Data is the most valuable currency in the business world today. Today, it is those businesses that make a practice of collecting and analyzing data to gain intelligent insights that are on the frontier of innovation, efficiency, and success.

As an executive or decision-maker, it is thus vital that you understand what effective business intelligence techniques can do for your business, as well as how insights from data can aid you with everything from keeping you up to date with the latest business trends to understanding what specific skills your data employees need to succeed.

Use Data to Be Proactive

Traditional business intelligence analysis has been reactive. The process of collecting and analyzing data took so much time that when executives were actually presented the processed data, their decisions would simply be reactive, as they were reacting to three- to six-week-old results.

Due to innovative technology, however, the game has changed. Businesses are now able to use real-time data to glean meaningful insights and predictions which they can use to make proactive decisions. Three ways real-time data can make a business proactive include saving time on data gathering, increasing the business’s agility in decision making and ending the trend of being reactive to market intelligence.

Kathy Chiang and Andrew Wells, co-authors of “Monetizing Your Data: A Guide to Turning Data into Profit-Driving Strategies and Solutions,” note that adding decision theory to your analytics strategy and gearing it toward proactive decision-making will increase the effectiveness of your data.

To quote the authors, “Decision theory, along with behavioral economics, is focused on understanding the components of the decision process to explain why we make the choices we do.” Tools for the same include decision matrices and choice architecture. When employees are equipped with these tools and knowledge and can use them alongside data insights; C-suite officers will be better able to make data-driven decisions.

Finally, an article on Techfunnel recommends eliminating data silos through data democratization. This means that employees and executives across the board can have access to the data in real-time so that they can analyze it and make quicker and more informed decisions.

Use Data to Stay Relevant

Staying relevant is one of the top priorities of every business in every sector. We live in a constantly changing world, and with the rapid rise of technology and social media, the rate at which new trends are born has increased tenfold. It is thus important that business executives and managers are making decisions based on real-time trends procured from real-time data.

This is an important principle for every department in your business to adhere to, especially if you use employee-based decision making. For this to work, every involved employee must be up to date on how to use data to make smart business decisions, you included.

For instance, your sales department needs to be aware of how to optimize the sales strategy with business intelligence. Similarly, your marketing department needs to be in touch with customers’ likes and dislikes, needs and wants.

One of the most integral aspects of the marketing strategy is the business’ website. Aesthetic trends seem to change more rapidly than any other trend, especially in relation to the internet. Your website is the virtual face of your business, and if it is outdated, it will be an immediate turn-off for the customers. You need to thus ensure that your marketing team is using data about the best website UX and building practices to build an effective website.

As an executive, it is your responsibility to use business intelligence insights to enable your marketing team to properly do their jobs. In this sphere, BI could range from data on ideal customer support response times to what content is most successful with your target audience. You need to filter through the available data and use what is most relevant to your business.

What Does it Take to Effectively Capitalize on Your Data?

Data scientists are the professionals who understand how to collect, manage and analyze data in a way that will lead to intelligent insights and powerful decisions. Data scientists include a diverse range of skills that are crucial to their jobs. The skills every data scientist should possess include data visualization, programming, statistics, and mathematical skills and the non-technical skills of communication, business acumen and data-driven problem-solving.

The communicative and visualization skills of a data scientist are perhaps the most overlooked yet make for two of the most essential skills. In order for a data scientist’s analysis to be beneficial to the business, they must be able to communicate their results effectively so that executives can understand make proactive decisions accordingly.

For this reason, it is absolutely essential that data scientists are well-versed with data visualization. You will want to key an eye out for these skills when putting together a business intelligence technical team.

Big data is a big deal in the business world. In today’s competitive world, businesses that aren’t using data will be overtaken and left behind. It is thus crucial that your business is taking full advantage of real-time data and predictive data analytics to glean invaluable insights and make informed decisions.