The importance of Business intelligence can be aptly encapsulated by the phrase, ‘Information does not equal knowledge.’ While accurate up-to-date information is undeniably a critical requirement for any business, it is how that information is used, manipulated and acted upon that is fundamental to business success. Business intelligence (BI) is a tool that proactively uses business data to provide actionable information for end users; it helps to join up information from disparate departments’ functions and systems to give businesses a holistic view of their business.

According to a Gartner survey of 2,335 CIOs BI and analytics have now deposed cloud computing as the top enterprise technology priority. During challenging economic conditions, firms have to recognise that they must be in a position to quickly react to new opportunities and threats that arise. Through having the full picture of their business and this has put BI as the heart of many organisations operations. The efficiency of your business’ processes is everything. In these situations simply relying on hunches or inclinations would be illogical if not detrimental.

A tool just for big businesses?

The complex nature of early BI systems meant that Business Intelligence has traditionally been viewed as a service exclusive to large enterprise. Whilst historically BI may have provided information at a management level only, extending the reach of BI is now more important than ever, and is a business critical tool that today underpins the success of organisations of all sizes.

Simple, easy to use BI tools can be used by anyone across the business, helping employees to share information across different departments and therefore save time on reporting and analytics. This is particularly important if you have regular reports you need to run e.g. monthly executive reports where you need the same information each month. Sharing information reduced duplication of data and means not only will all your figures match up but that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.

Making it work for your business

Sage works closely with its ever increasing 830,000 small and medium size UK customer base. Many of whom have realised the important truth that business development can only be based on solid foundations. One key component is trust worthy and accessible data on which to make informed decisions. Provision of business intelligence through business management solutions like the award winning Sage200 allows companies to have greater control and agility through better visibility of data and multidimensional analysis so they can measure key metrics enabling them to spot things like underperformance and take action.

At Sage we worked closely with our thousands of customers and built our solutions to assure that user’s don’t have to work hard to get the data out of the system, that the data is easy to interrogate and provides meaningful and timely insights. We know we’ve succeeded when we see people get genuinely excited about the patterns they can see in their own data!

Kathryn Shankland is Product Manager for Sage 200 in the UK