Why building and maintaining a BI strategy is so vital

The buzz around Artificial intelligence has skyrocketed in this past year. The new models of ChatGPT and the like, released to the general public have had such a profound impact now that everyone can have a play and view the real-life context of what artificial intelligence can provide for businesses.

This in turn has really opened the conversation and changed the dialogue around how to trust the information that is coming out of these algorithms. We’ve all seen the Photoshop generation, where celebrities are photoshopped into strange and interesting places. So of course, in that trust economy, how do you believe what you see and what you read.

This is also true with business intelligence which often sits behind AI – how do you trust the insights that have been generated? And how do you trust the data that you are feeding into these algorithms? Being able to verify this information is key.

Businesses shouldn’t be walking in blindly and say I’m going to adopt BI or AI in my business. You need to understand the ‘why’ and ‘what’ behind your decision. Is it to drive customer value? Is it to drive efficiencies in your business? Is it to improve employee satisfaction?

This is where a BI strategy is essential as it can help pinpoint the answers to those questions and ensure the data you are collecting will lead to beneficial insights and support your overall business strategy and objectives.

Defining a BI strategy

With the ever-increasing volume of data, it is becoming increasingly challenging to find valuable information amongst all the noise. Often, data is accrued organically, with no ‘big picture’ plan in place for what to do with it.

Therefore, a solid BI strategy is critical to derive value and relevant insights from the clatter, save time and money by automating information gathering tasks and prevent those costly ‘Excel Formula’ errors.

So, what are the main things your business needs to build a BI strategy:

Data quality   

Data quality sits at the heart of a truly successful BI strategy because this is the extent to which your data is reliable and relevant for informed and timely decisions. In a business climate driven by powerful digital disruption and rapid-fire innovation, your organisation must capture the data it needs in the right way and for the right reasons. Your business should also ensure the validity and the value of the data that you have historically collected as this could greatly affect the output.

   Illustrating the right visuals 

The ability to clearly identify trends, explore influences, dig deeper and reveal problems or discover new opportunities, will be what differentiates a BI strategy that delivers value, tangible reporting outcomes and insights from business data, from one that does not.

 Involving the right people

Using a BI strategy to keep up with competitors also requires involving your organisation’s thought and business leaders, to make sure the strategy covers company-wide needs, goals and priorities. The final strategy should also connect horizontally across functional areas of your organisation, helping different teams to collect, share and process data.

 Securing the right experts

A trusted BI partner is your best ally to empower your business and use BI tools with confidence, while delivering sophisticated insights that serve your interests.

Pronto Software has a dedicated team of Business Intelligence professionals, Pronto iQ, who can take your business strategy, and help you come up with the right infrastructure, visualisations and insights that will help your organisation reach its goals. When you are ready to begin this data exploration, contact our BI experts to guide you along this journey.

Read more about these essentials in detail in our whitepaper, ‘Building a Data Driven Business’.