7 Real-World Examples of Business Intelligence Automation in Action
Be it ecommerce, IT, healthcare, or any other field, data extraction and management is a critical part of every business that helps to make informed and calculated decisions. However, as the business grows, so do the requirements for data extraction.
That’s where business intelligence (BI) automation comes into the picture.
Business intelligence automation is a data analysis and management technique that combines different strategies and tools, such as business process management (BPM), artificial intelligence (AI), and robotic process automation (RPA) which helps reduce the involvement of data scientists and analysts in the data interpolation process.
What is Business Intelligence Automation?
Simply put, business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven approach to retrieving, processing, and managing data at the enterprise level. The main objective of BI is to assist executives and managers in making more insightful and better-informed decisions.
The procedure involves acquiring data from internal and external sources, arranging it properly for analysis, running queries, and finally, creating BI dashboards, visualizations, and reports. The results are then used to make strategic choices that will help increase efficiency and revenue for the business.
Automating BI accelerates this exact process while cutting down the time and cost required. Moreover, it significantly improves the quality of data extraction and presentation. As a result of business intelligence automation, data scientists and analysts can save a significant amount of their time, which can be invested in other more complex tasks.
Some of the common technologies applied in this approach include cognitive automation, machine learning, deep learning, speech recognition, natural language processing, intelligent document processing, and more.
Real-World Examples of Business Automation Intelligence
The following are real-world examples of businesses and companies benefiting from implementing BI automation in their work model. RTS Labs has covered some of the best examples for your reading convenience.
1. Meta Gaining Insights on Users
Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook Inc., is the biggest social media company today with billions of users worldwide. The company owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among several other platforms and services. Interestingly, over 77% (approximately 3.59 billion) of internet users are active on at least one of the social media platforms owned by Meta.
However, on top of being a social networking company, Meta is also one of the most popular advertisement service providers in the online realm. Almost every business, from small startups to multinational corporate giants, uses Meta’s ad services to increase its online presence. The company has adopted quite an intuitive business intelligence automation approach using insights from its users to improve ads performance.
The Meta algorithm keeps a record of the interests of each user based on their online activity. This information is then used to categorize users into different groups according to their mutual interests as well as demographics.
Consequently, when a business runs an ad campaign on any of the Meta platforms, the algorithm targets only those users who may be interested in the product or service. This BI automation technique by Meta not only helps businesses and companies reach out to the appropriate audience but also helps users avoid seeing irrelevant ads on their screens.
2. Amazon Anticipating User’s Purchases
Originally started as an online bookseller company, Amazon has transformed itself into an iconic version of electronic commerce. It is a vast internet-based enterprise that sells more than 12 million products to its millions of customers online. From selling books, toys, and electronics to marketing houses and apartments, Amazon has everything you can expect from an excellent online retailer.
The secret to business success for the world’s largest e-commerce retailer, Amazon, is their assurance of quick delivery and personalized services. The company’s patent for anticipatory shipping demonstrates how the retailer giant benefits by using analytics and business intelligence automation to accelerate the shipping process.
Having this kind of data and insights into users’ behavior to determine if they will complete the buying process or not, Amazon is able to initiate the shipping process well before the shoppers even make the purchase decision. A few hours’ early shipping means the company can get miles ahead of its competitors, thanks to the winning combination of predictive analytics and business intelligence automation.
3. Starbucks Individualizing Data on Customers’ Orders
This American multinational coffee chain is the leading roaster and retailer of specialty coffee, operating in 80 different countries with over 32,000 stores worldwide. Starbucks success can be attributed to its effective analytics strategy and subsequent ability to make data-based decisions on the spot.
The company is also the largest and most popular Seattle-based coffeehouse chain and a prominent user of business intelligence automation today. The Starbucks Loyalty Card Program, driven by a business intelligence automation model, allows the company to quickly scan through huge chunks of data of the users’ previous orders.
Based on leveraging the insights obtained from the data collected and analyzed, Starbucks can easily predict what offers a particular customer is most likely to be interested in. Therefore, the company is able to develop deals and offers that their customers would be most interested in, thus, maintaining a positive customer response.
4. American Express Tailoring the Users Perk Program
Business intelligence automation has proved to be the most effective tool in the finance sector, more than any other industry. Any financial organization worldwide is heavily dependent on the reliable analysis of its customer’s data.
American Express is amongst the first financial institutions to utilize BI automation in this field by implementing innovative technology to create new payment methods and offer better services to customers. Founded in 1850, American Express is a leading multinational payment company in the world that primarily offers cards to consumers and businesses.
The company has adhered to AML compliance and maintained a positive customer response for many years. Much like other companies on the list, AMEX offers its users the benefits of BI automation to help tailor the perk programs and give its customers what feels like an incredibly friendly user experience.
5. Coca-Cola Bottling Company Maximizing Operational Consistency
Interestingly, Coca-Cola used to struggle with manual report preparations and restricted access to real-time sales and operation data. It’s not surprising if you consider the company has to bring together the reports of various metrics from over 200 million lines of data collected from 100 different systems. However, the team overcame the problem by automating manual reporting and saving more than 40 hours per week.
Moreover, after introducing BI automation strategies, Coca-Cola was able to significantly optimize teamwork, hence, improving the operational workflow. As a result, analysts can focus on the bigger picture and long-term innovation rather than having to do all the manual reporting tasks.
6. Walmart Unifying Online Data
With over 10,000 stores, 10 websites, and almost 230 million customers every year, Walmart is easily one of the biggest retail corporations in the world. Considering these numbers, we can easily assume the mass quantities of data the company has to deal with.
Over the recent years, Walmart has incorporated business intelligence automation techniques to achieve its business goals. Originally, Walmart used to store data from each of its 10 websites in a 10-bit Hadoop cluster. When the company decided to transition to one single website, it shifted to a 250-bit Hadoop cluster to unify all its user data. Before moving further, it’s important to note that the Hadoop cluster stores data in unstructured form, making it difficult to analyze and visualize.
Walmart used BI automation tools to strategically organize and visualize this massive amount of data, making it much easier for managers to make insightful decisions. This allowed the company to push certain products that a certain number of customers may need further up their screens. On top of that, Walmart used BI tools to track the prices of products from all over the web, thus, offering the most competitive prices.
7. Delta Airline Tracking Luggage
It’s hard to find even a single person who hasn’t had a problem with their luggage during their air travels. Delta Airlines – one of the oldest airlines in business – has invested over $100 million in BI automation technology to eliminate this problem.
The company uses innovative BI solutions to track and handle customers’ luggage. It provides Delta headquarters with significant data resources, which are then used to identify various problems related to luggage misplacements and delays. This strategy has allowed the company to make decisions that have considerably reduced the risk of luggage loss or damage for passengers.
Takeaway
Many businesses that are now known globally for their outstanding services adopted business automation strategies to pave their path to success. While the examples discussed above are just a few implications of BI automation, possibilities with this approach are countless.
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