visualize and act on that data in real time.

Using Domo, DHL created dashboards that track container temperature, shipping routes, and compliance across its cold chain network. One global operations team used Domo to reduce the time spent investigating shipment anomalies by 80 percent. “Domo helps us ensure that every shipment stays within compliance,” said a senior DHL manager. “It’s the difference between reaction and prevention.”

4. Telecommunications: monitoring network health

Many telecom companies use BI to track network performance across millions of users. Downtime, slow speeds, or signal issues can quickly lead to customer churn.

BI dashboards provide a real-time snapshot of network status by consolidating data from devices, sensors, and customer feedback. Engineers can identify outages, monitor bandwidth usage, and prioritize repairs based on impact. One large provider used BI to reduce average outage resolution time by 35 percent, improving service quality and customer retention.

5. E-commerce: powering personalized campaigns

One large meal delivery service uses BI to centralize and automate digital marketing reports. Before BI, it could take hours or days to pull metrics from various ad platforms, CRMs, and e-commerce systems.

With real-time dashboards, teams get instant visibility into campaign performance, customer engagement, and churn. They can A/B test offers, target the right segments, and personalize messaging based on buyer behavior. The company reports faster decision-making and improved ROI as a direct result of its BI platform.

6. Outdoor retail: understanding member behavior

An outdoor retailer had more than 90 terabytes of data to better understand its co-op members. The company wanted to tailor experiences and optimize its product mix across online and physical stores.

Using BI, analysts looked at customer purchase histories, product affinities, and regional trends. They found, for example, that members in the Pacific Northwest preferred different brands and categories than those in the Southwest. These insights influenced merchandising, local events, and digital experiences. The result? Smarter inventory planning, higher satisfaction, and stronger loyalty.

7. Financial services: detecting fraud faster

Many financial institutions use BI to detect anomalies and prevent fraud. In a fast-moving industry, early detection is everything.

BI tools combine transactional data, customer profiles, and historical trends to flag suspicious behavior. Real-time dashboards can alert analysts to spikes in withdrawal activity or unusual login patterns. Machine learning models layered on top of BI platforms further refine these alerts, reducing false positives and enabling faster investigation. Banks using BI in this way have reported significant reductions in fraud-related losses.

8. Healthcare: improving patient care with predictive analytics

Healthcare providers use BI to track patient data and hospital performance metrics. With budgets tight and stakes high, every insight matters.

Dashboards help teams monitor readmission rates, length of stay, and physician utilization. Predictive models use historical data to anticipate which patients are at high risk of complications or return visits. One hospital group saw a 20 percent reduction in readmissions by acting on BI-generated insights.

9. Hospitality: acting on guest feedback

Hotel chains use BI to analyze feedback from surveys, online reviews, and social media. In a service-driven industry, sentiment data is gold.

By pulling in structured and unstructured feedback data, hotels can identify service gaps, trending complaints, or standout employees. For example, one brand used BI to discover that guests consistently rated breakfast lower at certain properties—leading to a targeted update of menus and staffing. BI made it possible to act on insights at scale and improve the guest experience system wide.

10. Nonprofits: maximizing program impact

Organizations like the United Way use Domo to unify data from dozens of sources—including CRM systems, volunteer tracking tools, and fundraising platforms—into one source of truth.

Using BI dashboards, United Way can monitor donations by region, analyze program participation rates, and track community outcomes. It replaced monthly reporting cycles with real-time data access and now shares impact dashboards with donors and board members. This transparency has strengthened community trust and donor engagement. “Domo has fundamentally changed the way we communicate impact,” a program manager noted.

11. Higher education: driving enrollment strategy

A large university needed a way to centralize and share data across departments to support strategic planning and improve the student experience. With Domo, they built dashboards that gave leadership insight into student enrollment trends, course fill rates, and faculty workloads.

The admissions team used these insights to optimize recruiting campaigns and course offerings, while the finance office tracked tuition revenue in real time. One major win: a 30 percent improvement in forecasting accuracy for semester enrollment. “Domo empowers our leadership with information that’s both comprehensive and easy to digest,” shared a university spokesperson.

12. Professional sports: optimizing team performance with the Utah Jazz

The Utah Jazz use Domo to bring together performance data, fan engagement metrics, and revenue operations into one platform. On the basketball side, coaches and analysts review player data—including minutes played, shot efficiency, and recovery time—to inform training decisions.

Meanwhile, the business operations team uses Domo to analyze ticket sales, merchandising, and sponsorships. With these insights, they’ve optimized pricing strategies and improved fan retention. “Domo makes it easier to deliver performance insights across the entire organization,” said a senior executive. “It’s become part of our playbook—on and off the court.”

13. Amazon: revolutionizing e-commerce with data-driven insights

Amazon uses BI to personalize recommendations, optimize pricing strategies, and manage its complex supply chain. The company analyzes massive amounts of data across touchpoints to anticipate customer needs and maximize efficiency. Their advanced BI infrastructure enables Amazon to launch new products, identify top-performing categories, and create seamless customer journeys.

14. Starbucks: enhancing customer engagement through big data

Starbucks tracks loyalty program and mobile app data to analyze millions of transactions weekly. This enables hyper-personalized marketing campaigns and optimized inventory planning. BI also helps Starbucks determine where to open new stores based on neighborhood spending habits and foot traffic trends.

15. American Express: strengthening fraud detection with machine learning

American Express uses real-time BI tools combined with machine learning to detect fraud across millions of cardholder accounts. Their systems analyze behavioral data to quickly flag unusual patterns. This approach reduces losses, protects consumers, and keeps the financial ecosystem safer.

16. Arysta LifeScience: optimizing data management in agriculture

Arysta LifeScience improved cross-functional decision-making by integrating data across business units with BI tools. This agricultural leader gained clearer insight into performance metrics, production data, and distribution timelines. With centralized dashboards, leadership teams could quickly make strategic, data-informed decisions.

17. Synerise: empowering businesses with AI-driven BI solutions

Synerise created an AI-powered BI ecosystem that unifies customer data across websites, apps, and marketing channels. Their clients use the platform to personalize communications, optimize customer journeys, and predict future behaviors. With smart segmentation and automation, businesses have increased conversions and deepened customer loyalty.

How to get started with BI

Inspired by these stories? Here are a few tips to help your organization get started with business intelligence:

1. Start with a clear use case. Focus on a business problem where data could make a meaningful difference—like sales forecasting, marketing attribution, or resource planning. Don’t try to boil the ocean; start small and scale as you see value.
2. Choose the right platform. Look for tools that offer real-time data, scalability, and easy-to-use dashboards. Bonus points for mobile access, built-in connectors to your existing systems, and strong support from the vendor.
3. Get buy-in across the org. BI only works if people use it. That means investing in onboarding, training, and user-friendly tools that empower everyone—not just your analysts—to explore and act on insights.
4. Build a data-driven culture. Celebrate quick wins, encourage curiosity, and make data part of everyday decision-making. Make it easy (and fun) for teams to explore the numbers behind their work.
5. Review and iterate often. As your business evolves, so will your BI needs. Set regular check-ins to evaluate what’s working, refresh dashboards, and introduce new data sources. The more you use it, the more valuable it becomes.

BI is no longer optional

Across industries and use cases, one thing is clear: BI helps organizations move faster, think smarter, and act with confidence. Whether you’re in retail, logistics, finance, or healthcare, real-time data insights can help you solve problems before they start.

Looking ahead, BI will continue to evolve. We’re already seeing a shift toward embedded analytics, low-code and no-code BI apps, and the integration of AI-driven forecasting and natural language queries. The future of BI isn’t just about dashboards—it’s about making data accessible and actionable for everyone in the business.

Want to see what BI could do for your business? Explore how Domo helps organizations turn data into action.