What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence (BI) is a broad term for the techniques and tools businesses use to gather and analyze information from internal and external sources. This information can be used to make informed decisions and create effective business strategies.

No matter the size of your company, by tapping into internal and external data, you can get a clear picture of what your company is doing right and where it can improve. Internal data includes sales and e-commerce data, customer information, customer feedback, seasonal influence, and how your marketing performs. External data examines what your competitors are doing and assesses external risks, such as supply chain instability or weather-related risks. 

Business intelligence is the process of aggregating and analyzing this pool of internal and external data, and then using it as the foundation for actionable, evidence-based decisions or strategies.

Big Data vs. Small Data

Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis. Big data is so large in size and complexity, that none of traditional data management tools can store it or process it efficiently. The following are some examples of big data:

- The New York Stock Exchange generates about one terabyte of new trade data per day.

- A single Jet engine can generate 10+terabytes of data in 30 minutes of flight time.

- Social media sites like Facebook are estimated to collect 500+terabytes of new data into their databases, every day.

But it is not the amount of data that is important. It is what organizations do with the data that matters. Companies like Google and Amazon gather granular data on individual customers and use it to make individualized psychologically appealing offerings and recommendations to its customers. Based on the large data they process and analyze, they know what customers want, what marketing techniques work, or what time to deliver an advertising campaign.

Small data is data that is "small" enough for human comprehension. It is data that comes in a volume and format that makes it accessible, informative, and actionable for us. Small businesses do not usually have the resources to deal with big data, but data analysis on a smaller scale is doable, affordable, and easier to understand. Small data can be found in different tools and software companies' use daily, such as, your booking system or Google Analytics. 

What is Business Intelligence for small businesses?

The data small business accumulates is usually more structured and has easier to process formats. This data gives valuable insights and is easier to access. Depending on the data your company currently gathers, you could use business intelligence for the following topics:

- Create dashboards to track in real time your key performance indicators (KPI)

- Create financial and/or business reports to understand the past performance 

- Analyze information to create budgets, financial plans, and forecast for your business

- Analyze customer behaviors, buying patterns, and trends using sales data

- Measure, track, and predict sales and financial performance

- Gauge the cost and effectiveness of recruiting and hiring

- Track effectiveness of marketing campaigns

- Optimize processes

- Improve supply chain effectiveness

- Understand your customers better with social media and website behavior analytics

- Improve customer relationships

- Perform accurate risk analysis

- Conduct competitive intelligence analysis

How can BI FINANCE help you?

Small data is more accessible than big data, but it does not mean that utilizing it effectively is effortless. If you want your company to achieve better results using business intelligence (BI) tools, it is important first to acquire the right mindset and become a data-driven organization. It is not a complicated process if you set clear objectives, define the reporting tools you want to work with, and start creating your first BI reports. However, many small businesses do not have these capabilities or can not afford having a full-time staff member dedicated just to business intelligence. 

Here is where BI FINANCE can help you. With our experience and approach, we make it possible for your company to start creating your first BI reports or guide you in your business intelligence journey.

BI FINANCE approach

First, we look at the concrete business questions you want to answer. These can be the processes you want to optimize, the dashboard or financial reports you want to create, the key performance indicators (KPI) you want to track, etc. 

Then, we look at the potential hypotheses to answer these questions and the data (internal and external) that you currently have, to support or reject your hypothesis. If you do not have the data, we will provide you with a framework so that you can start or improve the way your company thinks about data, collects it, and uses it, with the aim to answer the above questions.

If we have the data, we will extract it from its different sources, transform it, and load it into a data model. This step can be complicated since small businesses data often comes from various data sources, including your booking system, Google Analytics, your CRM software, and spreadsheets. However, with the right tool, it can be done in an efficient way. When we have all the data ready, we start analyzing it by creating different formulas to allow us to test the hypotheses we had to answer our initial questions.

The final step is to prepare visually compelling dashboards or reports where you and your teams can look at the answer to your questions in an interactive way. Our brain is wired to process information visually, making visualization one of the best ways to explore and understand data, particularly when presenting it to customers, employees, investors, or other stakeholders. Interactive dashboards or reports quickly engage end-users and provide an intuitive experience and easily digestible insights.

The tool we use for the whole process is PowerBI from Microsoft. This tool, in its desktop version, can be downloaded for free and we find it ideal for small and medium sized companies to start. For less than CHF 15 a month per user you can upload and share your reports online, have mobile access, and many other technical features. PowerBI is a powerful tool. Without a big IT investment, you can combine different data sources into one data model, program the formulas, and create impactful visualizations. Of course, it requires some specific knowledge to use the tool, and this is where BI Finance helps you. We will create your data models, visualizations and explain you the basics of PowerBI so that you can keep updating and developing your reports on your own. 

At BI Finance we focus first on how our expertise can help you and only second on financial remuneration. We will discuss together in detail your requirements, how we can help you, and the final expected outcome.  We will then estimate the amount of time it will take us to deliver the desired outcome and calculate a fair fix fee or an hourly rate.

Why BI FINANCE?

BI FINANCE is Mariano de la Torre. I created BI FINANCE with the mission to facilitate small and medium sized businesses with access to business intelligence. I genuinely believe that with cost effective self-service business intelligence (BI) tools, small companies can, with limited investments, use internal and/or external data to make better business decisions faster. 

I have more than 20 years of experience in finance. I learned and applied the core investment and corporate finance concepts and solutions while working for international private equity and investments banks (Partners Group, Credit Suisse, WestLB and Deutsche Bank). I also have tangible operational experience while working for companies (Swarovski and Outdoor Switzerland) in strategy, financial advisory, and CFO roles. I hold a MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and co-own a privately-held outdoor activities company (Hightide), where I’m actively involved in managing the business. 

The large organizations that I worked for understand the value of data and use it to drive business decisions. They also have the resources to invest in it. When I started to advise small companies with Financial Solutions and to manage Hightide, I wanted to use data in the same way as big corporations do but in a cost-effective way.

I came across PowerBI and realized its potential for small and medium sized businesses. PowerBI works perfectly well with data in spreadsheets (where most of the information comes from in small businesses) as well as integrating data from other internal and external sources. I spent time learning the tool, from extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL) data into the data model (PowerQuery), to programing the formulas to extract insights (DAX-language), to designing impactful dashboards and reports.

I use BI in our own small business to track different key performance indicators (KPI) and automate different processes. I know first-hand how powerful it is. This inspired me to help other businesses to implement similar solutions. I am convinced that today any company (regardless of its size) that has the willingness to use data for decision making can do it in a cost-effective way.

Contact me if you want to learn more about how I can help you in your business intelligence journey.