The business industry, especially in Europe and America, has been undergoing continuous and rapid change since the beginning of the pandemic.
According to a report, it’s primarily driven by the dynamism of the global economy.
But, the ever-so-evolving customer demands, the usage of advanced technologies, connected devices, and sophisticated applications have had their say in this aspect too.
Thus, you must change your business intelligence to remain relevant while offering noteworthy value through your organisation.
It has to be designed in a flexible manner so that it can be accommodated to whatever change you are dealing with now. And it would help if you built the infrastructure for everyone.
In this case, you have two options to choose from –
- Changing and evolving the traditional BI you’ve been using for ages.
- Upgrading your business and implementing modern BI into it.
So, which one should you choose? Let’s find out.
Conventional Business Intelligence – What Is It?
At a fundamental level, business intelligence or BI usually refers to various technologies, processes, and methodologies used to improve a business structure.
It’s primarily used to support and assist evidence-based decision-making. Some of the related activities regarding the same may include the following –
- Data mining,
- Online analytical processing, and
- Reporting and querying.
An organisation can ask various data-based questions by facilitating querying and procuring the correct answers. Traditionally, this may involve creating enterprise data and cubes that the company might use for analysis and reporting.
Two examples of conventional BI include – A CRM (customer relationship management) and an ERP (enterprise resource management).
- A CRM is a technology used to closely assess and manage customer interaction with the organisation. It, in turn, helps them improve client experience within a business portal and increase their loyalty towards the company.
- On the other hand, an ERP is a business management software program that allows a business to store, use, and evaluate data. It can be used for different activities, like –
- Manufacturing,
- Human resources, and
- Operational or sales planning.
Benefits of Conventional Business Intelligence
In essence, traditional business intelligence is less effective no matter how you look at it. However, it can still be beneficial for a business if applied correctly.
Here’s what you need to know about them –
- With traditional business intelligence, you can comfortably establish KPIs that align well with your business strategy. It, in turn, can improve the visibility of a business’s performance and boost its revenue generation capability.
- Conventional BI usually doesn’t require massive technology or resource usage. Thus, with it, you can reduce your business’s cost to some extent and ensure that you’re getting that competitive edge over others.
- Although less effective, traditional BI can also improve your decision-making skill massively through automation. With it, you can access the data you need at the right time and place. It may also improve relationships with your clients.
What is Modern Business Intelligence?
From a poetic standpoint, traditional business intelligence seems like something you do while maintaining a distance from the audience.
It’s more about accumulating and assessing data rather than being more intuitive. That’s where modern business intelligence comes in and saves the day.
This type of BI can enable a user to interact with an intuitive application and explore visual data without depending on an IT professional.
Besides, modern BI tools are automated and, thus, can provide instant insights into the current stature of the organisation. Hence, a company can use the same to –
- Get better and more accurate results from the get-go.
- Perform a thorough analysis of a situation and use it to their advantage.
- Generate new reports automatically without wasting too much time.
Benefits of Modern Business Intelligence
Besides covering up the benefits of conventional business intelligence, modern BI can offer several other blessings to a business. Here are a few of them.
- With modern business intelligence, you can control and monitor the performance of an organisation in real time. Aside from your clientele, it can also help you keep an eye on your employee satisfaction, productivity, and performance. Hence, if you can integrate it with your business, it’ll encourage better operational behaviour too.
- As per Accenture, almost 49% of companies consider business analytics to be a vital part of their business. And when it comes to collecting accurate data, there’s only one thing that can be helpful for you – modern BI.
- Finally, modern BI can identify upcoming marketing trends before someone understands them. It does so by analysing consumer behaviour over time and processing and comparing the same data continuously.
Conventional BI vs. Modern BI – The Differences
Modern BI is far more different from a traditional BI system. These differences of it may include the following –
1: Time Consumption
Traditional BI usually relies upon the IT structure of an organisation to gather data sources or requirements to create a database of answers. This, in turn, makes the entire process slow and time-consuming. Also, the others have to access the dashboard manually.
With a modern BI tool, you can find any answer to their query independently. Hence, as a user, you can perform an ad hoc analysis on it to get proper and accurate data results from it. The data, in this case, will become democratised.
The availability of portals and dashboards can allow a user to search and review data online. It can streamline your daily workflow by reducing the need for unnecessary communication. So, you and your employees will be able to focus more on their work than anything else.
2: Empowerment
When it comes to ease of usage, traditional business intelligence edges out modern BI to some extent. However, it can also limit the development of knowledge of the user.
However, with modern BI, users can interact with consumer data in brand-new ways, discover new insights, and share them with everyone else. Such freedom can empower an individual to foster passion and self-sufficiency in their work.
3: Infrastructure
Traditional or old-school business intelligence is usually used with an on-premise IT model. It also requires a bunch of Microsoft SQL licenses, servers, and a team of administrators to take care of the system. And honestly, it’s not possible to do it all on a tight budget.
Compared to this, cloud-based or modern BI generally requires a single individual for the implementation process. The same person can also deal with the regular functionalities while ensuring that it works properly. Besides, the reporting procedure will be automated too. Thus, even if the administrator is unavailable for a day or two, you can still acquire data incessantly.
4: Reliability
Both modern BI and traditional BI largely depend on the internet connection to work properly. However, the former can still perform well due to the presence of AI.
If you suffer a sudden power or server loss, it will ditch the traditional method of gathering all your data and relying upon the satellite. Hence, your data flow won’t be affected at all.
Nonetheless, with conventional BI, if your office has lost an internet connection or server connection, it’ll stop working instantly. You’ll encounter various storage issues as well without the cloud.
5: Scalability
As an integral part of digitisation, the scalability rating of modern BI tends to be pretty high. For example, it’s easily customisable and, therefore, can rapidly increase in size. This, in turn, will make it easier for your organisation to cope with the ever-changing needs efficiently.
Moreover, with modern BI, you wouldn’t have to purchase a new server or technology now and then. Even if you do, you can quickly implement them within the system due to its excellent scalability and customizability.
However, the traditional BI is more labour-intensive, especially in the department of providing maintenance and installation. Hence, the requirement for resources tends to be higher as well.
Also, the new technologies, which are getting continuously upgraded and deployed, might not integrate with your older system. So, in that case, you have to change everything again.
Don’t Wait – Modernise Your Business Today!
In today’s dynamic world of business, you must have a well-polished BI working by your side. With it, you can –
- Track campaign results efficiently and tailors your organisation’s future promotions in accordance with it.
- Ensure that the finance department consolidates the financial data and properly monitors the revenue streams, cash flow, expenses, margins, etc.
- Help the HR team to monitor various metrics, including attendance, productivity rate, and an employee turnover of your company.
Now, you can do these tasks either manually, which would take a lot of time and resources, or automatically. So, which one would you choose to do?
In our opinion, implementing modern business intelligence may seem costly at first. But, if we consider and compare its future of it with traditional BI, the former wins the race easily. However, that’s all from us. Now, you have to decide to choose whatever you want.
