Can your Street Trader Benefit From Business Intelligence Software?
Business Intelligence was once relegated to the domain of only large companies, but now business intelligence software, like Tableau, is getting easier to implement by small and medium businesses that want to better analyse their data.
Some things never change and companies have been looking at data to bolster business since the beginning of, well, business. Go way, way back and a Roman sandal-clad street merchant 2,000 years ago might have noticed over time that he gets about a dozen more customers buying his wares on the days when he puts a canopy over his wagon as a shield from the hot midday sun. As a result, he goes to the trouble of putting the bothersome thing up every day and his business benefits.
That’s just smart, or as we’d say today, he was using Business Intelligence (BI), which, at its most simplistic level, is just looking at data to make better business decisions.
While in days past modus operandi may have been determined using gut feel and intuition coupled with simple observational data, today companies have unimaginable amounts of information available to guide business moves.
And big business has been trying to harness that animal since the early 90s when the term “data warehousing” started becoming in vogue.
Basically, enterprises began trying to figure out how to get data out of their operating systems and into the hands of decision makers without bogging them—the systems and the people—down. And in the last two decades they’ve made terrific progress in doing so.
Research companies Gartner and IDC both recently rated Tableau as the fastest growing business intelligence vendor in the world.
The beauty of Tableau, so its makers claim, is its simplicity. It takes the data you already have and makes it easier for you to lay it out into impressive formats. It won't be long before someone claims they've 'consumerised the business intelligence market'.
Don’t take their word for it, take Tableau for a free trial.
