What is business intelligence and data analytics?
Business intelligence and data analytics are the use of data to help an organization make better decisions. Data is collected from various sources, such as employees, clients, and suppliers, and analyzed to identify patterns and trends. Business intelligence and data analytics are used to make better decisions about an organization's strategy and goals.
5 Reasons Your QSR Needs Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Software
What is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence is the process of analyzing large volumes of historical and current data sets to bring out actionable information on the business operations in order to sharpen the decision making system. Organizations gather humongous amounts of data with every operational process, be it sales, inventory management or production. Business intelligence tools collect this data in their data warehouses and analyze them for a better understanding of the business.
The data is converted into visual elements such as graphs, pie charts and reports in various forms by the business intelligence systems, for managers to gain actionable insights into operations. These reports, prepared with data visualization, are easy to understand and interact with, and prepare business owners for better decision making. Earlier, business intelligence tools were mostly restricted to data analysts. However, with the advent of self service BI tools, data science is available to all those who seek to improve their business operations.
What is Data Analytics?
Data Analytics is the broad process of using data science to understand, evaluate and study raw data to identify trends and patterns, and ultimately draw conclusions about an operation.
Data analytics includes various types of data analysis, such as predictive analytics, descriptive analytics, diagnostic analytics and prescriptive analytics. With these processes, data analytics sets up various key performance indicators (KPIs) that help managers understand and evaluate the performance of various business operations.
With its intelligence tools, data analytics provides valuable insights into the workings of a business, the larger market scenario and competitor actions, which help business owners make better decisions in the long run.
There are so many different data-driven technologies out there, it can be hard to know which one is the best for your business.
Business intelligence and data analytics software is the perfect solution for your needs. It will help you make more informed decisions about your business, which in turn will lead to better results.
Intelligence Vs. Data- What's the Difference?
The key difference between Business Intelligence and data is that intelligence is used to describe, interpret and analyze data to make sense of it. Data, on the other hand, is the records, reports and individual information that a company or organization gathers historically or in real time.
Data are individual pieces of information that would not make much sense in their own capacity. Intelligence is the tool that is deployed to bring out the meaning of these pieces of information and create a summary.
Intelligence and data go hand-in-hand to drive business analytics in an establishment, with the aim of helping managers make more effective business decisions.
Popular BI Tools for Restaurants
Restaurant Management has become a lot easier thanks to business intelligence tools managers can use to optimize business operations. So what are the popular BI tools to look out for?
- Data visualization- One of the key features of a business intelligence system is its data visualization capabilities. This tool takes the large volume of data gathered by restaurantssuch as sales data, inventory data, supply chain data, etc. and converts it into visual reports with pie charts and graphs for business owners to better understand the information.
- Executive dashboards- BI software comes with interactive, user-friendly dashboards where business owners can find all the relevant information to aid decision making. These are presented in the form of actionable reports and analytics on the dashboard.
- Interactive reports- BI tools present business intelligence and data in the form of interactive reports that can be visualized in multiple ways, depending on what the viewer wants.
- Trend analysis- BI tools will not only analyze your business operations and data sets but also draw comparisons with competitors and identify current market trends.
- Data warehouses- These are data management systems that lie at the center of business intelligence systems. Data warehouses store and organize volumes of data for the system to analyze, interpret and understand.
How Does BI and Data Analytics Software Work?
At the heart of a business intelligence system lie data warehouses where all the data related to the company's operations are stored systematically. These data warehouses are used by the intelligence system as its resource for all information related to the company. Data from all sources, be it the sales point or restaurant inventory, are stored in these warehouses. It is then used by data analytics tools to gain insights into the business.
Business Analytics tools address questions that need to be answered, such as what are the conversion rates for a marketing campaign, what is the weekly footfall rate, etc. These queries are taken up by the system that fishes for the relevant data sets in the data warehouse. The relevant numbers are then packaged as reports, graphs and other data visualization elements for business managers and users to understand.
You want to be able to measure your progress, but the data you have doesn't always provide the answers you need.
Business intelligence and data analytics software can help you get the information you need so that you can make informed decisions.
5 Advantages of BI and Data Analytics Software
- Business intelligence and data analytics tools help businesses flourish with data-driven and result-oriented methods of analysis.
- Huge caches of raw data that restaurants and hotels gather with their Data Collection systems over time, are used to gain better understanding of business operations. These data sets are used to improve business performance and gain an edge over competitors.
- BI tools help a business use its customer database to gain better knowledge of its customers and thus serve them better by knowing their exact needs and preferences.
- With its real time data analytics and business analytics tools, BI software can help fix ongoing crises, bugs and flaws in the operational process, and achieve Inventory Optimization.
- It offers detailed insights into each operational process. Its reports help plug gaps and make better decisions for the business to flourish.
BI Software FAQs
Q1- Can small businesses afford BI tools?
A- Business intelligence and data analytics have been restricted to data analysts and intelligence analysts for a while. This made BI tools expensive to use. However, with technological advancement, this is no longer the case, and small and medium-sized businesses too can now use BI tools to improve efficiency through actionable Research Reports. There are also a number of free intelligence systems available in the market for such companies.
Q2- Will BI tools keep business data secure?
A- All data-driven tools raise the concern of crucial company information leaked. However, obtaining a reputable BI solution for your company will guarantee that your data sets are secure and tamper-proof.
You have a lot of data, but you don't know how to use it to improve your business.
Business intelligence and data analytics software can help you take actionable insights from the raw data your business produces and help you turn a profit with it.