Consumers have grown more and more immune to ads that don't target them. After a day spent searching for short story competitions on Google, a scroll through your Instagram feed will reveal ads for writing contests taking place near you. This is because companies are using increasingly intelligent systems to understand their customers and curate highly specific messages for them. This comes under the ambit of 'Business intelligence', a term that became widespread only in 1989. This relatively new concept refers to a bunch of software and services that take raw data and turn it into relevant insight that reflects a company's performance. Using the graphs, maps, and charts that these software generate, better business decisions are made to improve internal workflow, understand competitors better, provide more personalised services to customers etc.

Big changes take place in most industries everyday, so it's necessary for companies to stay one step ahead, in order to remain competitive. One German service provider, Verastel faced intense price pressure and growing competition a few years ago, before turning to business intelligence. An issue that was uncovered was that their customers hated having to deal with an outsourced call center for support. So, the first order of the day was to bring customer support in-house. This simple decision skyrocketed their customer renewal rates, quickly making Versatel one of the leading providers of data, internet and voice services in Germany, which was in blatant contrast to being barely able to keep their heads above water just a couple of years prior.

Another prime example of BI being used effectively is The Boston Celtics Basketball Club which saw a five-figure return purely from promotions based on intelligence, according to their Senior VP of Operation. They collected data on their customers' seating and cost preferences. Visualizing this helped them see how much revenue a given seat is producing during a season, and compare the different areas of the stadium. Given that the Celtics have a very complex ticket pricing structure (over a hundred different prices depending on the package, section, individuals, students, competitive games, etc), it was extremely important to understand which seat brings what, to make decisions on the fly for promotions. For example, if there are many low-cost seats available for an upcoming game, the sales team will send a customized email offer to local students.

Every company embarks on its BI journey due to different reasons, which translates to unique software requirements. Software is often used for ten years or more, so investing time in choosing the right product will have positive long-term effects. The best process to evaluate BI software is a multistep one: 1) defining the company's goals, 2) identifying requirements relating to user interface, architecture and more, 3) market analysis and short-listing of around 3-5 software, and 4) final selection. Though this may seem no different than buying a durable product like a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner, often companies end up making otherwise obvious mistakes. For example, letting software vendors who invariably have their own interests at heart educate them about the market. According to Gartner's Magic Quadrant, a few software that stands out in the global market are Microsoft Power BI, Tableau Desktop, Qlik Sense, SAP BusinessObjects BI and Sisense.

Ideally, a company's BI system should be one that can easily integrate with their existing systems, and make timely information accessible to all departments of the company. With the involvement of the right BI software in a company, comes a multitude of benefits-reducing the time it takes to make decisions, optimizing internal processes to help their employees focus on higher-value work, reducing the time it takes to get their product or service to market, and increasing customer satisfaction through better service.