Business Intelligence Archives - Page 4 of 5

Yashica Chopra
March 31, 2022
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Management Information System Vs. Business Intelligence: How is BI Better Than Traditional MIS

MIS is a traditional information system used to collect and process data. BI is an umbrella term covering various processes and technologies that empower an enterprise to use data effectively and make the right decisions. Before business intelligence took over, many enterprises had another information system called the MIS. Management Information Systems were the heart of every business and played a vital role in data collecting, storage, processing, and reporting. However, MIS had its disadvantages and became a burden for many businesses. With business intelligence entering the market, enterprises adopted BI, not to replace MIS but to revamp their entire internal system. MIS is a small part of the business intelligence framework and is no longer enough in the competitive world to help establishments make the right decisions. Let’s read more about MIS and BI in detail and understand how BI is a better and more comprehensive alternative to traditional MIS. What is Management Information System or MIS? MIS or Management Information System is based on an old concept where data is collected from various sources, compiled, and presented in a readable format. It is used by mid-level and top-level managers to make the necessary business decisions. MIS is a collection of systems and processes that facilitate data collection, compilation, and reporting within the enterprise. The definition sounds similar to what a BI tool does. However, the difference lies in the technology used, the approaches to data collection, storage methods, and reporting formats. Before we read more about the differences, let’s take a brief look at the different functions of MIS. Data Collection: Different types of data can be collected by MIS. Financial information, employee details, sales figures, etc., can be sent to MIS, which is integrated with other software used by employees. Decision Making: MIS is used to help with decision-making. It presents aggregate data reports that help the top management make day-to-day decisions. Collaboration: Employees can be provided access to edit and share the data stored in MIS. The MIS department handles the everyday issues related to the system. Business Reporting: Managers make decisions based on the business reports generated by MIS. Even non-managers can get reports to compare data or compile a data file. What is Business Intelligence or BI? Business intelligence or BI is a wider concept that combines MIS, business analytics, data mining, data visualization, and much more. It is a modern framework that helps enterprises adopt the data-driven model to make better decisions based on historical and real-time data. BI gives businesses a comprehensive view of the enterprise data and makes use of this information to understand market trends, improve customer experience, evaluate existing policies, and make changes to build a better enterprise. Today’s BI tools and solutions offer self-service analysis to employees from different levels in the organization. Business intelligence tools are flexible, scalable, and user-friendly. Here’s what the BI framework handles in an enterprise: Data Mining: It is the process of analyzing large volumes of data to gather more information. Datasets, statistics, and machine learning are used for data mining. Data Preparation: Data from internal and external sources is collected, cleaned, and formatted to keep it ready for data analytics. Types of Analytics: Business intelligence is capable of providing different types of analytics based on the organization’s requirements. For example, preliminary data is used for descriptive analytics; descriptive analytics data is used for statistical analytics; predictive analytics is a combination of statistical analytics, data mining, and machine learning. Querying: An employee asking the BI tool for specification information is called querying. The tool uses computing power to collect data from datasets and processes it to provide an answer to the query. Data Visualization: Visualization is the technique of presenting data in a graphic form in real-time. The reports generated by the BI tool are presented in charts, graphs, holograms, heat maps, etc., for easy understanding. What is the Difference Between Management Information System and Business Intelligence? MIS and BI are interrelated. They have common elements, though BI is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of processes and tools used to implement the data-driven model in an enterprise. Scope and Focus Management Information System or MIS is a part of the business intelligence framework. Traditionally, enterprises used MIS mainly for revenue and expense reporting. However, they had to face several issues with inaccuracies, inconsistent data, and other system complications. While business intelligence deals with the analysis of products and customers, MIS is used to analyze the business in terms of finances. Difference in Reporting MIS delivers aggregate data reports which are not enough to get a complete picture of the business situation. It doesn’t offer in-depth insights that help the managers identify the problem. For example, the MIS report gives aggregate data about income and expenses. This doesn’t include transactional data that are key to identifying the root cause of the issue. The managers have to run multiple queries to gather the relevant information. Business intelligence tools provide in-depth analytics for the given data. Moreover, the reports are generated in real-time. The dashboard of a BI tool allows employees to get a macro and micro view of the same report just with a few clicks. Business intelligence not only works faster but also requires lesser computing power as it has a higher processing capacity. Self-Servicing Business intelligence tools allow self-servicing within organizations by empowering employees to access data and run analytics as and when necessary. The dashboards can be accessed from different platforms such as web browsers and mobile apps. While MIS is complicated and confusing, BI is elaborate yet efficient and user-friendly. Automation is possible with business intelligence. MIS and Business Intelligence: What’s the Connection? Management Information System has a narrow range of services, and business intelligence deals with a wider and broader scope where different aspects of the business are taken into consideration. Furthermore, BI is an advanced and modern framework that uses the latest technology to deliver accurate insights and reports. The disadvantages of MIS are solved using the BI tools. Accurate Insights: Unlike MIS, the reports generated

Yashica Chopra
March 24, 2022
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Power BI Supply Chain Dashboard: What Can It Do for Your Business?

Supply chain analytics helps businesses understand their datasets to make informed decisions about their logistics and transportation processes. Power BI is an incredibly useful business intelligence tool to create supply chain dashboards and use the insights in real-time. Let’s discuss the role of supply chain analytics and Power BI in various industries. The supply chain is a network of people, businesses, and processes that ensure that a company continues to produce and sell products/ services in the market. From sourcing raw materials to moving finished goods to the warehouse and delivering them to the end customers, the supply chain network is intricate, complex, and systematic. The implementation of the supply chain strategy has an impact on the success of a business. After all, how can a company deliver the products/services to the end-users if it cannot source the materials or transport the finished goods as per the schedule? Covid-19 has disrupted the global supply chain, and the Middle Eastern markets, too, faced the same trouble. Challenges such as shortage of labor due to lockdowns, increase in demand, and reduction in supply and adhering to the safety protocol makes it difficult for businesses to manage their supply chain. However, the companies also know a solution to the problem. Many Middle Eastern businesses are heavily investing in technology, especially artificial intelligence, to make their supply chains more resilient even in adverse conditions. For example, Hypermotion Dubai is an ME edition of the German-initiated convex that gives the transportation and logistics industries a fresh start. The aim is to be sure that the emirate continues to lead in supply chain management and speed up development. The Dubai-based global logistics company, Aramex, has built a data lake and streamlined its supply chain process by relying on machine learning. This led to a whopping 74% increase in shipping accuracy. It also resulted in a 40% reduction of calls to customer support. Middle Eastern companies know that digitalization is the way to the future. Business intelligence for the supply chain is becoming an integral part of various companies. But what is supply chain business intelligence? How does it help the companies, and which BI tools can be used to build a supply chain dashboard? What is Supply Chain Analytics? Supply chain analytics is the analysis of the individual elements of the supply chain that work together to help the business achieve its goals. Procurement, inventory, warehouse, order management, shipping, and deliveries are the elements of the supply chain. Understanding how every element contributes to keeping the supply chain running will help businesses overcome roadblocks and prevent delays. While there are various software applications to manage individual elements, companies need to bring it all together on a single platform/dashboard. This makes it easier to identify the correlations and come up with the necessary solutions. Types of Supply Chain Analytics The following are the four major types of supply chain analytics that help enterprises improve the efficiency of their business operations, streamline logistics, and save time and money without compromising quality. Key challenges that Supply chain analytics solution solves: Actionable Advice for Data-Driven Leaders Struggling to reap the right kind of insights from your business data? Get expert tips, latest trends, insights, case studies, recommendations and more in your inbox. How Do Companies Use Supply Chain Analytics? Companies use analytics to process and analyze the data generated at different points in the supply chain. The logistics dashboard empowers companies to stay up to date and get real-time information about their supply chain processes. It gives them the information to make last-minute changes and make decisions based on historical and real-time information. Managing local, national, and global supply chains is simpler when using supply chain analytics. How Can Supply Chain Analytics Transform a Business? Businesses need to invest in building supply chain dashboards to make the most of data analytics. Since companies don’t often have in-house teams to manage business intelligence, they hire offshore solution providers to create the BI dashboards. Many AI service providers recommend Power BI for supply chain analytics. Power BI is a Microsoft product that helps build business intelligence dashboards for various business requirements. Power BI experts help business enterprises use supply chain analytics to transform their business in the following ways: Streamline Inventory and Warehouse Management Accurate forecasting can reduce the uncertainties in inventory and warehouse management. Analyzing customer preferences, purchase history, market trends, and the inventory at different distribution centers will help businesses plan the stock in their inventory to keep up with the customers’ requirements. It is one of the most vital supply chain management techniques. Increase Sales Knowing which products have a higher demand and anticipating the changes in the market conditions will increase sales for the business. Supply chain analytics gives the management the necessary insights about the demand and supply ratio for their products. Releasing products into the market at the right time will give the business a better chance to capture the customer base. Improve Quality Standards The quality standards here pertain to the logistics and supply chain processes. For example, the Power BI logistics dashboard will make it easy to identify the gaps in the supply chain that are causing disruptions in procurement or deliveries. By rectifying the gaps, the business increases the quality standards of the process and gets higher returns. Data Utilization How a business uses the supply chain dataset determines whether it can achieve its goals or not. Big data solutions facilitate businesses to better understand the changing demands in the market. Not only does supply chain analytics use historical data, but it also processes real-time information from multiple sources to increase the accuracy of the forecasts/predictive insights. Supply chain analytics makes businesses proactive instead of reactive. How is Power BI used in Supply Chain Management? Power BI is a popular business intelligence tool used by enterprises of all sizes and volumes. Multiple dashboards can be created for each department to provide employees access to the centralized data sets and the derived insights. Supply chain analytics using Power BI improves functional efficiency and aligns the processes

Arya Bharti
March 10, 2022
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Leveraging Business Intelligence in Retail Industry: Benefits and Getting Started

The business intelligence market is expected to grow with a CAGR of 8.7% and hit the 43.03 bn USD mark by 2028. Further, a recent survey suggests that 58% of companies consider business intelligence crucial for retail and wholesale sectors. Technological innovation is happening faster than ever and digital transformation is sending ripples across all the industries. As data analytics and business intelligence overtake the hunches and guesswork, the disparate and fragmented industries, such as retail, are looking at a major makeover. A recent feature in Forbes talks about customers becoming increasingly conscious in terms of making purchases and how important it has become to deliver exceptional services alongside great products. This has led to the widespread adoption of smart analytics platforms that offer business value across the most crucial 4 verticals, as shown below: The smart analytics tools allow retail business owners to dig deep into their customer data and uncover hidden insights about service, support, customer journeys, and brand expectations. The software solutions allow them to streamline their business offerings in a customer-centric manner and monitor the results of all such efforts. We discuss how business intelligence, such as interactive data visualization software, can offer retailing insights to steer your business towards growth. How would the retail industry use business intelligence and what is the best way to leverage it for boosting your business? Below, we explore these problem statements at length. Why Business Intelligence for Retail and eCommerce? Business intelligence allows you to make the most critical business decisions in a data-driven manner. You can dig deep into the customer data and find out what issues or concerns they have regarding your products. This way, you can improve your products and services to deliver delightful customer experiences. The best way to leverage business intelligence in retail is via software tools. Power BI is an excellent data visualization software that can dig deep into the customer, market, organizational, and business data to discover the most compelling retail visuals. The data generated from them are interactive in nature and highly secure, so you don’t have to worry about the safety and security of your data resources. You can connect these software tools to multiple data sources and tap into all your customer segments with its interactive and intuitive retail dashboards. What makes the entire endeavor so amazing is the fact that you can generate data-intensive reports from a combination of dashboards with different kinds of visualizations that are relevant to particular business areas. So, business intelligence has all the arms in its arsenal to drive a critical transformation in a retail business scenario via data visualization and business intelligence. Shown below, is how the entire process comes out to be: While the infographic is highly engaging and granular, it can be a bit overwhelming, especially for beginners who are just taking the first steps towards digital transformation and business intelligence. Hence, we explore the various benefits of using business intelligence for retail in the next section. Business Intelligence in Retail Industry: Exploring Benefits and Functionalities Business intelligence finds many applications in retail, ranging from learning about your customers to employees. Using BI tools, you can identify the major issues that are ailing your supply chain efficiency and resolve them. Further, BI tools offer smart data visualization to help you make the most of your organizational data. 1. Knowing Your Customers: Inside Out Digital shoppers are smart, more perceptive, and look beyond the reward points and discounts when it comes to customer service and experiences. Retail analytics dashboards help you gain visibility into customer insights and purchase patterns. You can leverage the predictive analytics and identify their shopping predictions to scale effectively alongside your customer demands. You can identify, adapt, and deliver across the ever-evolving needs of your customers, and that too across all channels. As you have a 360-degree view of your customers’ expectations and requirements, you can deliver across all of them, thereby ensuring that you streamline the entire customer journey instead of standalone touchpoints. You can personalize your customer interactions on every channel and deliver proactive customer service and support in an omnichannel manner. Business intelligence tools allow you to use hundreds of data connectors for combining Petabytes of data from external and internal data sources. Hence, you can have data-rich and cohesive customer insights that are reliable as well as intuitive. 2. Empowering Your Employees: The Right Mix of Human and Automation Your employees are your core strength no matter what level of automation you have in your organization, or what size your retail setup is. Hence, it is important to empower your employees with the right tools for collaboration, data analytics, customer intelligence, and business operations. All these retail insights are data-rich and actionable. So, your management or analysts don’t have to spend hours making sense of the huge blocks of data they have. They can easily figure out the next course of action with highly intuitive retail KPIs dashboards. They can easily export and share this data in various formats for real-time collaboration and presentation to take business decisions in an agile manner. What makes the entire process so awesome is the fact that the insights can be implemented without any doubt, as they are stemming from exhaustive data processing and not from any third-party market research data. Further, your employees have 360-degree customer profiles that have all the contextual, behavioral, and interaction information they might need to form a wholesome opinion about a new strategy or marketing decision. 3. Smart Supply Chains: Resilient and Efficient The retail industry is inseparable from supply chains that are inherently inefficient with data silos and fragmented components. Using business intelligence in retail, you can also steer your supply chains towards transformation. You can get the right product at the right price and deliver the same to the right customer at the right time without succumbing to the inefficiencies of the supply chains. Data analytics empowers the supply chains by incorporating different elements, such as IoT, automation,

Yashica Chopra
February 22, 2022
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Power BI HR Analytics Dashboard: Simplify HR Processes

Data analytics for HR helps streamline the human resource processes within the organization. The Power BI dashboard is commonly used to derive actionable insights to improve employee performance and retention rates. Let’s read more about the importance of HR analytics in an enterprise. The HR (Human Resource) department is the heart of every organization. From recruitment to compensation to performance appraisal and employee wellbeing, the HR department plays several roles in the enterprise. The HR acts as a mediator or a bridge between the employees and the management or enterprise. It’s no surprise that the HR department is already burdened with work. Providing them access to the latest technology and means to derive insights in real-time will help reduce the workload and create a healthy environment throughout the organization. HR analytics or people analytics is the key to helping the HR department provide a better working experience for the employees. Unlike other analytics, HR analytics doesn’t collect data about employee performance. It gathers data about the HR processes and the work environment so that the processes can be made more efficient to keep employees happy and productive. Issues such as high employee turnover rate, decreased productivity, employee grievances, etc., are the focus of HR analytics. What is HR Analytics? Human Resource or HR analytics is where analytical processes are applied to human capital in the business to improve outcomes and enhance critical talent. The analytics aims to provide in-depth insights into the HR processes to increase employee retention, performance, and productivity. The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the Middle East market along with the rest of the world. A report published in Jan 2021 showed that around half of the employees wanted to change jobs. While some responders said that flexible working and job security were their primary factors, 45% admitted that a higher salary was their aim. The employees in Gulf and UAE regions saw an increase and decrease in salary. While the increase was to retain top-level professional employees, the pay cuts were due to the pandemic and resorted after the market conditions improved. Around 64% of the employers in the Gulf said they would be hiring additional staff in 2021 and 2022. So how does the HR department make these decisions in volatile market conditions? They rely on HR analytics to understand the existing situation and come up with a new one. A survey report by CIPD showed that 82% of the respondents were already using HR analytics in the Middle East. Almost 72% of them responded that they will continue to invest the same amount or increase the investment in HR analytics. Middle Eastern organizations are actively upgrading the legacy systems and adopting the latest technology to provide employees with more growth opportunities. HR analytics will continue to play a vital role in helping organizations design robust and agile end-to-end HR processes. How to Get Started with HR Analytics? Data analytics in HR helps build the data-driven model to make decisions based on actionable insights in real-time. Implementing HR analytics requires proper planning and continuous monitoring to ensure that the analysis reports are accurate. Have a Data Management Plan How do you plan to manage the data within the organization? Start by creating a data governance program and define policies to collect, clean, process, and store data. Then you need to align the data definitions with analytical processes and focus on the four main key areas of human resources- recruitment, absenteeism, turnover, and retention. Choose the Reporting Software Which reporting and visualization software do you want to use to derive analytics? For example, Power BI is popular software for HR analytics and is used by many businesses from around the world. Build the Dashboard You also need to determine whether you have the necessary talent to run analytics or if you need the assistance of a Power BI consulting company. Many organizations in the UAE hire offshore solution providers to set up the HR analytical dashboard. The metrics you choose for the dashboard should align with the KPIs of your business and achieve short-term, midterm, and long-term goals. Run a Pilot Test You don’t need to invest heavily in HR analysis from the very first day. Start small by focusing on minimum metrics and run a pilot test to see how the insights are helping in making faster and better decisions. Gradually, you can expand the dashboard and hire HR analysts to manage the processes. Actionable Advice for Data-Driven Leaders Struggling to reap the right kind of insights from your business data? Get expert tips, latest trends, insights, case studies, recommendations and more in your inbox. Work on Capacity Building HR analysis reports are used to improve the processes and capacity of your business. Focus on one target group first before implementing the changes throughout the enterprise. Starting with the capacity building of HR Business Partners is recommended as they are the ones who are in constant contact with your customers. Consider Data Privacy and Security Dealing with employee data means you have to be extra careful about data privacy. Your employees need to know that their data privacy rights won’t be compromised to run HR analytics. Set up policies to find a balance between both. What are the Benefits of HR Analytics? The HR analytics dashboards help the business adopt a strategic approach to growth and development. How Power BI Consultants Can Help You Overcome the Biggest HR Analytics Challenges? Though the HR analytics dashboard offers numerous benefits to the organization, the process is not without challenges and complications. How you overcome the roadblocks determines the success of your enterprise. Power BI consultants can help the HR team find a comprehensive solution for the challenges and create HR analysis dashboards to derive real-time insights. A Gap in Talent Pool As we previously discussed, the lack of data analysts within the enterprise can make it hard to use technology and derive insights for the HR team. This problem can be solved by hiring offshore consultants. Bad Data The accuracy of the reports depends

Yashica Chopra
February 18, 2022
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Is BI a Revolution in the Banking Industry?

Business intelligence is no longer a strange phenomenon in the banking industry. It is a revolution that’s changing how banks perceive data and analytics. We’ll discuss the role of BI in banks in the modern-day scenario. Technological innovations are the key to being relevant in this fast-changing world. The banking industry is not an exception to this rule. From following traditional bookkeeping methods to computerizing the transactions, we’ve noticed many changes in the banking sector. Another such development is the use of analytical tools to streamline internal operations and enhance customer experience. Even the banking industry has competition as more banks are going multinational and opening new branches around the world. Collecting data, creating a centralized database, and processing huge volumes of data requires much more than legacy systems and spreadsheets like MS Excel. Business intelligence has successfully entered the banking, insurance, and financial sector. Banking analytical solutions can help employees, management, and the leadership have more control over day-to-day operations and provide better services to their customers. BI is undoubtedly a revolution in the banking industry, and here’s how. What Is Business Intelligence? Before we talk about how BI is changing banks and financial establishments, let’s first understand what business intelligence is and why it is important. Business intelligence is a set of technologies, processes, architectures that help collect, clean, and convert raw data into meaningful and actionable insights. BI is a suite of software applications and services used for transforming data into intelligence. Business intelligence impacts the operational, strategic, and tactical decisions of an establishment. BI tools are used to collect, clean, format, process, analyze, and present data in real-time. BI uses historical and real-time data to derive insights and generate reports. Employees can run queries by setting parameters to get accurate responses from the tools. Business intelligence is important to measure KPIs, set benchmarks, identify market trends, overcome challenges, and make data-driven decisions. Applications such as Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, etc., are some well-known business intelligence tools used by businesses from different industries. Power BI is the most preferred tool in the banking industry. What Is Business Analytics in Banking? Business analytics help in understanding the bank’s data based on statistical models and quantitative methods. Analytics can be used in various ways in the banking industry. The core reason to use business analytics is to answer questions like: Business analytics is a part of BI. How Is Business Intelligence Used in Banking? Consumer Trend Forecasting Knowing what the customers want is important to achieve the bank’s goals and generate profits. Banks offer a range of financial services for individuals and business entities. From operating a savings account to funds management, loans, credit cards, and insurance services, the banking industry deals with everything related to money management and control. Business intelligence helps in analyzing the huge volumes of data generated every day to identify the trends in customers’ demands/ requirements. Is there a decrease in home loan applications? Are more customers investing in a certain mutual funds scheme? Finding answers to these questions will help the management make the necessary changes to their financial products and services. Better Marketing Effectiveness Understanding your customers is a good way to increase your customer base and ensure brand loyalty. The banking industry has become a competitive field. You need to reach out to the target audience with offers that’ll surely make them consider you as a first choice. But how do you know what the market wants? BI in banking helps use customer data and data analytical tools to derive insights about each target base. It is not essential to spend money on ads that may or may not be effective. You can create ads for each target group with the confidence of knowing what they want. The bank can generate more returns with less investment, identify the weak points in the existing marketing strategies and correct them in time. Data and Cybersecurity According to a report shared by Security Magazine, the banking industry saw a 1318% increase in ransomware attacks in 2021. Banking data of individuals, corporate entities, and non-profit organizations are highly confidential information. While this data can be obtained through several malpractices like hacking and phishing, a cyber attack on a bank’s database gives criminals access to valuable information in bulk. Business intelligence tools play a role in monitoring the network traffic and can alert you in case of irregularities. The data collected and analyzed by BI tools gives security experts the necessary information to identify hot spots and improve the security layers at each level. Retain Customers Customer retention is necessary to maintain a healthy customer base. A bank needs to have customers who’ve been with them for years and will continue to be. Providing personalized services and ensuring quality customer experience promotes customer retention. BI tools can be used to identify customers who are more likely to impact their business with the bank or move to a competitor. You can also understand the reasons behind this trend and find ways to prevent it from happening. CEOs, CFOs, and other chief executives can run analytics on historical and real-time data to understand the patterns and come up with a solution. Calculating Credit Risk Should you approve the loan application of a customer? What is the risk associated with it? Banks already have a system to process credit requests and approve/ reject applications based on it. However, changing times require advanced systems. You may need to consider more risk factors, especially when the customer is a business entity and the amount is millions. Banking business analytics is used to process customer data from multiple sources. It helps analyze spending habits, income stability, and the probability of fraud before a loan application is approved. This lowers the credit risk for a bank and reduces defaulters. Compliance Assurance The banking industry has to adhere to the various regulations set up by the national and global bureaus that help in establishing anti-money laundering norms, etc. Banks have to regularly send reports and updates

Deeksha Anand
February 10, 2022
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Power BI for Retail Industry: Dominate the Sector

With an increase in competition in the retail sector, it has become extremely important for every retail company to understand advanced technology stack, people and data. Power BI is one such technological advancement that allows retail businesses to leverage its functionality for data visualizations to improve their profitability and efficiency while acting on real-time insights. In fact, the usage of any business intelligence tool is considered a crucial key to managing a company’s data in this digital age. It is used to generate reports, surface insights and connect to a wide range of information for better understanding. The reports offer visualization of the data that boosts the sales for the business by facilitating better planning and strategizing. Today, we will discuss the applications of Power BI for retail and what makes it one of the most efficient retail reporting tools. Benefits of Power BI in the Retail Industry Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the retail industry is slammed with the challenge of uncertainties. Moreover, the growth of digitalization has enhanced customer expectations. As per a survey, the e-retail industry in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region was predicted to grow at the rate of 12.2 percent of the offline retail in the year 2025 (before the COVID-19 pandemic). The forecasted penetration rate grew to approximately 16.3 percent after the pandemic. Therefore, customer demands follow a different pattern in today’s digital era. Along with the products or services, the customers are also given equal importance in today’s economy. Every business and retail industry is looking forward to providing their customers with quick satisfaction and a smooth experience. The retail industry is suggested to analyze and collect the data for coping with the changing customer expectations and rising demands. With the applications of Power BI, the industry can expect the transformation of raw data into actionable retailing insights. It can offer every business a 360-degree view of their entire industry at a glance. Moreover, the efficiency of the Power BI retail dashboard helps understand the selling and buying habits of the customer. Thus proving to be the top retail business intelligence tool in the e-retail market. Let us look into the major advantages of using Power BI in retail: Since it is clear how Power BI for retail can prove to be beneficial, let us now understand its technicalities. How Does the Power BI Sales Dashboard Work? As we discussed earlier, the business intelligence tool by Microsoft helps to analyze data present in different sources and build dashboards and reports based on the data. Top-level management effectively uses Power BI’s dashboard for retail operations as it is capable of generating an alert once it notices low stock. It helps to create accurate reports on the profitability of the products. Apart from endless uses of the Power BI retail dashboard, the report generated by the BI tool helps to analyze the cash tied to the existing stocks. The industry can avail the advantage of getting the data source with the help of Power BI. Companies can keep track of the inventory status, changes in customers’ shopping trends and the value that any supplier holds using the BI tool. For example, a Customer Analysis Dashboard will help evaluate profit and sales while generating valuable insights based on product turnover-related, dynamic customer behaviors. As an illustration, retail companies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) could analyze a decrease in in-store shopping following the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, noticing an increase in shopping via the PC. A survey conducted in 2020 supported the data analysis by predicting the growth curve of the e-commerce industry in the Middle East region to accelerate to five years in about five months. How Would the Retail Industry Use Business Intelligence? The powerful dynamic of business intelligence can be used in many ways by the retail industry. Some of the most useful ways are as mentioned below: Following up with Changing Trends Keeping up with the latest customer trends has become seamless with the help of Power BI. Now every industry can use Power BI to analyze big data that projects the pattern of change in the customer’s purchasing behavior. Using the retail visuals can help the industry monitor, plan and assess the effectiveness of various promotional activities. It can also draw a report on how a particular group of customers reacts to specific marketing campaigns. Moreover, the Power BI can collect social media data while analyzing it to measure the high engagement level, track the demographics, and assess the influencing behavior while understanding the buying patterns. With the help of the retail analytics dashboards, you can boost the efficiency of the supply chain while meeting your customers’ demands. It can also help meet the seasonal demand while enhancing the forecasting ability. Get the Omnichannel Experience The multi-channel retail would get replaced with the help of a more engaging omnichannel experience. Power BI helps to unify the customer in every action and touchpoint. It helps to treat the single-channel interaction for a more delightful customer experience. Power BI helps to aggregate the data from various offline and online sources with the help of a visualization tool that helps predict user behavior. It also helps get a unified picture of the expectations and demands of the customer. Assessment through the budget is only possible with the help of Power BI. It helps to understand the different areas of intelligent plans, cost-cutting, predictive analysis and floor optimization to balance the demand and supply of the perishable results. Assists All Team Members The data analysts can dig deeper with the help of the advanced features of Power BI, including map visualization. It also helps them unfold the platform’s predictive analysis potential by using R scripts. The team helps the executive keep an eye on the critical parameters while helping them with an all-encompassing and comprehensive report generated via Power BI sales dashboards. It can help them to access a high-level picture of the situation within less time. The top-level management is

Yashica Chopra
February 08, 2022
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Why BI is important for C-Level Executives in BFSI

Business intelligence is used to derive insights from data and helps in decision making. Make the most of big data to understand customers and improve their experience with the financial company. Let’s discuss how C-level executives can use BI tools to achieve their goals. The Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance industry has changed over the years and is now leaning towards the customer-centric model. The increase in competition, the unexpected losses, and the changing trends in the market are some reasons for this development. The C-suite executives have a huge role to play in streamlining the banking operations, increasing revenue, and enhancing customer experience as they are the decision-makers in the establishment. Providing customers with a worthy experience has become essential for a financial company to establish itself and become a popular name. However, achieving customer satisfaction is not possible without knowing what customers want. This knowledge comes from the data collected by the institutions. That said, raw data is of no use unless it is cleaned, processed, and analyzed using data analytics tools. In short, financial institutions need advanced tools to adopt the data-driven model. The tools and the processes come under business intelligence. Financial establishments mostly hire the services of offshore BI consultants to build the data-driven model and implement the necessary tools like Power BI for data analytics and reporting. A financial establishment with noteworthy customer experience is proof that it has everything under control and is at the top of the game. What is Business Intelligence? Business Intelligence is a technology-based process used by business organizations to collect, clean, store, streamline, and analyze large volumes of data in real-time. Business intelligence delivers high-quality and accurate insights used to make business decisions. Data mining (collecting data from multiple sources), predictive analytics, and data visualizations (reporting) are an integral part of the business intelligence process. There are several BI tools in the market. For example, Microsoft Power BI and Tableau are well-known tools for business intelligence processes in various industries. The BFSI industry relies on Power BI for financial, operational, and marketing purposes. This certainly doesn’t mean that BI is only limited to the banking and finance sector. Let’s look at some of the benefits of using business intelligence in banking and financial companies. Benefits of BI Tools Why BI is Important for C-Level Executives in BFSI Business intelligence has a prominent role in customer experience. CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CTOs, etc., can use BI tools like Power BI for the following: Real-Time Reporting The executive leaders don’t need to wait days and weeks to access data reports. The reports are automatically generated in real-time and shared using the dashboard of the BI tool. They can export the reports to other applications and send them to team members, management, etc., whenever required. Why spend hours of your time creating reports when you can set up the process and let the software do the rest? Omnichannel Customer Insights Structured and unstructured data from multiple sources (social media, call recordings, emails, messages, surveys, feedback, etc.) is collected in a centralized database. This data is cleaned and analyzed to derive insights to get a complete picture of a customer (to build customer profiles). This helps create better financial products, plan marketing campaigns, and convert more leads into customers. The chief executives don’t have to rely on outdated reports or past experiences to determine the best way forward. They can use real-time reports to target the markets and capture a larger customer base than the competitors. Collaborations The C-suite executives have to work in tandem with teams from sales, marketing, and financial departments in the establishment. From setting up the budget for customer acquisition to allowing the sales and marketing teams to brainstorm and share information seamlessly, BI tools help create a healthy environment in the organization and promote collaborations between employees and stakeholders. Automate Customer Engagement The metrics and data thresholds of BI tools act as natural triggers for automation. You can establish workflows and campaign timelines and schedule customer meetings based on the analytics. When you contact a prospective customer at the right time in the right way, the results will be favorable for your organization. Business intelligence gives you the necessary information to identify the best course of action and helps automate the processes. Predict Customer Demands It’s no surprise that customer demands change based on geographical location, market trends, and demographics. By predicting the changing conditions and demands, banks and insurance companies can offer financial products useful for customers and thus increase their market share. You can conduct surveys and use beta groups to study potential customers in new/ unknown markets. Root Cause Analytics Root cause analytics is where you identify the actual cause for a problem at hand. This is done by analyzing relevant information (historical and real-time) for the adverse condition you need to overcome. Business intelligence tools like Power BI can quickly process big data and generate data visualization (graphical) reports about the reasons for the problem/ adverse condition. Convince the Team One of the toughest tasks the chief executives face is to convince the topmost leadership and other chief executives about a campaign, an investment, or a decision. The reports generated by BI tools help present data clearly for the leaders to understand the potential of a project/ campaign and the expected ROI. Since the reports are generated using data analytics, it becomes easier to make decisions that impact the organization. Risk Mitigation Chief executives need to stay one step ahead and filter the leads to minimize the risk of attracting fraudulent customers. Identifying who/ which group is likely to commit financial fraud or misuse services will help banks cut down losses. Be it unpaid loans or vanishing customers, the financial establishments have to handle various types of frauds and find ways to overcome the losses. Integrating BI tools with data sources and existing apps will help in running automated analytics and sending alerts to the respective employees when there’s a possibility of a fraudulent transaction Better Customer

Yashica Chopra
December 31, 2021
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Business Intelligence in Financial Services: 10X Growth in BFSI

Business intelligence in the financial industry helps unlock the full potential of the establishment and its products and services. The real-time analytics provided by tools like Power BI help financial companies make accurate decisions. Let’s discuss the role of BI in bettering financial services. Business intelligence is a combination of processes and strategies used to collect, clean, format, and analyze data. Historical and real-time data is analyzed to derive actionable insights that aid in decision-making. BI helps understand business operations and customers to increase revenue. The financial industry comprises banking, insurance companies, credit card companies, credit unions, wealth management companies, and other relevant service providers. Business intelligence is used to help these establishments overcome the challenges in daily operations and provide enhanced customer service. BI has been a part of the financial industry for a while. However, it’s only recently that the institutions began to realize the advantages of business intelligence in financial services. Be it collecting data from multiple sources or providing data visualization reports using Power BI, business intelligence has a prominent role in the financial industry. Power BI consultants assist the financial establishments to integrate the platform with their existing systems and use it for day-to-day operations. How is Business Intelligence Used in Finance? Using BI in finance not only eases the way of doing business but also provides the institutions with a competitive advantage over others. Banks, credit card companies, insurance agencies, etc., need to constantly add new customers to their base and increase their market share. Business intelligence provides them with the necessary information to achieve their goals. Easy Data Handling Access to data is no more an issue in today’s world. However, the problem arises in handling the huge amounts of data and making sense of it. That’s where business intelligence helps finance companies. From collecting customer information such as complaints, suggestions, requests to gathering data about the resources allotted for solving problems/ providing services, BI tools continuously get data from multiple sources in real-time. Understanding the daily volume of work and comparing it with the results will show the performance of the establishment and help identify areas of improvement. Better Customer Retention Banks don’t want to lose a customer to another bank. Insurance companies don’t want competitors to take away their clients. Retaining and attracting new customers becomes easier when you know what the customers want. BI tools help segment prospective leads and analyze the quality of financial products/ services to shorten the sales funnel. By tracking the customers’ income and spending patterns, financial establishments can cater/offer services that align with their requirements. This helps increase customer loyalty towards the establishment. Managing Risk The finance industry works with large amounts of money. Considering the volatile nature of the market, it is crucial to have a proper plan to navigate through the ups and downs. Business intelligence for finance helps banks with risk management by analyzing historical and real-time data. The data visualization reports aid in risk assessment, data management, audits, etc., to perfectly document all transactions and train employees to handle customers’ demands and mitigate risks. Streamlining Work The finance industry has a lot of repetitive work across all departments. Gaining a deeper insight into daily operations will give you better control over the tasks and optimize the use of resources. It helps increase productivity by removing unnecessary processes and shortening the service cycles. Generating Real-Time Reports How is the branch’s performance this quarter? Does it take too much time to plan the budget? Where does the establishment stand in terms of assets and liabilities? What is the status of the customer credit pipeline? BI tools provide answers to these questions and more. The reports are generated in real-time to include the latest information. This helps optimize the IMS (Information Management System) and increase collaboration between different departments. There is more to how business intelligence is used in the banking and insurance industry. Analytics are slowly becoming an inherent part of the banking industry as more and more establishments invest in BI tools. How is Analytics Used in Banking? Data analytics gives banks the necessary insights into customer behavior and market trends. The insights show banks how they measure against the KPIs and where they need to improve their services. Real-time analytics provides employees and management with vital reports to make changes to their operations, processes, and approach. Here’s one question many banking professionals ask- Why do banks need analytics? The simple answer is to understand data and use it to increase revenue. For example, using Power BI for understanding finance services makes banks flexible in managing daily activities. It helps determine whether a customer will be an asset or a liability. Reports are available at the touch of a hand and bring more transparency into the system. All this helps attract more customers to the bank, thus increasing its market share, revenue, and profits. What are the Applications of BI in Banking? Banking business analytics can help with the following aspects: Fraud Detection and Analysis There have been 4,047 reported cases of online banking fraud in 2021 in India. NCRB reported that 60.2% of the total financial frauds were done for the sake of fraud (intentionally). India saw banking frauds worth 1,384 trillion rupees in 2021. Using business intelligence tools like Power BI can help banks detect fraud in the early stages and prevent them from happening. Fraud detection has become a priority for many banks and financial institutions. The insights derived from BI tools are used to build robust fraud detection systems that warn banking professionals about the possibility of fraud and help them avoid the situation. It helps with: Performance Management What happens when employees have access to up-to-date information? It gives them more control over daily operations and aids with making the right decisions. Since employees can get real-time reports with just a couple of clicks, they can understand the bigger picture before offering a financial product/ service to a customer. BI tools empower banking professionals to be more productive and deliver better performance day after day. Cross-Selling Financial Services How do you know

Yashica Chopra
December 10, 2021
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Power BI for Banking: Dashboard to Analyze Financial Operations

Power BI is a product by Microsoft developed to help with business analytics. Power BI is an effective tool for banks to track KPIs and streamline their services. This blog elaborates on the role of Power BI in the banking industry. Let’s see how consultants help banks use Power BI. With the various technology solutions available and implemented in the banking industry, a lot of staple tasks are already eased with them. Banks are always bustling with activity. Customers come to deposit money, withdraw money, apply for loans, and so on. The multitudes of transactions per day are a part of the process. The yearly balance sheet with profit and loss is one way to measure a bank’s success. However, it’s not enough. Banks need to know what and how their customers feel. How is the bank’s performance when measured against the KPIs? Are the procedures easy for customers to follow? How can a bank identify where the problem lies? Business analytics is the answer to these questions. Power BI is an effective data analysis tool developed by Microsoft. Banks can collect data from multiple sources and measure their performance using a single platform. Power BI consulting partners assist banks in using this effective tool to track KPIs and analyze the success of their financial operations. What is Power BI? Power BI is a collection of software, apps, and connectors that gather data from multiple sources, convert it to a readable format and derive insights through data analysis. The insights help make the right decisions to boost the business and increase customer satisfaction. It is a well-known product of Microsoft and has three major components: Why should banks consider Power BI? Power BI is not limited to data analytics. It is also a data visualization tool that generates customized reports for the given information. Data is collected, processed, and monitored in real-time. Power BI can help banks track the profitability ratio of customers, products, and services, as well as the branch’s performance against all KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Business enterprises and banks use Power BI to access the latest insights and get a complete perspective of their operations. The Power BI banking dashboard gives banking professionals a deeper and better understanding of their services and customers’ response to the services. Power BI is mainly used for the following: How to use Power BI for Banking? A banking dashboard is a business intelligence tool where data collected from multiple systems across the bank is presented on a single platform. The employees and management can access all information through the dashboard. From customers’ accounts to loans, deposits, and defaulters, the analytics dashboard shares the overall picture of the bank in real-time. Power BI is indeed a powerful tool for developing the banking dashboard to track the firm’s performance based on factors such as customer trends, new process results, financial operations, and so on. The dashboard has various elements, ranging from KPIs assigned, KPIs comparison, customer acquisition ratio, etc. Banks can add or delete elements in the dashboard to customize as per their requirements. Power BI is used in the banking industry to create the dashboard to manage data and derive insights. The BI tool gathers data from the given sources and analyzes them to share the comparisons and insights on the dashboard. Banking professionals can measure how well the bank is delivering the expected results and identify the areas for improvement. Banking KPIs/Visuals that can be Tracked on Power BI Dashboard Financial transactions play a vital role in the banking sector. Customers are directly involved in the process and can impact the bank’s success. Even though there is no definite list of KPIs a bank has to monitor, the following are commonly used by banks and financial institutions. Power BI service providers assist banks in designing and customizing the dashboard to include the necessary KPIs and track performance. Financial KPIs Expenses Expenses are the costs incurred by banks for daily operations. These are divided into interest and noninterest categories. Revenue The inflow of cash to a bank is called revenue and can be classified as deposit fee, transaction fee, service fee, loan interest, and so on. Operating Profit This amount is obtained by subtracting expenses from revenue. For a bank to do well, the revenue should be more than the expenses. Return on Assets The net income of the bank is divided by the total number of assets to determine the return on assets. Assets Under Management Usually termed AUM, it shows the total value of assets managed by the bank. This KPI is measured quarterly by most banks. Return on Equity The total bank income divided by the equity owned by shareholders gives the return on equity and is measured in percentages. Operational KPIs Total Deposits and Loans A bank with high deposits is considered reliable and trustworthy. By measuring the loan growth against the overall progress, banks will know if they are on the right track. Customer Satisfaction Score The customer satisfaction score is calculated based on trends, demographics, industry sentiments, response rate, feedback, surveys, etc. Net Charge-off Rate The net charge-off rate is the ratio of recovered debt to gross charge-offs. It shows the unrecovered debt of the banks and helps in maintaining a lower rate by making better decisions. Efficiency Ratio It shows how well the bank is managing the assets and liabilities in the long term. The efficiency ratio is derived by dividing operational expenses by revenue. Actionable Advice for Data-Driven Leaders Struggling to reap the right kind of insights from your business data? Get expert tips, latest trends, insights, case studies, recommendations and more in your inbox. Benefits of Power BI for Banks Why use Power BI for banking? What benefits does the data analytics tool offer banks and financial institutions? How does Power BI help banking professionals? Tips for a Successful Power BI Implementation Power BI in the banking industry is no longer a theory. Many banks have successfully integrated Power BI into the existing systems. Role of DataToBiz in Serving a Renowned

Yashica Chopra
December 06, 2021
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Power BI: How to Implement Advanced Analytics with Data Integration?

SMEs are on the way to becoming data-driven enterprises by investing in data analytics and business intelligence. This move is to empower themselves to make better decisions based on reports generated by advanced data analytics tools. Revamping the business systems and processes by integrating the latest AI, ML software allows enterprises to collect, store, process, and understand the vast amounts of data generated every day. Historical and real-time data from numerous sources is gathered in one place and processed using BI tools such as Power BI to gather valuable and accurate insights. In this blog, we will learn about the need for data integration and how Power BI can be used to implement advanced analytics with data integration. What is Power BI? Power BI is a product of Microsoft used for data analytics and visualization. The layout resembles an advanced version of Excel, belonging to the same company. The main job of power BI is to bring coherence to your data and present it in a visually appealing and compelling manner. It guarantees data accuracy, consistency, and reliability. Though the software belongs to Microsoft, many data analytics and BI consulting firms are Power BI partners and help enterprises integrate the software into the business systems. You can take the assistance of these firms to enhance your business processes and become a data-driven enterprise. What is Data Integration? Data integration is an inherent part of advanced analytics. What will the tools process if there is no data available? But what exactly is data integration? It is the process of bringing together data from various systems and sources within and outside the enterprise. Any data that is considered valuable for the business is collected from across the internet. It is common for one department in the organization to ask permission to access data collected and stored by another department. Data integration makes it easier for employees in all departments to access any data they need to complete their work. The process is automated and streamlined to reduce human error and delays. Advanced analytics is the process of examining data autonomously or semi-autonomously using tools and techniques that are beyond the traditional business intelligence tools. Advanced analytics is used to obtain deeper insights, make accurate predictions, and provide recommendations to the top management. What are the Types of Data Integration? Data integration is not as easy as it sounds. But it is not impossible either. There are different ways in which data integration services can be provided. Let’s take a look at the types of data integration in brief. Data Consolidation It is the process of physically bringing together data from different sources and consolidating it in one place. This reduces the need for excess data storage at multiple locations. Data Visualization It is the process of presenting data in an easy-to-understand and visually appealing manner so that it becomes easier to interpret data based on numerous factors. Data Propagation It is used for real-time data processing where information from one place is copied to another (data sharing). This is usually two-way communication between two systems or departments and is used for large amounts of data. Data Warehousing It is the process of cleaning, formatting, and storing data in data repositories such as in-house servers, colocation centers, or remote cloud storage servers. This is data integration. Data Federation It is a form of data visualization that uses data abstraction to facilitate a unified view of data from multiple sources. This data is analyzed and presented using tools like Power BI. Data federation is used when data consolidation is too expensive for SMEs to invest in. What are the Benefits of Data Integration? If data integration wasn’t beneficial, we would hardly see organizations willing to invest in it, right? So what are the benefits of availing the Power BI consulting services? How does it help enterprises in becoming better than their competitors in the market? SMEs have to work with limited resources that make it rather difficult to compete with multinational enterprises. But data integration helps businesses become efficient in optimizing the resources to get more efficient outputs. When data is seamlessly available across the enterprise, it improves communication and collaboration between different departments. It also leads to better customer services as the support staff has all the details required to deal with customers. Any enterprise armed with data analytics tools is better equipped to deal with competitors in the market. It gives you an edge over others and lets you expand the business to newer markets. When you can rely on reports and insights created by advanced software, you will naturally become a better decision-maker. You have a solid backing to support your decision. There is no need to work with outdated reports or copy a competitor without knowing how a decision will impact the business in the long term. It is not easy to convince employees to adopt new procedures and systems at work. Power BI services from offshore consulting firms help train employees and make them understand the importance of working on advanced analytics. This increases the willingness of employees to adopt new technology and digitally transform the business. Challenges of Data Integration Do you know that about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated every day? The US economy suffers losses of around $3.1 trillion per year due to the poor quality of data. Now is the right time to invest in data integration and advanced analytics. But it doesn’t come without challenges of its own. So how do you find a way to work around these challenges? Power BI development services help you in overcoming the challenges by- Glossary of Data Integration While the actual list is extensive and includes hundreds of terms, we have listed a few terms regularly used by data and BI analysts. Analytics The process of analyzing data to derive meaningful insights and patterns from it. Big Data Vast amounts of data are collected from numerous sources and processed at high speed to get real-time insights. Data Connector A tool that works continuously to replicate data