Business IntelligenceSee your business future in a crystal ball [Archives:2006/983/Business & Economy]
Mohammed Esmael Al-Moayed
[email protected]
Business intelligence is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, accessing and analyzing data to help enterprise users make better business decisions. The term implies a comprehensive knowledge of all of the factors that affect business. It is imperative to have an in-depth knowledge about factors such as your customers, competitors, business partners, economic environment, and internal operations to make effective and good quality business decisions. Business intelligence enables you to make these kinds of decisions.
Reasons for Business Intelligence:
Business Intelligence enables organizations to make well informed business decisions to create competitive advantages. When you are able to extrapolate information from indicators in the external environment and make accurate forecasts about future trends or economic conditions. Once business intelligence is gathered effectively and used proactively you can make decisions to benefit your organization before the competition.
The ultimate objective of business intelligence is to improve the timeliness and quality of information. Timely quality information is like having a crystal ball that can give you an indication of what's the best course to take. Business intelligence reveals to you the changes in customer behavior and spending patterns, your own capabilities, and what changes are taking place in the market.
Businesses realize in this very competitive, fast pace, and always changing business environment the only thing to help them gain a competitive advantage over competitors is how quickly they respond and adapt to change. Business intelligence enables them to use information gathered to proactively respond to changes.
Benefits of BI
BI can eliminate a lot of the guesswork within an organization, enhance communication among departments while coordinating activities, and enable companies to respond quickly to changes in financial conditions, customer preferences, and supply chain operations. BI improves the overall performance of the company using it.
Information is regarded as the most important resource a company has so when a company can make decisions based on timely accurate information it improves their performance. BI expedites decision making because businesses realize information can be used to achieve an advantage so when a business obtains key information they quickly use it before a competitor obtains the same information. It also maximizes the customer experience because they can cater to the wants or needs of a customer.
Factors Influencing Business Intelligence
Customers are the most critical aspect to a company's success and without them a company cannot exist. So it is very important to have information on their likes and dislikes so you can quickly adapt to their changing demands. Business Intelligence enables you to gather information on the trends in the marketplace and come up with innovative products or services in anticipation of customers' changing demands.
Business Partners must possess the same strategic information you have so there is no miscommunication leading to inefficiencies. It is common now for businesses to allow their suppliers to see their inventory levels, performance metrics, and other supply chain data in order to collaborate and improve. With business intelligence businesses and partners can share the same information.
Internal Operations are the day-to-day activities going on in a business. You need an indepth knowledge about the internal workings of your business from top to bottom. If you make an arbitrary decision without knowing how your entire organization works it could have negative affects on your business. BI gives you information on how your entire organization works.
One of the leading Business Intelligence Solutions (BIS) providers is 'Business Objects' and it translates data from the factors that influence BI to useable BI that changes the way they do business to become more efficient, better managed and more competitive. They integrating their data, turning it into information, and delivering it widely across and beyond their organization. The ability to take any piece of information and deliver it to where it can be best used – whether it be in the hands of an employee, a supplier, a partner, or a customer – with an amazing power to transform the decision making process.
Business Intelligence for Telecommunications from Business Objects
The telecommunications industry is going through a revolution. Acquisitions, consolidations, and new regulations are creating competitive pressures and new opportunities. Managers at telecommunication service providers are recognizing the opportunities, turning them into a competitive differentiator and measuring the impact on revenue, market share, and customer retention. One way of ensuring a company can capitalize on these opportunities is to invest in a strategy to harnesses the power of information.
The telecom industry has ever-changing market conditions and managers need information at their fingertips to anticipate the changes and quickly make informed decisions. Decision-making in the telecom industry today demands high-quality intelligence. BI solutions, already widely used by telecommunications companies in human resources and finance, are now becoming critical to their core business strategy by: driving sales and marketing, increasing customer loyalty and streamlining operations.
Driving Sales and Marketing
Enabling easy access to information, business intelligence solutions from Business Objects are a key component for building strong sales and marketing operations. As well as undertaking sales analysis which enables companies to measure revenues, volumes, and margins from an unlimited number of different dimensions such as geography, time, and product category.
Another important element is the ability to profile customers into segments so that marketing executives can obtain insights into customer demographics and behavior and they can visualize, and manage customer segments resulting in more accurate marketing campaigns and improved ability to target new customers.
Additionally, service corporations, such as Telecom companies, can use BI and BIS to run targeted marketing campaigns, but they usually measure campaign efficiency by looking only at the response rate. Business Objects enables organizations to track the performance of campaigns over time, and use tracking to create more effective marketing and merchandising promotions.
Lastly, BI can enhance management strategies aimed to improve the analytic and operational practices that grow lifetime value of customers. Business Objects enable businesses to drive increasing profits from their customer base by constantly monitoring, reacting to, or even anticipating changes in customers' behavior.
Increasing Customer Loyalty
In the highly competitive telecommunication industry, operators realize that proactively sharing information with customers is a great way to increase loyalty. For example, Telecom companies are moving their customer services to the web to stand out from the competition and build stronger customer relationships. They can provide their customers with critical information such as trouble ticket status, service level agreement reporting, and usage history. It is cost efficient compared to producing paper reports.
Streamlining Operations
As competition pushes down prices, telecom operators are looking at ways to lower operating costs to maintain acceptable return for shareholders. For customers, the service they get from a call center is a highly visible indicator of the company's quality of service. Companies can analyze their call center activity so they detect busy periods, look at call waiting times, and take action to ensure the call center is running efficiently.
Future of Business Intelligence
Consumers are now demanding quicker more efficient service from businesses. To stay competitive companies must meet or exceed the expectations of consumers. Companies will have to rely more heavily on their business intelligence systems to stay ahead of trends and future events. Business intelligence users are beginning to demand near real time analysis relating to their business, particularly in frontline operations. They will come to expect fresh information in the same fashion as they monitor stock quotes online. Monthly and weekly analysis will not suffice. “Business users don't want to wait for information. Information needs to be there and never out of date. This is the way we live our lives today. Why should Business Intelligence be any different?” said Charles Nicholls, CEO of SeeWhy, a UK software company.
Soon companies will become dependent on real time business information similar to how people expect to get information on the internet in just one or two clicks. “This instant 'internet experience' will create the new framework for business intelligence, but business processes will have to change to accommodate and exploit the real-time flows of business data,” said Nigel Stokes, CEO of Canada's DataMirror Corp.
Also in the near future business information will become more open and throughout the organization people will be able to view information on their particular segment to see how it's performing.
So, in the future the capability requirements of business intelligence will increase in the same way consumer expectations increase. Companies must increase at the same pace or even faster to stay competitive.
BI in Yemen's Economy
Many Yemeni enterprises, especially private ones, have made progress in automating information. These enterprises now have different sources of information making data warehouses essential – the first step in BI.
Private and government sectors have very big challenges. For example, banks have to increase their capital within the next years or merge with other banks and there is a growing number of Telecom companies creating intense competition. These factors affect decision makers who should start thinking seriously about business intelligence as one of their solutions to aid future planning and increase efficiency and productivity.
Many of Yemeni companies share the same concerns with their counterparts in the region, and following suit, now is the right time to think of implementing a BIS. In Yemen many challenges hinder economic growth. New strategies in business and economic policy making must be adopted, and BI is one of these strategies.
Mr. Al-Moayed is a Business Intelligence & Business Object Expert administering Information Technology at Sabafone Telecommunications.
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