What is business intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) is the process of translating raw data into actionable business insight. It encompasses any tool or technique that enables organisations and their leaders to make more informed, data-driven decisions.
In this guide, we’ll explore the uses of business intelligence in finance, how it works, its benefits, and more.
What do business intelligence solutions do?
Research shows that between 60-73% of an organisations’ data goes unused for analytics. Business intelligence solutions turn this untapped data into an asset by standardising it, analysing it and transforming it into reports for leaders to gain a better understanding of their operations, customers and industry as a whole.
Business intelligence in finance
Large volumes of data are generated every day in today’s financial landscape. How organisations manage and visualise that data is critical to their success.
An effective business intelligence solution offers the opportunity to use this data, allowing management to monitor and enhance the entire operations of a financial business. Some of these areas include:
- Risk assessment and management
- Cost management and optimisation
- Customer insights and segmentation
- Supporting the budgeting and planning processes
- Making sales predictions and financial estimates
- Improving operational efficiency and resource allocation
- Simplifying regulatory compliance processes
- Identifying and analysing market trends
- Measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns
What are the benefits?
- More time for your team
The most prominent benefit of adopting a business intelligence tool is the hours it saves. To leverage their data, businesses first need to make sense of the large volumes available to them. Manually sorting through this data to analyse future trends and make decisions is a tedious job, draining hundreds if not thousands of hours across the year.
Business intelligence solutions automate most of the heavy lifting during this process, taking staff away from data standardisation and analysis jobs and giving them more time to focus on areas that drive business value.
- Data-driven decisions
Business intelligence tools empower staff to access data sets from a range of sources quickly. With this data readily available, strategic decisions regarding product development, market expansion or risk management are based on concrete evidence rather than intuition or guesswork.
- Improved operational efficiency
Organisations use business intelligence solutions to gain a deeper understanding of their operations, identifying inefficiencies and areas for improvement. By streamlining processes, optimising resource allocation and enhancing workflow efficiency, these tools bolster overall operational effectiveness.
- Enhanced strategic planning
Leveraging business intelligence solutions, organisations can identify trends, patterns and opportunities within their data to facilitate robust strategic planning and forecasting. These insights make it easier to anticipate market shifts, capitalise on emerging trends and develop agile strategies to stay ahead of competitors.
- Better customer understanding
Serving customers is much easier with the right data analytics capabilities. Business intelligence tools delve deep into areas like transaction volumes, spending behaviours and preferences so organisations can meet customer needs more effectively. This information is then used to tailor product offerings, services and marketing strategies, leading to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Real-time insights
The ability to make decisions quickly is critical in finance. That’s why most business intelligence solutions offer real-time (or near-real-time) analytics capabilities, enabling organisations to monitor key performance metrics and respond to changing market dynamics as they happen.
- Reduced operating costs
Business intelligence tools drive significant cost savings through process optimisation, waste reduction and enhanced resource allocation. These tools maximise profitability by identifying inefficiencies – something that is especially important in industries such as payments where profit margins are already tight.
- Compliance and risk management
Business intelligence tools support the compliance function, offering automated solutions for processes like transaction monitoring, KYC (Know your customer) and PCI DSS (Payments Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance. Automating these processes and detecting anomalies in real-time ensures proactive risk-management and compliance with regulatory standards.
Key takeaways
Superior business intelligence capabilities are a significant competitive advantage for all financial organisations today. It transforms raw data into actionable insights, streamlines operations and enhances customer understanding. With business intelligence, decisions are data-driven, operations are optimised and risks are managed proactively.
Welcome to the world of business intelligence – where data is not just information, but key to unlocking success.
Business intelligence at Kani
Kani works with a range of clients across the banking and card payments industry to track and report on transactions, as well as understand how customers and products behave. Our business intelligence solutions are currently helping the payments sector with:
- Customer insights to understand customer spending or where the most active customers are
- Standardising data from a variety of payment processors into a common language, providing easy comparison of volumes between different products, merchants and geographies
- Real-time performance monitoring on key performance indicators (KPIs), such as transaction volumes, transaction success and revenue
- Compliance and regulatory reporting, generating reports on transaction data, audit trails, and other compliance metrics
- Easy data forecasting predicting future trends and market behaviour
Reach out to our friendly team at hello@kanipayments.com to learn more about business intelligence at Kani.
FAQs:
- How does business intelligence drive innovation in finance?
Innovation in the financial industry is driven by business intelligence, allowing organisations to uncover new insights, develop data-driven strategies and adapt to evolving market dynamics. These tools help in exploring new opportunities, enhancing product offerings and competitive strategies.
- What role does business intelligence play in optimising financial processes and workflows?
Business intelligence tools streamline financial operations by automating repetitive tasks, enhancing workflow efficiency and optimising resource allocation. By offering real-time insights into key performance metrics, they make it easier to identify bottlenecks, streamline processes and improve overall efficiency.
- How do business intelligence solutions help to anticipate market trends and stay ahead of competitors?
Harnessing the power of business intelligence makes it easier to anticipate market trends and maintain a competitive edge. By analysing market data, spotting emerging trends and providing actionable insight, these tools empower businesses to capitalise on opportunities in a rapidly evolving landscape.
- How is business intelligence used to personalise financial services and offerings?
By leveraging customer data to segment markets, understand individual preferences and tailor offerings, business intelligence enables more personalised services. These insights into customer behaviour, spending patterns and preferences lead to improved customer acquisition and retention.
- What are some best practices for implementing and integrating business intelligence solutions?
Integrating a new business intelligence tool requires careful planning and execution. Some best practices include defining clear objectives, selecting the right tool, establishing robust data governance frameworks, and ensuring alignment with overarching business goals. Fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making and providing the necessary training is equally critical to a successful implementation.
- What role does business intelligence play in regulatory compliance?
Regulatory compliance is fundamental for all sectors of finance. They exist to protect customer assets, mitigate risk and minimise unethical behaviour. Business intelligence applications help to collect, analyse and report on data to simplify submissions and avoid penalties.
- How does Business Intelligence benefit card payments companies?
BI empowers card payments companies to gain insights into transaction patterns, detect fraudulent activities, optimize pricing strategies, and identify market trends. It enables them to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance profitability.
- What are some specific use cases of Business Intelligence in the card payments industry?
Business intelligence tools ease a number of challenges in the card payments industry. The most prominent use case of business intelligence in cards payment industry include:
- Monitoring transaction volumes and trends.
- Identifying spending patterns of cardholders.
- Predicting customer churn and implementing retention strategies.
- Analysing merchant performance and identifying lucrative partnerships.
- Detecting and preventing fraudulent transactions in real-time.