7 Real-Life Examples of How Business Intelligence Can Transform a Business [Update]
If you could invest in a solution that would help you to run your company more efficiently, make better decisions, and understand your customers better, would you make the investment? (Would it also make your life easier at work?)
Business intelligence (BI) is exactly the kind of solution that can make these things happen for you. (And this probably isn’t the first time you’ve read about it or considered it.)
So, how do you get over the hurdle (and convince stakeholders at the same time) that it’s worth the investment? That the ROI will be worth it?
Check out these real-life examples of business intelligence from the RTS Labs client archives. These are business problems real clients have used BI to solve. Which ones sound similar to what you might be going through right now?
The business case for business intelligence
Take a look at these stats on the use of business intelligence:
- Organizations “earn an average of $10.66 for every dollar spent on deployments of analytics applications such as business intelligence (BI), performance management (PM), and predictive analytics.” (Nucleus Research)
- “Companies that use analytics are five times more likely to make faster decisions.” (BetterBuys.com)
- “89% of business leaders believe big data will revolutionize business operations in the same way the Internet did.” (Forbes)
And yet, there are business owners who still ask us if BI is worth the investment. Well, we chose these seven case studies specifically because they tell some of the best stories of how business intelligence has significantly improved business processes and bottom lines for a variety of businesses.
Want real BI results? Keep reading to discover not only some of the best uses of business intelligence but also the potential power of BI.
Case Study #1: Harnessing Sales Data to Increase Sales
For our first example of business intelligence, our client, a key player in the retail business, was dealing with erratic sales performance with most reps not meeting targets consistently. Their strategies were driven by guts instead of data, and they were faced with dwindling sales rep morale. The sales director wanted to correct this course by attaining a granular level of understanding of the sales process and performance.
The Opportunity: Come up with a data-driven strategy to streamline their sales process.
The Solution:
- Understand and organize the pipeline, so reps could prioritize time spent on each type of prospect based on both the probability and the dollar value of the conversion.
- Measure and monitor sales rep performance in terms of the value of business they brought in.
- Empower sales reps with data.
Using data and business intelligence, RTS Labs was able to help sales grow by 24% and rep attrition drop by 90%. Due to a better organized target-setting process and refined sales strategies backed by data, the reps were not only meeting but surpassing their targets.
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Case Study #2: Streamlining Data Management & Improving Performance
Our client’s Clinical Trials department was faced with a laborious data management process. Their studies depended on collecting clinical information from their internal lab information system, as well as from external sites. The problem was that the process was negatively impacting the quality of the data and productivity.
The Opportunity: RTS Labs was brought in to help the Clinical Trials team scale up on research by streamlining their data management process through the use of business intelligence.
The Solution:
- Institute OpenClinica for collecting data from participating practices and physicians.
- Built a data mart to combine data from both their internal lab information system and OpenClinica.
By streamlining the data gathering, data management, and analysis processes, RTS Labs enabled the Clinical Trials team to scale their research without having to scale their resources.
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Case Study #3: Uncovering High-Value Customers and Marketing Opportunities with Big Data and Business Intelligence
Our client, a fast-growing company in the bio-sciences industry, wanted to develop a data-driven marketing plan for the coming year. While the strategy was designed to increase market share, the company lacked the processes and systems necessary to capture and analyze the customer insights that were needed.
Challenges:
- They had no way of ranking their customers on key parameters for specific targeting.
- They had no way of tracking the impact of their marketing events.
- Their data was not integrated.
Solution:
RTS Labs implemented a unified business intelligence platform, integrating multiple data sources into a single data mart. From there, we calculated the specific marketing metrics needed and segmented their data for future campaigns. The result was lower marketing expenses, higher sales and a better bottom line.
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Case Study #4: Streamlining Business Processes With Business Intelligence
What do you do when you have multiple databases and workflows to manage, your cash flow is off, and your customers are asking for access you can’t give? You call on a BI superhero to save the day.
This particular business was managing accounts receivables for their customers via third-party payment agents. In addition to managing client data, they were struggling to manage their own back office data with no cross-system visibility or streamlined reporting.
The Opportunity: Their operations could be streamlined drastically if only the data from their multiple systems could be aggregated and one set of reports could be derived from that aggregate data͘.
Challenges:
- Provide a better way for the client’s customers to manage their file uploads with minimal problems and support intervention.
- Provide the client’s customers with the requested insights into their data.
- Boost the client’s operational efficiency.
RTS Labs did a complete data integration, set up a data mart to drive reporting, and used embedded business intelligence to provide insights into customer data. As a result, customer retention was solidified, if not increased, and customer service costs were reduced.
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Case Study #5: Using Data to Uncover Cash Flow Issues in Accounts Receivable
Our client, a disease diagnostics company, was in its early phase of aggressive growth. While new clients were being acquired and new partnerships were being forged rapidly, a pile of claim denials and receivables were accumulating in the background. With little insight into the nature of these denials and payment delays, their percentage collections were low and accounts receivables had hit an all-time high.
The Solution: RTS Labs created a data mart and reporting system that allowed the client to analyze the data. In this example of business intelligence, we were able to uncover a trend of denials associated with a certain insurance payer that happened to be the largest payer group in those regions.
As a result, “Days in AR” was reduced by 30% in two months, and $8 million worth of claims was recovered.
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Case Study #6: Smart Marketing: Using Data to Save Money on Marketing Overhead
Our client, an online retail firm, had amassed a large amount of customer activity and transaction data on their eCommerce platform. But having the data is only the first step. They needed a way to organize and analyze that data, so they could better understand the impact of their marketing activities. They also needed it done affordably.
The Solution: With our affordable and comprehensive BI toolkit, we segmented their buyers based on a variety of factors, refined a target list of customers to whom they should approach with email offers, and determined the email perfect frequency.
The result was a decreased number of emails marked as spam, a three-fold surge in response to marketing initiatives, a 30% reduction in customer churn rates, and a 60% reduction in marketing costs.
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Case Study #7: Better Business Processes Across the Board with the Help of BI
As a fast-growing healthcare business in the U.S., our client was faced with the challenge of having large amounts of data located in disparate sources. The isolated databases had no cross compatibility, preventing our client from utilizing this data when making key business decisions.
The Solution: RTS Labs implemented a unified business intelligence system, integrating multiple data sources into a single platform, and created high-value reports that provided multi-dimensional analysis.
The result was an increase in productivity across the board; billing, marketing, sales, and finance departments were armed with the tools they needed to perform their jobs more efficiently. By helping the right people to make sense of fragmented data, these reporting insights fundamentally steered the company towards a direction of well-managed expansion.
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Arthur C. Nielsen, the founder of The Nielsen Company, once said, “The price of light is less than the cost of darkness.”
The RTS Labs BI team loves taking clients out of the darkness and into the light by empowering their teams with data. As you can see from these seven examples, the investment in business intelligence is worth it. All you need is the right partner for your BI journey.
