Gone are the days of flying by the seat of your pants.
“Trust me, this feels right.” Sound familiar? It used to be enough to run a successful business.
Someone in charge would make a decision. The troops would carry it out. Cross your fingers and hope for the best.
Sometimes they nail it. Sometimes they belly flop.
Problem is:
These days gut instinct just doesn’t cut it. Marketplaces are more competitive than ever. Margins are slimmer than ever. And there’s too much riding on decisions than ever before.
Business intelligence insights are taking the guesswork out of decision making.
That’s why companies of all sizes are turning to business intelligence software to build smarter, data-driven decisions. The ones that aren’t are quickly falling behind.
What Are Business Intelligence Insights?
When people talk about Business Intelligence (BI) insights, they’re talking about what you do with the data.
You take all that information a business collects (website traffic, sales numbers, customer data, etc.) and analyse it to make decisions.
It’s one thing to collect data. It’s another to make sense of it.
A retailer might intuitively know which product will sell best next quarter. Or they can use BI insights to give them that answer.
Business intelligence insights are the difference.
BI tools are where it all comes together. They aggregate data from different places, organise it into actionable insights, and display it on a user-friendly dashboard.
The latest trends in AI analytics these days relate to BI tools. The more powerful they become, the more data-driven companies will leave their instinct-driven counterparts in the dust.
The business intelligence software market was valued at $30.1 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow from USD 47.92 billion in 2025 to USD 116.25 billion by 2033.
Why Trusting Your Gut Feeling Just Isn’t Enough
Sure, use it as a starting point. But making decisions should be a systematic, repeatable process that anyone on your team can access.
If you’re wondering why, consider this:
Marketplaces don’t rest. Neither should you. Customer tastes change in the blink of an eye. Product supply can dry up overnight. Decisions made on a whim (read: without data) can steer you in the wrong direction quickly.
Truth is, most businesses are already drowning in data. Website visits, sales transactions, customer service tickets. You name it.
The real problem is that no one is interpreting it.
BI tools give you the insights you need to turn data into decisions.
Why Businesses Are Switching To Data-Driven Decisions
Enough of the why. You want to know the how.
More importantly, you want to know what good it’s done for the businesses that have already made the leap.
Let’s run through a few of the biggest benefits:
- 74% of companies report faster decision-making after using BI tools
- 65% of businesses say those insights have directly impacted their strategic decisions
- Organisations with BI tools are 37% more likely to have a competitive advantage over their competition who don’t
- Businesses with data-driven CEOs are 77% more likely to be successful
Got all that? Good.
Let’s break that down:
Decisions are made faster and with more confidence. Businesses can trust their decisions with data to back them up. Pretty much every positive business outcome starts with great decision-making. BI insights give you an edge.
Real-Life Business Intelligence Examples
Most companies use BI software to track performance. Dashboards allow them to monitor KPIs (key performance indicators) in real-time. Revenue, customer acquisition costs, churn rate, and more.
Instead of waiting on a monthly sales report, everyone has access to live data at their fingertips.
There are lots of different ways companies use BI software. Here are a few examples:
Predictive analytics is another big area of growth for BI tools. It uses past data to predict future outcomes. Retailers use it for inventory management. Banks use it for fraud detection. Marketers use it to forecast the success of future campaigns before they spend any money.
Then there’s self-service business intelligence. Non-analysts are now empowered to access data insights. Thanks to self-service BI, team members can pull their own reports, ask their own questions of the data, and get answers in minutes.
It used to be that only analysts had access to a company’s data. Now it’s an open playing field.
Your Starter Kit To Smarter Business Decision-Making
No. You start with a problem.
Maybe it’s your pricing strategy. Or your hiring process. Could be how you spend money on marketing.
Here’s how to do it:
- Decide what decision you want to make more often
- Determine what data you can use to make that decision
- Pick a BI tool that suits your business
- Build your first dashboard and include the metrics that matter
- Analyse your new metrics and start improving
Then prove that your process works. Validate how useful your data can be.
From there you can start compiling more and more dashboards. Data can inform virtually any decision you make. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Lastly. BI isn’t here to replace intuition. It’s here to inform it.
BI tools will give you the insights you need to make confident decisions. The decision-making part still has to happen on a human level.
Final Thoughts
The way decisions are made in business has changed forever. Successful businesses today are piloting decisions with careful analysis and impactful Business Intelligence insights.
Quickly. Accurately. With confidence.
Got a problem with that?
Think BI tools are worthless? Remember, every startup in the world today is a data-driven startup.
Here are some key takeaways:
- Gut feeling doesn’t hold up to data
- Business intelligence tools help you analyse your data and make informed decisions
- Businesses that use BI insights are improving their decision-making process (and their bottom line) as a result
- Identify a problem and build one dashboard around it
- Use your dashboard to validate BI’s value to your business, then scale from there
