How to Develop an Effective Business Intelligence Strategy in 7 Steps

What is a Business Intelligence Strategy?

A few years ago, McDonald's wanted to ensure that its third-party delivery platform could keep up with customer demand for popular menu items. The QSR feared losing revenue and consumer loyalty if its third party delivery network was not up to scratch. A business intelligence solution was the need of the hour.

Business intelligence (BI) and data analytics systems help businesses identify their blindspots through data. Data is collected from every arm of a restaurant -- from kitchen, to sales, delivery, inventory, and so on. With more data collected over time, predictive machine learning algorithms are able to refine their projections and help businesses cater to the needs of their customers better. They can, for example, recommend with a great degree of accuracy the changes that need to be made in a business's sales strategy in order to achieve maximum revenue and consistent growth.

The main goal of business intelligence has always been to conduct data analysis effectively. But modern BI platforms achieve this objective more efficiently than ever before, resulting in a new relationship with data. It is this understanding that pushed McDonald's to partner with Wavicle Data Solutions, with the objective of optimizing the performance of its third party delivery partners in 40 markets across five continents.

Wavicle implemented a data driven model to load source data from multiple third-party delivery partners into a single Amazon Redshift cloud data warehouse. The move helped transform data from various sources into valuable operational intelligence. Customizable and on-demand, real time reports gave the management team at McDonald's an in-depth understanding of sales, delivery, customer feedback, and fees. The brand could analyze these metrics by food delivery partner, restaurant location, date and day-part, and evaluate and refine food delivery operations.

McDonald's operators can now use this data solution to examine the details, iron out specific issues, and optimize the performance of food delivery. Since its implementation, the fast food behemoth has escalated its total order of food deliveries by more than 10% at locations that offer the service. The solution integrates corporate data from the point of sale software with third-party food delivery data to keep tabs on, estimate, and visualize key metrics, including sales and fees against customer analytics.

An effective business intelligence strategy collects and processes extensive information from numerous data sources. These can then be scrutinized and packaged into useful formats, like reports, dashboards, and data visualizations. Business intelligence tools are the backbone of competitive strategies. They help companies make better decisions with their data. BI aims to help companies turn their data into a competitive advantage in today's data-saturated world.

Why is a Business Intelligence Strategy Important?

Business intelligence covers a wide spectrum of processes that allow businesses to draw on data stored in various systems. With the application of analytical tools, they can then draw useful insights from this data. Businesses that use business intelligence software effectively can plan for the future and act on things happening in real-time, resulting in maximized profitability, market share, growth over time, and an overall successful business.

For instance, Hubworks, a cloud-based software suite designed for the restaurant industry, brings together a variety of technologies in one stack. From business intelligence solutions (Zip Reporting and Zip Forecasting) that offer reporting and data analytics, to service desk applications (Zip POS Dashboard) that help businesses generate insight for a streamlined operations, these applications fulfil all the business intelligence needs of a restaurant. With the proper implementation of these software solutions, many important tasks required for efficient Restaurant Management, including supply chain and inventory management, order management, etc. can be streamlined.

Here are seven reasons why a successful business intelligence strategy is important-

1. Insights Into Customer Preferences- By analyzing the buying patterns of customers through transactional data, loyalty programs, and feedback through social media, emails, etc, businesses can understand their customers better. They can create segment-wise user profiles to provide customers with better products and experiences.
   
2. Improves Business Operations- Business intelligence applications draw on data stored in various systems, presenting the information in a way that can be easily interpreted and acted upon. Such information can come from transactional databases, survey results, weather reports, retail sales records, website traffic patterns, and more. This analysis is then summarized and packaged in reports as dashboards, business presentations, and data visualizations to improve business operations.
   
3. Improves Efficiency- It can be very challenging to make business data easily accessible across multiple decision-making teams in the organization. But BI systems make that possible. It enables decision-makers in the organization to make quick decisions which increase not only the productivity of teams, but also the efficiency of business processes. Real-time access to data helps organizations communicate and discuss business-related initiatives better by bringing everyone on the same page.
   
4. Better Productivity- The best business intelligence software provides users with a single, comprehensive view of their entire business. BI tools also reduce the wait time on report requests and increase productivity. And as a bonus, your business will become smarter and more strategic because everyone will be fully up-to-date with the most recent data sets. BI systems connect an entire organization under one umbrella for a better flow of ideas and their execution.
   
5. Helps Stay Ahead of Competitors- Business intelligence platforms analyze and interpret Big Data with BI software tools. They enable users to mine for patterns in large data sets that can provide insights into past performance, guide decision-making for future action, and reveal hidden relationships in the data. When implemented in business decisions, they can give business owners an advantage over their competitors.
   

BI Strategy Step No. 1 - Define Your Scope and Objective

Developing an effective Business Intelligence (BI) strategy is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The best BI strategy for your organization will be based on several factors, including the size and structure of your company, your industry, and the specific needs of your decision-makers. The first step in any BI initiative should be to define the specific business goals you hope to achieve. Without clarity on what you are trying to accomplish, it won't be easy to measure the success of your efforts.

BI Strategy Step No. 2 - Assess Your Current Data Landscape

Before designing your new technology, it's vital to understand where you want to start and how you want to grow. Take some time to map out what you've currently got, how everything can be organized, and whether or not the solutions being put into place will fit in with all the other aspects of your data architecture. Ask the following questions to assess your current data landscape-

• Where is your current data coming from?
  
• How is it being stored?
  
• What efforts have been made to ensure that these data sets are safe?
  

BI Strategy Step No. 3 - Select Your BI Software

BI platforms are not just about technology or software. It's important to consider them within your organization's full data architecture. Here's what you should look for in a BI platform provider- What kind of data are you looking at mining? What will you be able to see, and how easily can the findings be delivered and understood? How much deeper can you dive into the data and discover new insights on your own? How would these insights help as your business changes over time? Business Intelligence software platforms provide powerful capabilities, but they may not match your BI strategy. To find a good fit for your plan, you should evaluate BI platforms based on the following factors-

• Visual capabilities for creating rich dashboards and visualization.
  
• Ability to dive deeper into business analytics and data analytics to discover new insights.
  
• Integration with other enterprise systems.
  
• Data retrieval across multiple sources using a single dashboard interface.
  

BI Strategy Step No. 4 - Choose a BI Project Manager

For any project to go in the right direction, it's most important to have the right person at the steering wheel. The project leader, or as most organizations call them -- the chief data officer -- should have the same vision and objective as the organization. They need to participate and align with the vision of the company and the role BI will play in its growth. The project leader must also educate the other staff members about the importance of incorporating the BI strategy in their work. Consider the expense, resources, and training required for its implementation. Finally, one important task of the project lead is to ensure that the strategy can be scaled-up throughout the entire enterprise.

BI Strategy Step No. 5 - Form a BI Team

Your BI team will work to implement your strategy. You can hire new people or have people fulfil multiple functions if your organization is small. One way to approach business intelligence properly is to invest in a platform that makes reports and dashboards accessible and approachable even to non-analysts (known as self-service business intelligence). However, it's important to have a cross-functional implementation team ready when you set up your BI strategy, as it will help ensure you have everything running correctly from the start. A BI project management team should include-

• An IT service owner or business analytics director to manage the software platform and ensure it is integrated with the existing data architecture.
  
• An enterprise architect/data manager to integrate metadata/semantic mapping and create user groups and permissions.
  
• A technical lead who can ensure that the customization of each business case is tailored to meet specific needs.
  

BI Strategy Step No. 6- Create a Scope Statement and Define KPIs

Creating a scope statement is like writing a map before you go on an expedition. It tells the team what they are trying to accomplish, how it will be done, and when it will be finished. It is also a way of ensuring that procedures for verifying and approving work after project completion are in place. To keep your project on track, define key performance indicators (KPIs). These can be anything, from deadlines, to costs, to the number of people involved. By documenting these figures and sticking to them, you'll ensure that all team members follow the same guidelines. In addition, this documentation helps the strategy team remain focused on their mission, ensuring the project stays on track.

BI Strategy Step 7- Collaborate & Communicate to Refine Your Strategy

Communication is the key to keeping a business strategy on track. When miscommunication threatens the success of a project, clear communication can help iron out any unwanted disruptions and internal conflicts and ensure that everyone works out the best possible solution to implement your business intelligence strategy. To avoid miscommunication, you must have regular status meetings about important milestones with the team. Discuss preempted risks, estimate the delivery time and check if the budget needs to be updated. If there is ambiguity in the goals of your project, or if the communication is confusing, the result will be misaligned and could lead to a failure of the project.