The world of business is ever-changing, expanding, evolving, and adapting, especially after the supreme upheaval and damage caused by the continuing effects of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
One of the main innovations within businesses across the length and breadth of different industries is that of the creation of business intelligence and analytics, which have made drastic and impressively positive changes to both individual companies and the outlook for businesses moving forward as a whole.
With this being said, continue reading to learn how business and business intelligence have changed and evolved over time and some key future predictions in the field.
The Importance Of Human Resources & Its Impact On the Company
Obviously, a myriad of factors determines the most fundamental and necessary components of a company, such as the size and the industry in which it operates. However, naturally, there are certain elements within every business model that act as a framework to build a successful business.
One of the most fundamental departments within a business framework is that of the human resources department.
Human resources deal with absolutely everything employee related, and the fact that it deals with people means that HR employees have to be adept and skilled in a vast array of different roles and responsibilities.
HR can be divided up into the following top priorities within the department:
- Ensuring a safe working environment:
Workplace health and safety is one of the primary jobs of a human resources employee and involves arranging maintenance, inspections, and thorough site surveys to ascertain where potential hazards may be. It is a legal requirement of all businesses to provide a safe working environment for their customers and staff.
- Recruitment:
The term’ hiring and firing’ is basically entirely the responsibility of the human resources department, and it is their responsibility to source new talent and potential recruits and often also to streamline the best of the applications themselves. HR employees also write and publish the job descriptions, screen candidates, conduct interviews and actively search for the most qualified people to apply.
- Employee Relations:
The relationships and connections between individual members of the workforce and the department heads, and the manager of the business are, of course, absolutely paramount for a successful business. Human resources employees actively strive to constantly improve these relationships and be responsible for responding to any union matters and inquiries and unpicking any contract issues raised by employees.
- Benefits & Rewards
Another important part of any human resources department, especially within larger companies, is to effectively manage and monitor any and all employee reward schemes or benefits packages.
- Payroll:
Human resources employees use the latest technologies to ensure that every single individual is paid the correct amount and always on time, although some companies do choose to outsource their payroll responsibilities to a reputable third-party company.
What Actually Is Business Intelligence?
Essentially, business intelligence is the act of using predictive analytics, data, and the thorough examination of both affecting external and internal factors to make more researched and more effective choices in driving a business forward that contain little to no risk.
In 2022, businesses, regardless of the industry, have to be primarily driven by data, and business intelligence is the best way to succinctly achieve this goal. Business intelligence uses technologies and strategies that a company is currently implementing to best analyze it’s information and data and is somewhat of an art form within the business framework.
The Beginnings Of Business Intelligence
In a book published in 1865, the phrase ‘business intelligence’ was first coined by Richard Millar Devens, who used the term to describe how an American banker, named Henry Furnese, gathered information within the banking world and acted upon his discoveries before his competitors and subsequently profiting considerably from it.
The term was virtually left in the book, and certainly, there is no real record of prominent and larger businesses taking any notice or meaning from the phrase, although it is fair to say that there were others who realized the importance of analyzing their current business needs with a view to projecting their future. It is perhaps likely that although the actual term ‘business intelligence’ wasn’t used in mainstream business circles, owners and managers were starting to organically come to their own realization that such activities can and are important to secure the longevity of a company.
After a notable break from the term even being referred to in mainstream publications or even in business conversation, an article written in 1958 by Hans Peter Luhn, an IBM specialist within computer science, once again popularized the term. Luhn wrote about the supreme potential in gathering business intelligence from various sources and the incredibly high potential of profitability from the successful acquisition of such intelligence.
From there, business intelligence had somewhat of an impressive rise in terms of importance and popularity. Today, the field is considered one of, if not the, most successful and effective ways of managing a business from within.
Ten years later, in late 1968, business intelligence was a more prominent and popular way of managing a company, although it was only the select few individuals who had amassed a high level of business and analytic ability that were able to successfully translate the data extracted from a business into useable and practical information. In 1970, just two years later, a businessman named Edgar Codd identified this issue and endeavored to make business intelligence more accessible and more useful to more businesses, primarily by changing how people thought about statistics and databases.
In the modern world of business of 2022 and beyond, business intelligence is acquired solely by the use of advanced and innovative technologies and software packages that can quickly and effectively gather all manner of different types of data and groups of statistics that can have an incredible effect on the accurate projection of a company’s future.
How Business Intelligence Benefits A Company
It is not by accident that businesses across a wide range of different industries as well as countries are growing and expanding, even during such a turbulent business climate like the one caused by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
Business intelligence provides a wide plethora of advantages to furthering a company’s success and assuring the longevity of the business for many years to come.
Strong, well-sourced, and researched business intelligence with benefit the relevant company in the following ways:
- Substantially improved levels of customer service
- Increased positive perception of the company and brand name from both inside employers and both new and current customers
- A way to positively and accurately forecast future outcomes before they have happened
- Increased effectiveness in competing and surpassing business rivals
- Significantly faster analysis of events within the business
- The ability to make data and statistics-driven business decisions
- An increase in sales and subsequent profitability
- Stronger and more accurate decision making
How To Increase Business Intelligence Within A Company
As with other fundamental factors that directly influence a company, the need for constant monitoring and striving to improve business intelligence is ever-present.
Fortunately, there is a myriad of ways that business intelligence can be increased, and here you shall learn of the most significant.
- Consolidate The Data Received Into One Source
Often, businesses struggle with conflicting information and even differing statistics when they rely on more than one environment that provides the data. Reporting systems that originate from different departments within one company, for example, shouldn’t theoretically contradict each other, but the reality is that they often do just that.
Furthermore, if such an event occurs, it can then serve to devalue both the sources’ authenticity and reliability, even though, independently, they are likely to be accurate and viable. It is for this reason that, when sourcing the various sections of data, statistics, and other reports, there should be one ‘mainframe’ that consistently provides the bulk of the information.
- Ensure Everything Is Entirely Automated
Obviously, business intelligence relies solely on the statistics, data, and information that it is supported by, and therefore any information that is either inaccurate or outdated in any way is arguably worse than having no business intelligence daily.
Businesses who try and use their existing software packages and data to create immediate reports may think that they are engaging in the ways of business intelligence, but the truth is that this is far from the reality. All data and statistics must be brought together into one place using specific software, and therefore before the process of business intelligence can begin, every single system and department within the business framework must be entirely automated.
- Take Advantage Of The Option To Self-Service
When business intelligence was first introduced to the mainstream business world, the process of collecting and collating the data was a long and arduous one, yet still, many companies operate in this way.
Traditional business intelligence used their in-house information technology teams to generate reports on various departments before creating reports based on the summaries of these findings. This process could take a month or longer and is frustrating for the management and the people within the IT department.
Instead, modern and forward-thinking business managers and owners are moving towards offering a self-service option to their users, which entirely eliminates the older process of reporting data. The resulting ability to access reports immediately and of an individual’s own volition means the whole process of business intelligence is sped up considerably.
- Extend Business Intelligence Across Any & All Devices
Business intelligence will only benefit a company to the fullest when it is aligned with the latest innovations of and demands from modern technology and, as a result, should be able to be accessed across any and all workplace devices.
Raising the levels of success and speed of business intelligence means that all data and reports should be able to be accessed from anywhere, at any time, and by anyone within the company who is authorized to do so. One of the most effective ways to enable this is to introduce a way for users to access reports and data via a mobile application.
- Use Business Intelligence Across the Entire Company
It is commonplace for many businesses, particularly those larger, national and international companies, to use business intelligence in what they think to be only the key fundamental departments within.
Understandably, there is a reason for this as it allows the reports produced and the information gathered by business intelligence to be wholly more manageable. However, as manageable as the reports may be, they are not conclusive as other departments’ data and statistics are simply not being recorded or received.
Then, it would be pertinent to strive to implement business analytics across the entire business and not just what the manager or owner considers to be the most important parts. Business intelligence is specifically and deliberately designed to work across all departments, and therefore the more information received, the more accurate and beneficial the projections.
- Strive For Business Intelligence To Be As Proactive As Possible
Essentially, when summarising what business intelligence actually means and is, the easiest and most succinct description would be simply the latest form of data visualization.
Through the implantation and usage of strong and well-sourced business intelligence, after a while, it is then possible to accurately enable employees to understand the needs of the business, strengths, weaknesses, and most pertinently, the various triggers.
Enabling the addition of automated alerts is by far the best and relatively easiest way of ensuring business intelligence is as proactive as possible, by alerting the relevant users as to when there is an anomaly with the data findings and letting them know of any unusual trends or changes.
Conclusion
It’s clear that business intelligence has shifted and altered meaning throughout the years and has done so to match the needs of the times. It’s also been made apparent that business intelligence has been important to help businesses thrive. Be sure to take the information from this article and apply it to your own business.
