How to take action on BI insights and improve business operations

With the right BI platform in place, you can move from insights to action and see real results. Your business intelligence (BI) platform provides a wealth of valuable information that can help you to make better decisions and see increased performance.

Whether you’re looking at the overall health of your company or how one department is performing compared to another, there are insights to be gained from your BI solution that can help you to improve operations and take action for optimal business results.

In this article, we’ll discuss some of the insights gleaned from your BI platform that can help you to improve business operations.

Let’s get started with an overview of what insights are and why it is so valuable to have access to them.
 

 

Why BI insights are important

Insights are information that helps you to take action toward a particular goal or result.

For example, suppose your company wants to increase customer engagement through improved customer service. Insights from your BI platform could include how long your customer service reps are taking to answer a chat or phone call. These insights can shed light on where problems exist within the organization and help pinpoint areas for improvement.

In the case of customer service, this might be as simple as knowing which locations need more customer service representatives. With the right insight and an action plan, you can improve overall performance and increase revenue and overall profitability.

Similarly, insights gleaned from your BI platform can help you to hone in on areas for improvement in sales, marketing, manufacturing, and more.
 

Types of business intelligence insights

As previously mentioned, you can gain many different insights from your BI solution.

Some examples include:
Business processes: These are insights into the way employees, customers, and other individuals interact with your company. You can use these insights to improve business processes and customer experiences and identify best practices for profit improvement.

Industry: With a solid BI platform in place, you have access to industry trends and benchmarks so you can see how your company is performing compared to others within the same industry.

Leaders can use these insights to compare performance between different departments, identify best practices within your industry and increase overall profitability.

Location: With the right BI platform in place, you have access to location-specific data that can help identify areas of high traffic so you can optimize staff resources accordingly.

These insights might also include information about the types of customers in a specific area so you can optimize product and service offerings.

Department: With a solid BI platform, you have access to data that allows you to compare the performance of different departments against each other.

For example, suppose your customer service department lags behind your sales department. In that case, insights from your solution can help you identify why that might be the case and where you should focus your improvement efforts.

Technology: As technology is ever-changing, business intelligence allows you to stay updated with the latest tools at your disposal. With the right BI platform in place, you can get ahead of new or emerging technologies so you can remain competitive and provide improved service to your customers.

Now that we’ve discussed some of the different types of insights you can gain from your BI solution, let’s look at how you can actually get started using these insights to improve business operations.
 

 

How to take action on BI insights and improve business operations

Whether you’re looking for improved performance in customer service or marketing campaigns, insights from your BI solution can help you to take action and see real results for your business.

Let’s take a look at how this works:

Identify the insight

The first step is to identify where you want to improve operations. For example, if one of the areas of focus is on marketing campaigns, insights from your BI solution can help you identify areas that may need improvement.

In this case, insights might include information about the effectiveness of specific campaigns as well as common sticking points for customers during a campaign, such as product specifications or delivery dates.

With these insights in hand, you’ll be able to identify key areas where you could improve performance and increase revenue.

Determine the action

Now that you’ve identified where you want to improve operations, it’s time to determine the actual action.

Take everything you’ve learned about your company and what customers are looking for during a marketing campaign, and use this information to refine future campaigns, so they resonate more with your target audience.

This could mean revising current marketing materials or launching an entirely new campaign that better speaks to the needs of your target audience.

The important thing is that you’re using what you’ve learned from your BI solution to create an action plan for improvement.

Act upon the insight

Once you’ve identified where you want to improve operations, it’s time to act upon it. Implement the changes identified to see if they improve performance and boost revenue according to your goals.

The beauty of BI is that you can measure results, which means you can determine if the insights gleaned from your solution are leading to improved company performance rather than just hypothesizing about it.

Review and respond accordingly

In any good business, you’re going to experience some challenges and unexpected outcomes.

Even if everything is going according to plan after taking action on your BI insight, that doesn’t mean it will stay that way forever. You need a solid business intelligence solution that can review and respond accordingly when conditions change so you continue to see results from your efforts.

If something doesn’t go according to plan, you need a BI platform that can adapt and overcome any obstacles so you can continue to benefit from your insight. This way, you get the most value possible from your data-driven insights and deliver continued business value.
 

 

Conclusion

Business intelligence is all about data-driven insights, and these insights are made possible by the business intelligence platform you use. By understanding how your data is performing and how it is being used, you can make better decisions about where to allocate resources and improve overall performance.

With the right BI solution in place, you can move from insights to action and see real results for your business.

If you’re having trouble identifying the right insights, here are three questions to get started:

• Is my data complete, or are there gaps?
• Have I defined my metrics clearly enough?
• Am I sharing this insight with the people who can act upon it?

By asking these questions, you’ll be able to identify the right insights for your BI solution. From there, take action on them and see results for yourself.