Business Intelligence (BI) can add value to business processes, create a comprehensive view, and enable an organization's teams to analyze their own data to improve efficiency and make better day-to-day decisions. Today, digital transformation is seen as a key strategic initiative for businesses, and BI tools are evolving to help organizations make the most of their data investments. Here are the top 10 applications of BI technology across industry sectors:
(1) HelloFresh
For food service provider HelloFresh, the adoption of a centralized BI solution has saved the marketing analytics team 10 to 20 man-hours per day by automating the reporting process. It also enables larger marketing teams to plan regional, personalized digital marketing campaigns. Based on comprehensive analysis of customer behavior, HelloFresh created three buyer personas to guide their efforts. Being able to view and track real-time data means the team can react to customer behavior and optimize campaigns. As a result, they've seen higher conversion rates and better customer retention.
(2) REI
Outdoor retail co-op REI Corporation uses a business intelligence platform to analyze their co-op members. Co-op members contribute more than 90% of retailer purchases for REI, so it's critical to track metrics like acquisition, retention, and reactivation. All of this information equates to over 90 terabytes of data. The ability to parse all this data means that operations teams can decide whether to invest more in physical retail or in the digital experience for their members. This will lead to higher customer satisfaction and a positive association with the brand.
(3) Coca-Cola
The Coca-Cola Company's Business Intelligence team handles reporting for all of the organization's sales and delivery operations. With their Business Intelligence platform, the team has automated traditional manual reporting processes, saving over 260 man-hours per year. Reporting automation and other enterprise system integrations put customer relationship management (CRM) data back in the hands of the field sales team through mobile dashboards that provide timely, actionable information and a unique competitive advantage. Self-service BI implementations promote more effective collaboration between IT and business users, maximizing the knowledge and skill levels of participants.
(4) Chipotle
Chipotle MexicanGrill, an American restaurant chain with more than 2,400 locations around the world, phased out its legacy BI solution and committed to building a modern self-service BI platform. This allowed them to create a centralized view of operations so they could track the operational efficiency of their restaurants across the country. Employees now have greater access to data, and the speed of report delivery for strategic projects has tripled from quarterly to monthly and saved thousands of man-hours.
(5) Des Moines Public Schools
Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) uses advanced analytics to improve dropout intervention rates to better understand the impact of various instructional methods on individual student achievement. The Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) research and data management team uses multiple linear regression models and employs dropout coefficients to measure student indicators to predict which students may be at risk of dropping out. They use a business intelligence platform to leverage the model. Data visualization allows faculty and staff to easily identify some students who are at risk of dropping out and get those students the care and help they need.
(6) Koodos
Koodos is a new startup at Harvard Business School's Center for Entrepreneurial Rock that builds content management technology for Gen Z based on user-generated data.Koodos's business model relies on understanding the relationships between different data sets. Their first experiment matched emojis to music, for example texting an emoji to 566-367 to receive a suggested song. With business intelligence tools, Koodos was able to collate and organize their data to understand how their experiments were conducted and then use those insights to build better products.
(7) New York Shipping Exchange
The New York Shipping Exchange (NYSHEX) is a shipping technology company dedicated to improving the shipping process overseas. The New York Shipping Exchange (NYSHEX) decided to give companies access to data using their business intelligence tool, Chartio. This became possible not only because all the data was centralized in one system, but also because it could be analyzed by people with no coding knowledge.
(8) CareLinx
CareLinx is a national home care network that connects families to over 300,000 family caregivers.CareLinx has used BI tools for non-PHI data, so their engineering and product teams have realized the benefits of BI. Once Chartio is HIPAA compliant, it will open up a whole new world of opportunity for them.
(9) Bugcrowd
Bugcrowd is a cybersecurity platform that connects its customers with security researchers to identify vulnerabilities in products and applications. Their requirements are stringent: tight security and the ability to handle many data sources, and it must be easy to use. With its specific and achievable business intelligence goals, Bugcrowd was able to solve their problem.
(10) DataRobot
DataRobot is an enterprise AI platform that invented the automated machine learning category.DataRobot chose to give new hires a seat at the table with their business intelligence tools. Their goal is to allow each team to understand and work with data without having to go through an engineering or analytics team. By integrating their BI tools into the onboarding process, DataRobot solidifies a culture of data democratization where every employee is empowered to analyze and work with data.