Accelerate your Business with Business Intelligence Systems - Etisalat Yellow

1. Accelerate your Business with Business Intelligence Systems Having your own business and expanding it is just fine, but running it smoothly and efficiently is another ball game all together and you will need all the help and processes you need to make sure the growth of your company goes in one direction only & that is upwards! So Imagine a Typical Scenario in Your Company – You start a new project, look for team members, hold meetings and the emails start flying. Pretty soon some very important documents start to emerge and those documents get passed around & within a couple of weeks, a few hundred emails and a couple of dozen phone calls later a few things start to become clear- First–People become overwhelmed. Everyone’s inbox is filled with the same version of the document. One can never be sure if they have the latest version. Second- It is impossible for you to see a complete snapshot of the project. Everything is spread across multiple computers and everyone in the team has different information depending on whom they talk to and Third & most important in my opinion– Even though a project will and can impact other projects there is no way to connect them. They are like islands.

2. You as a head, end up spending valuable time trying to co-ordinate with other project leads and stake holders. Also with information so widespread, important learnings can easily get missed and collecting data and having so much useful information can just go in vain. Here is where a Business Intelligence soft wares save your life. To begin with, what is Business Intelligence? It refers to applications that transform data into meaningful information which helps business make better decisions. The term business intelligence came into use around the 1950’s & it grew out of a technology called decision support systems. Over the past few decades business intelligence systems have grown to become more powerful and comprehension as a result of Increased data that companies can now collect on their customers and on their own internal processes due to rise in use of cell phones, wearable devices, and the usage of internet & computer devices Data can be stored in much greater quantities at a much cheaper rate than before. Companies now have access to smartphone metadata, internet usage records, social media activity, etc. Business intelligence platforms sift through this data to find patterns and trends. Data comes in three forms: 1. Structured data- This kind of data resides in a fixed form, such as collection forms on the websites, addresses for shipping reasons, contact details. This data can easily be translated into an excel sheet and stored for future use. 2. Unstructured data- This kind of data cannot be read by the computer easily. This includes text documents, videos, images or anything that does not come with a clear description of what it is. It can be difficult to organize in traditional databases because it cannot be stored in rows and columns. This is by far the most common form of data on the internet. The good rule of thumb is that 80% of all data produced is unstructured. For example if a brand/ company collects data from a Facebook campaign in forms of messages, comments and consumer sentiments. 3. Semi-structured data- The question now is how do companies store & manage all this data? Moreover the company data isn’t always in one location. It can be found across CRM programs, Marketing automation systems, social media platforms etc. Hence the first step in BI is taking inventory of the data your company produces and then analyzing all the information that is being collected and managed to better your business and business decisions. Business intelligence software companies in UAE will help you with which solution best fits your needs and the needs of your business. You can research for the best ones online and find their contact details in Etisalat’s Yellow Pages which is a business directory which is how I found my BI system and had my business boom.