5 Ways That Business Intelligence Technologies Help You Drive Strategy
Business Intelligence Technologies- What are They?
Business intelligence is a group of tools and techniques that are used to analyze big data sets generated during daily business operations. With BI tools, you can convert your historical and real time data into actionable information and reports that will help you make better business decisions.
Operators often struggle to make sense of large volumes of data generated by their businesses. They fail to identify market trends, understand the factors that impact revenue, or figure out why their inventory usage has been going through the roof but without showing adequate results? In such cases, intelligence software and BI tools will process your data and bring forth solutions you would have otherwise missed. Using business intelligence tools will not only improve your business performance, but also give you a high return on investment (ROI) as demonstrated by successful establishments that use intelligence software.
How do Business Intelligence Technologies Serve Restaurants?
- Business Intelligence software uses all the historical data from restaurant point-of-sale systems, inventory, warehouse and other data points to create analytical reports and insights with data visualization tools.
- These media-rich reports and insights are generated in real time, which helps business users with better decision making. Both immediate, and long-term business decisions can be made easily with the help of business analytics tools.
- Self service BI software available for restaurants use natural language instead of complex technical jargon. This makes it easier for business users such as restaurant owners and managers to use intelligence tools to their full capacity.
- Restaurant business analytics tools can also be directly linked with the restaurant management software such as POS systems, restaurant delivery platforms, takeout software, and supply chain management tools. The data analytics and BI tools pull out data from these to provide business users with informative reports and analyses.
- BI tools such as predictive analytics can help restaurants know what to expect in the future. With sales forecasting, inventory forecasting and other predictive analytics tools, you can understand market trends and tweak your business plans accordingly.
Running a restaurant is hard work. You have to manage your inventory, staff, and customers. The only problem is that it’s really hard to see how you’re doing until you get your monthly reports.
Business intelligence technologies can help you stay ahead of the curve by providing real-time analytics on everything from what customers are ordering to the health of your employees.
5 BI Benefits- No. 1 Make Data Driven Decisions
Restaurants sit on large volumes of data from their vast range of touchpoints such as POS systems, inventory management software, online ordering and delivery points and kitchen management systems. This data reveals crucial information about customer behavior, market trends and sales patterns. BI tools utilize the data to create precise, actionable and real time reports that help restaurants speed up their Business Development.
BI tools use a business's data warehouse to generate visually appealing reports and analytics with data visualization tools that are easy to understand and interact with. Self service BI software brings the power of data analysis to everyone, including business users who do not have trained data analysts and data scientists on their payroll.
No. 2 Streamline Operations
One of the Top Benefits of using business intelligence software is that it allows you to optimize and streamline your operations. BI software will help you identify gaps in your business management processes, such as inventory usage, workforce management, supply chain management, sales point handling, and so on. Looking at the trends, patterns and usage reports, you can identify problem areas and start optimizing your operations for maximum returns.
For example, if a vendor charges you more than the market rate, your business intelligence software will identify the anomaly and help you find other vendors with lower prices around you. It will similarly identify problems with inventory overuse, high labor cost, time theft by the workforce, and so on. Without business intelligence tools, you'll find yourself struggling to pinpoint the root cause of your problems.
No. 3 Asset and Talent Management
Being part of the hospitality and service sectors, restaurants and foodservice businesses spend a huge chunk of their revenue on Labor Costs. One of the primary goals of all restaurants is to reduce labor costs as much as possible as it eats into 30-35% of their revenue. However, this isn't easy, as the restaurant's front house, back house, kitchen, inventory and all other operational areas function with manual work. This is where business intelligence software comes in.
Intelligence software will help you identify your busy days, lean days and peak hours, and advise you to deploy your staff to meet demand. This means you won't have to hire a full-fledged workforce at all times. You can also get your servers and kitchen assistants to work on multiple roles and thus save on labor costs.
The restaurant industry is always changing. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, you need to be able to analyze data, predict trends, and make informed decisions.
Business intelligence technologies provide the data you need to make informed decisions about your restaurant’s future.
No. 4 Updates on Industry Trends
Data analysis and Data Management will not only give you insights into your own business operations, but also provide you with an overview of the market, current industry trends and competitors. This will help you with better decision making and get a competitive edge over other market players. One of the key BI applications is to help business users identify market trends and stay ahead of competitors.
With machine learning, intelligence tools will allow for better decision making by prompting recommendations and providing actionable solutions. They do this by studying the data and patterns of your operations and comparing them to other industry players.
No. 5 Gain a 360-degree View of Your Company
Gathering Cloud Data and drawing valuable insights from big data sets will give your business a complete 360-degree overview of your company and its operations. This will not only improve your decision making, but also eliminate errors, loopholes, loss-making practices and misuse. By understanding your business completely and comparing it with competitors, you will be better equipped to grow your operations and revenue. You will also gain better understanding of your customers by analyzing your customer database, their purchase and visit patterns, and adapt your service accordingly.
You have a lot of data, but you don’t know how to make sense of it.
Business intelligence solutions provide the tools you need to turn data into actionable insights that drive strategy.