The benefits BI insights can deliver

Sergei Gundorov presents his top five reasons why small businesses should add BI (business intelligence) to their toolkit.

A lot of business managers assume there’s no value for them in using business intelligence tools, because a) it would cost too much or b) only large businesses generate enough data to benefit from analysis.

In today’s tech-integrated environment, however any business regardless of size can benefit from business insights at very little cost. I’ve witnessed how a bar and restaurant owner identified “less than diligent” bartenders that were pouring too much booze for higher tips. 

He used Microsoft Excel and Power Pivot with just a few hundred records. The point here is any amount of data relevant to your business can provide valuable insights if you use the right tools and modelling techniques. 

Here are some points for small and medium business owners to consider when thinking about BI:

1) Cost. 

Competition in the BI market has made BI tools affordable and accessible to virtually anyone. You may not be aware that newer versions of Microsoft Excel have Power Query (a sophisticated data identification and organisation module) and Power Pivot (a data storage module that can hold millions of records) built in. Meanwhile, Power BI Desktop is free to download and use, and there are many other free and low-cost options available like Birt, Dataiku, RapidMiner and Qlik Sense, all with different features. 

2) The benefits of data visualisation. 

Being able to visualise data rather than just looking at a bunch of records in a table can help instantly identify anomalies and outliers. A waterfall chart is a perfect example.  In the chart below it is very clear from the first glance that this business had a good year overall, but that there’s a need to look at why sales decreased in the first five months. (See chart below)

3) Using data to tell a story. 

Many contemporary BI tools have story-telling capabilities where simple and powerful dashboards act like a Power Point presentation, but are also interactive. Where can this be useful? Sometimes you need to tell your story to the banker to get a loan or attract potential customer. Use contemporary interactive BI tools to make your points and you will make an indelible impression on your audience. The days of static Power Point presentations are numbered. Sorry Power Point, you did well.

4) The power of what-if. 

Most BI tools give people the ability to tweak the data slightly to test what effect this would have on the bottom line. Any business of any size can benefit from this kind of What-If Analysis. Projecting shipping cost fluctuations, currency exchange rates or the price of raw materials could help you identify break-even point and, more importantly, as you will be loading actual data into your model, take corrective action before you go into the red.

5) BI is always on. 

Traditional BI was great, but why not take advantage of available technology in the ever more connected “always on” mobile device world? Some BI tools out there allow you to connect to your data in real time or near real time. Most contemporary BI tools include a mobile app option that will alert you no matter where you are. You can set up your system to alert you on your device when your data shows you’ve hit a certain threshold.  Kind of like the low fuel light in your car, but one that lets you keep your business running smoothly.

Sergei Gundorov (pictured) is senior program manager at Power BI, a division of Microsoft.