What Is Cloud BI?: The Power and Potential of Cloud BI Solutions

Cloud BI is a BI tool, in other words, a service created to build a dashboard in the cloud. A dashboard is an information panel displaying data in an understandable and convenient form. It is a kind of interactive whiteboard where data from various sources are visualized as graphs and diagrams. 

It can be summarized as a cloud service based on Power BI, which takes data from 1C, Excel, and CRM and displays it as a visual panel with numbers, graphs, and diagrams. The service is available on computers, tablets, and smartphones anytime and anywhere.

In this article, we highlight Cloud BI and the key benefits and challenges of Business Intelligence. 

What Does Cloud BI Do for Your Business?

Thanks to this service, all your business indicators will be available in the palm of your hand. It is clear, understandable, and affordable. Here are other benefits of Cloud BI:

• Control income and expenses. It is a practical and visual service that lets you qualitatively control the company’s key financial indicators with the financial service, financial director, or owner.
• Company turnover report. The analytical report is organized in graphic and tabular form based on various balance sheet data, including sales figures and expenses.
• Sales. The system helps you analyze complex situations and identify patterns that will help you manage them and make the right decisions to increase sales.
• Profit. The platform reflects the financial and economic flows of the enterprise, including data from sales and financial results, labor capital, investment activities, and in-group flows.
• Middle check. Successful work of a trading company is impossible without operational information. Daily sales data is becoming a source of analysis of the leading indicators of the efficiency of the retail network.
• Marketing. Making decisions in marketing requires support. Preferably—numbers. Ideally, it is interpreted and correctly reduced. Too often, marketing directors are choked in countless analytical tables with errors and myriad interpretations.

As you can see, you can cover and analyze many directions when using Cloud BI. Such a comprehensive analysis will help bring your business to a new level.

How Does Business Analytics Work in Your Business?

What is business intelligence? Modern business analytics answers complex business questions based on data in real-time, especially when presented in easy-to-understand information panels, visual elements, or reports from several sources and data storage. 

Business intelligence allows users to analyze the effectiveness of the company, identify trends, and determine areas in which performance indicators are unacceptable. As a rule, it is structured in such a way as to provide analytics about historical indicators, including current results. 

Depending on the solution, users can ask questions in natural languages without the need to enter programming code. The following are some areas in which companies use BI.

• Investment payback. The intellectual understanding of the business, based on business analytics, helps organizations optimize the performance and payback of investment using business analytics.
• Experience working with clients. The best understanding of the preferences, trends of purchases, and customer behavior allows you to improve customer service and simplify target marketing.
• Monitoring business effectiveness. Using data analysis to analyze the effectiveness of the company and constant improvement of operating activities.

With cloud business intelligence, you will see the strengths and weaknesses of the company, its capabilities, and its prospects. You can develop products and services that users really need. Business analytics is a programming tool that gives a complete understanding of the situation and control over it. It’s a great competitive advantage!

Benefits of Business Intelligence

The advantages of business intelligence will be useful for all departments of your company. When the data from different departments is combined into a single source, the whole company works harmoniously within the framework of the continuous process. Thus, there will be no spaces or gaps in the data and communications, and this, in turn, will provide the following business intelligence advantages:

• Making data based on data. With business analytics, making complex decisions becomes more justified (that is, supported by data). Thanks to the quantitative assessment of the root causes and a clear definition of trends, it is possible to discuss the future of the company more objectively and reasonably, whether it be the HR budgets, marketing campaigns, the needs of production, the supply chain, or a sales expansion program.
• Convenient visualization. Software as a service for business analytics can convert vast amounts of data and present it in a simple but convenient form for perception. This allows you to solve two problems at once. Firstly, the results of the analysis become easily accessible to business users- a few clicks with a mouse or touchpad are enough. Secondly, when the data is presented in visual form, sometimes it’s enough just to look at it for a new idea to arise.
• Modeling possible scenarios. Predictive analytics creates models for users to see patterns and trends that will affect the results in the future. Previously, only experienced data analysis specialists were able to do this, but with the help of software for business analytics based on machine training, these models can be created within the framework of the platform. This allows business users to quickly configure the model, creating scenarios of possible development of events with slightly different variables, and there is no need to develop complex algorithms.

All the factors listed above suggest that data analytics accelerates obtaining the results of analysis by users. But when the software for business intelligence cloud is based on machine learning and artificial intelligence, the possibilities of expanded analytics are also available. Extended analytics uses the ability to self-study, adapt, and process large amounts of data to automate processes and receive information without subjective errors made by a person.

Examples of Successful Implementation

Many companies successfully use business cloud analytics. Here are the three most striking examples:

• Amazon. Business analytics allows Amazon to collect consumer data, identify patterns, and predict future customer needs. This makes it possible to add personalized recommendations and optimize logistics processes for quick delivery to improve the customer experience.
• Netflix. Cloud BI tools help Netflix recommend movies and series, increasing user satisfaction and keeping them on the platform to view more content they like.
• Starbucks. In this case, business analysis allows Starbucks to study store purchases and consumption trends. This helps optimize stock management, effectively lead processes, and predict demand.

It is clear that such changes become possible thanks to the joint work of various specialists. However, improvements always begin with identifying vulnerabilities and problems and creating a class product from business ideas and requirements. Try to find a company that does not need Power BI Word Cloud — you won’t find one on this planet!

The Main Problems When Launching Business Analytics

The introduction of cloud-based business intelligence can be a complex process that comes with some difficulties:

• Lack of quality data. For successful work, business analysts need high-quality and relevant data. However, in many companies, data can be outdated, fragmentary, or contain errors.
• Lack of technical skills. The introduction and use of a business analytics application requires certain Hard Skills. If the company does not have such specialists, this may become a problem.
• Data complexity. Additional technologies and cloud business intelligence tools may be required to analyze and process large volumes of data.
• Lack of accurate and clear requirements. Re-rewriting ready-made software development is long and expensive. It is better to immediately understand what exactly is needed and how to do it.

These difficulties are easy to overcome and worth the effort. Cloud-based BI is both a support and a growth point for a company. With its help, you can create cool software, find new markets and niches, or survive a crisis.

Conclusion

This article helped familiarize you with Cloud BI, its features, and business intelligence benefits for your company. The importance of business analytics is undeniable, including comprehensive analysis, better identification of strengths and weaknesses to prepare the company better for the future, and increased productivity and results.  Developers are even working on adding it with systems for automated machine learning and data processing with the possibility of using third-party services. 

Additionally, it should be noted that Cloud BI is certified to work with personal data and has an appropriate license. This allows customers to use these services without fear and without needing additional certification, which also reduces costs in the future. 

If you need any help building your own Cloud BI, LITSLINK experts are always ready to help.