4 Ways How Technology is Revolutionizing Business Intelligence

Business intelligence technologies today are a far cry from their outdated predecessors. Business systems are linked and integrated, allowing for smooth and seamless flow of critical data. There is no need to collect tabular reports, financial statements, sales charts, and forecasts from various departments and individuals.

The introduction of business intelligence software has indeed improved the way business organizations harvest and dissect data. Insights are better in quality and are more actionable. Business leaders and decision-makers are equipped with the knowledge and insights to decisively and quickly make strategic decisions and respond intelligently to any development.

Business intelligence and analytics is crucial for tree care businesses. With research, innovation and insightful services, tree care experts, arborists and landscapers can improve tree healthcare.

As technology continues to progress, business intelligence will keep on evolving. And if the experts are to be believed, the following technologies will have a hand in shaping BI’s evolution.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, remains one of the most significant technologies that drive BI evolution. The majority of top business intelligence products, if not all, now offer AI capabilities. Implementation of AI-powered business intelligence platforms has greatly increased over the years. 

Experts say organizations that delay the adoption and integration of AI into their operations, business intelligence, in particular, are at a great risk falling behind the competition. A 2017 study on AI and its impact on businesses shows that 38% of businesses have fully operational AI systems. The same report says that 48% are evaluating an investment in AI.

With AI, business intelligence and analytics tools evaluate data inputs at an incredibly faster rate and discover opportunities and insights that no manual analysis methods can detect.

Intelligent chatbots with machine learning capabilities are leading the way. Chatbots have proven to be quite effective in collecting data and identifying customer sentiments, market trends, behaviors, and triggers. Such functionality allows chatbots to glean reliable and actionable insights from the noise and static.

The number of business organizations moving their operations to the cloud is growing at an incredible pace. Among the numerous advantages a connected cloud setup brings is faster access and better visibility to business data.

In a connected cloud setup, the usual components in business intelligence and data analytics such as data sources, data storage, processing models, and other applications are all located in the cloud as well. This allows for seamless, frictionless streaming of data from across various touch points like search, media, video, and mobile into one pipeline, resulting in a single source of truth.

In the realm of business intelligence, this is paramount. Using business intelligence tools and techniques enable business organizations to attain and maintain the highest level of data quality, data integrity, data compliance, and governance. For instance, you can utilize this technology to empower your tree service business’ field service.

Many organizations are still operating siloed business applications and tools independently. Since these tools and apps are not connected and virtually separated from a larger, wider network, the data ends up getting isolated, buried, and unutilized. Insights and opportunities remain undiscovered and ultimately rendered irrelevant.

According to a Forrester research, companies fail to utilize about 60-73% of the data they collect for any strategic initiative.

One of the many reasons why this is so is that people who require insights from data, such as marketers and salespeople, don’t understand business intelligence. And people who do know business intelligence and its implications, such as data scientists and analysts, lack the business skills and acumen to actually make the insights and opportunities matter at all.

While business technology has been focused on small form-factor devices, for the most part, experts are saying that a shift to large touch devices is imminent. When this happens, it will allow teams to explore business data side by side in what will seem an immersive, collaborative, and shared real-time analytics experience. To know more, read this FinancesOnline business analytics guide.

Data visualization has made it easy for many people who lack analytical skills and data literacy to comprehend data and identify opportunities and insights that lay hidden beneath facts, figures, and statistics. That said, presenting pie charts and bar graphs to a business meeting requires knowledgeable data experts to interpret the visuals and translate them into meaningful takeaways their clients and stakeholders can quickly understand and digest.

Data storytelling is becoming a trend in the business intelligence market, as highlighted in both the San Francisco Data Visualization Summit and the Tapestry Conference. It will not replace data visualization per se but rather complement it. Many people, even those at the top of the business hierarchy, still can’t comprehend visuals.

Data storytelling adds vital context to facts and figures, making insights far more comprehensible and impactful to users and their business.

Business intelligence used to be the right in the alley of global brands and huge corporations. However, advances in cloud computing are leveling the playing field in favor of SMBs.

Forbes highlighted BI statistics that in 2018, small and medium-sized businesses, particularly those with fewer than 100 employees, were reported to include business intelligence as part of their strategies. In fact, SMBs had the highest adoption rate of tools used in business intelligence last year.

Adoption of BI among SMBs is expected to increase in the coming years, especially as more business intelligence software vendors provide more affordable and accessible BI packages. Even SMBS and startups that operate with tight finances are able to include BI as part of their operational expenses. Regardless of your business’ size, it’s time for you to explore a BI tool that suits your specific requirements to stay competitive.