INTELLIGENCE ISSN 2834-6238, Report #5 Published: Friday, October 6, 2023, 8:00 AM Eastern.
To receive via our private list, see the form at the bottom of this page.
Planning and defining executable strategies take time, effort, patience, and support. Additionally, it can be hard to find the time to find and use business intelligence for problem-solving. Our question this month provides findings for defining and understanding intelligence.
Section I – Report Format
Getting to the CORE is about a digging process. Our focus is to excavate relevant business questions investigated in academic, practitioner, and industry research that provide direction, sources, and opportunities that small firm leaders can use in their strategic planning and execution.
Our objective is to find impactful questions answered through research and real-world application. The goal of our CORE inquiry is to share findings on key business questions that are compelling, and relative to business operations, systems, strategy, and marketability.
To find these questions, we collaborate with stakeholders who align around common goals, metrics (ways of measuring achievement), theories of change, and areas of practice. And, our most valued collaborator, you! We want our community to thrive through discussion and participation.
Each issue will have a question, the findings, and a list of sources. Each quarter, we host a live discussion to review and share strategies for how to apply the findings to your business.
I hope you’re ready to push yourself, move yourself, and achieve extraordinary results. We’re ready to inspire you to high achievement and help you excavate your Red Diamond Business!
Section II – CORE Question
“What is business intelligence and how can we incorporate it into our decision-making process?”
Business Intelligence (BI) for small firms encompasses a variety of tools, expanding resources, and applied skills. Most sources that we researched identify BI as utilizing technology and applications for answers in the decision-making process. This is true, although, for this issue, we are looking at BI as part of an overall decision-making model that also includes experience, evidence, and mindshare.
Technology, applications, and the use of the cloud are tools that help you organize, understand, and analyze data; we’ll discuss these in our next issue. There are other decisions you need to make in your business that require a thought process based on your skills, an ideation process that requires creativity and innovation techniques, and a need to decide on which BI tool to use to incorporate efficient data processing – these decisions rely on your ability to think critically.
Let’s use this perspective to answer this month’s business question, what is business intelligence and how can we incorporate it into our decision-making process?
Section III – CORE Findings
When searching for answers from the practitioner and industry sources, we found many. Most came from software companies offering analysis tools centered on BI interpretation and organization. Their goal is to persuade purchases, albeit the definitions, processes, and overviews presented good information to use as a foundation for inquiry. In the context of non-technological problems, business intelligence is heavily researched in academic literature.
Academic Findings
The term “business intelligence” (BI) describes the methods, platforms, and procedures that businesses employ to gather, examine, and interpret data to produce insightful information that can be used to make decisions [2]. Even though BI is frequently linked to technological fixes, it can also be used to solve non-technological issues.
Business intelligence, as it pertains to non-technological concerns, is the application of data analysis and insights to solve problems and reach well-informed judgments in areas like strategy, operations, marketing, finance, and human resources. It supports businesses in making data-driven decisions, recognizing trends and patterns, and developing a deeper understanding of their business environment.
In strategic decision-making, for example, BI can be used to study market trends, customer preferences, and competition behavior to inform the formulation of business plans and uncover growth prospects [1]. By analyzing operational data and identifying areas for improvement, BI can be used to optimize operations, improve efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction in operational decision-making [3].
BI can also be used to solve non-technological challenges such as marketing and sales. BI can assist firms in understanding consumer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns by analyzing customer data, enabling focused marketing efforts and individualized customer experiences [2].
It is crucial to remember that, although BI can aid in decision-making and offer insightful information, human judgment and decision-making should always be prioritized [4]. Interpreting and operationalizing the results produced by BI tools and technology still requires human engagement and views.
To sum up, employing intelligence and insights to confront challenges and make educated decisions across a range of business domains is what BI for non-technological problems entails. It assists firms in gaining a better understanding of their business environment, optimizing operations, identifying growth prospects, and improving customer experiences. [1][2][3][4]
Practitioner/Industry Findings
Oracle offers a useful summary of business intelligence definitions. It covers definitions, software kinds, advantages, and how business intelligence (BI) maximizes data. It states that business intelligence (BI) keeps your company informed and that understanding the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the market is crucial for success. It also raises some more really good points, such as: How popular are your goods or services with clients? When will the market shift, and how? What future trends are we going to see? A worthwhile read.
An application called Spotfire was created to enable users to query and respond to data at the speed of thinking. Although we don’t use their service, we appreciate their business intelligence overview. They give a decent summary of the capabilities of business intelligence (BI), its salient characteristics, and—best of all—a summary of the advantages of BI platforms. The benefits list alone is why we enjoyed this review; it offers a plethora of possibilities for analysis, allowing you to consider options other than Spotfire.
We added a few others in the sources section below.
Section IV – CORE Discussion
You should not limit intelligence to internal data and technologies but begin with more of a broad view of intelligence itself. The way it will apply to your business will depend on your industry and your operational goals.
How will you begin incorporating business intelligence? In what areas do you need to make strategic decisions?
Let’s converse!
We have many more sources and insights on this month’s question. Additional findings will be shared during our LIVE dialogue and conversation about “the CORE findings” webcast for network members. Webcasts are held on the third Thursday of each quarter in January, April, July, and October. If you’re a subscriber, no need to register, set the reminder on your calendar. We’ll send the link to join one week before the event.
If you want to subscribe to our monthly reports and access our webcasts, use the form below, it is free.
Section V – CORE Sources
Remember: We investigate research from all sources. Your goal is to dig into the findings so that you can create solutions.
Academic Articles
[1] Khoshbakht, F., & Quadri, S. M. K. (2023, February). Big Data Framework for Analytics Business Intelligence. In Proceedings of International Conference on Data Science and Applications: ICDSA 2022, Volume 1 (pp. 51-69). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-19-6631-6_5
[2] Adamala, S., & Cidrin, L. (2011). Key Success Factors in Business Intelligence (Dissertation). Retrieved from https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-5773
[3] Muniswamaiah, Manoj & Agerwala, Tilak & Tappert, Charles. (2019). Data Virtualization for Analytics and Business Intelligence in Big Data. 297-302. 10.5121/csit.2019.90925.
[4] Alghamdi, N. A., & Al-Baity, H. H. (2022). Augmented Analytics Driven by AI: A Digital Transformation Beyond Business Intelligence. Sensors, 22(20), 8071. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22208071
Practitioner/Industry Articles
What is Business Intelligence (BI)? Oracle Cloud Intelligence. https://www.oracle.com/what-is-business-intelligence/
What is business intelligence? Spotfire. https://www.spotfire.com/glossary/what-is-business-intelligence
Business Intelligence for Small and Middle-Sized Enterprises: Why it is Important? Ascend Analytics (2022, August). https://ascendanalytics.co/blog/business-intelligence-for-small-and-middle-sized-enterprises/
Importance of Business Intelligence in Small and Medium Size Enterprises, Iyer, Aanchal (2023, July). https://www.aretove.com/importance-of-business-intelligence-in-small-and-medium-size-enterprises
Learn About Business Intelligence the Right Way, Efficio, Inc. (2023, January) https://efficioeducation.com/learn-about-business-intelligence-the-right-way/
Intelligence Reports are posted the first week of every month and the Intelligence Webcast is held each quarter. If you would like to get these reports delivered to your email box and access the details for our webcast, join our private list below.
We look forward to your participation! Thank you for the opportunity to provide strategic resources and programs consistently.
Note: If you’re interested in becoming a student, learn about the full student experience in the next information session.
Let’s converse! You can use the comments section below to share your perspective.