Critical to the success of your business are timely data and relevant statistics about performance, materials and markets. So is leading information and analysis about our industry that helps you to make accurate, confident and supported decisions with channel partners and satisfy customer demands. Doing so more quickly helps you set better goals, objectives and priorities so your company is positioned to increasingly gain competitive advantages.
According to Kevin Craine, managing director of Crain Communications Group based in Portland, Ore., “Business intelligence can be used to support a wide range of business objectives and strategies.” According to an article he wrote for Workflow, short-term operational decisions, such as product positioning and competitive pricing, are generally enhanced with better business intelligence. Long-term strategies concerning things such as branding and market share are more successful with the perspective that business intelligence can provide. “In any case, business intelligence is more effective when it combines external data culled from the market in which the company operates with internal data found within the company, such as financial numbers and operational information. When external and internal data are combined together, the perspective creates an ‘intelligence’ that cannot be derived by any singular view or set of data.”