Linking Business Intelligence, Analytics and Strategy for Success

This article takes 2 minutes to read and will explain to you the role of business intelligence and analytics in executing a successful strategy.

Business Intelligence (BI) is not just critical for understanding how your business is performing. Most people forget that it is crucial to ensure the execution of business strategy to reach their vision!

But what is BI, and what is a business strategy?

Hans Peter Luhn defined BI in 1958 as “the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal”. In general, BI is about bringing to light data about what you know about your organisation. The very existence of this business function underpins a result-oriented corporate culture that guides every business decision.

But what is a business strategy? Michael Porter summarised in the 1990s that a strategy is “a combination of the ends for which the firm is striving and the means by which it is seeking to get there”.

Then, as far as a business strategy is involved, clarity about what you measure and how you can drive improvement from the related analyses is critical to success.

What is the relationship between BI, analytics and strategy?

BI metrics and indicators are clearly part of understanding whether a strategy is working. They transform raw system data into knowledge, where Analytics play a role. In our opinion, this synergy can be show in the picture below:

Linking Business Strategy with BI and Analytics

Business Analytics work similarly to BI. But they provide feedback mechanisms to improve the logic and processes underpinning your business strategy and BI metrics.

So, what can you do to align your vision and strategy with a coherent BI and Analytics approach?

The exact alignment between your vision, strategy, BI and Analytics approach depends on your business circumstances. But this article can give you pointers on how to measure such alignment.

In fact, Peter Drucker is often quoted as stating “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”. Simply put, how do you know if your business is successful unless you define and track success?

Business Intelligence allows you, in fact, to establish historical records that measure performance and track your company’s results. The metrics to measure it derive from a fish bone analysis of the sort plotted against your business model and plan.

Taking the first practical steps

Practically, and generalising quite a bit, you need to ask yourself a series of questions including:

  • What is the end state of your business and how do you know you are there?
    • Thus, what processes and progress metrics get you there?
    • And how can you improve your business assumptions?
  • How do you know that you are doing thing efficiently and effectively?
  • What do you do best than your competitors? What needs to be improved?
  • And how does your business stack up against customer wants?

Once you know the BI metrics and Analytics required, you may assess what data you already possess and what you need to start collecting. Then you may pick across many available tools to either manually or automatically crunch the numbers, like Power BI.

Indive Analytics helps you unleash the power of your data, including strategic BI and Analytics.

Contact us at info@indiveanalytics.com for a free consultation about outcomes and opportunities.

Vítor Fonseca de Melo
Vítor Fonseca de Melo

Vítor Fonseca de Melo is a Business Intelligence professional with extensive experience in Microsoft Power BI use. He has a proven record of success in delivering business intelligence solutions for his stakeholders.

Alberto Nicotra
Alberto Nicotra

Alberto Nicotra is the managing director of Indive Analytics, which helps Small and Medium Enterprises fine-tune their business. He has over 10 years of experience in increasing companies’ profits by delivering data-informed advice and following it up.