18 Case Studies and Real-World Examples of How Business Intelligence Keeps Top Companies Competitive

Business intelligence (BI) provides data that helps companies make timely and informed decisions. We explain how implementing BI software can give companies of any size a competitive edge. Plus, we share examples of how some of the most tech savvy companies are using BI.

What Is Business Intelligence (BI)?

Business intelligence refers to the technology that enables businesses to organise, analyse and contextualise business data from around the company. BI includes multiple tools and techniques to transform raw data into meaningful and actionable information.

BI systems have four main parts:

1. A data warehouse stores company information from a variety of sources in a centralised and accessible location.
2. Business analytics or data management tools mine and analyse data in the data warehouse.
3. Business performance management (BPM) tools monitor and analyse progress towards business goals.
4. A user interface (usually an interactive dashboard with data visualisation reporting tools) provides quick access to the information.

German market research firm Statista estimates the volume of data created worldwide by 2024 will be 149 zettabytes. This vast amount of data, or "big data," has made business intelligence systems relevant for companies that want to harness its power for a competitive advantage. Many BI systems use artificial intelligence (AI) and other capabilities as a part of business analytics.

Key Takeaways:

• Business intelligence offers a wide variety of tools and techniques to support reliable and accurate decision-making.
• The most successful companies use BI to make sense of ever-increasing amounts of data in a fast and economical way.
• BI-based, data-driven decision-making helps companies stay relevant and competitive.

Where Is BI Used?

Sales, marketing, finance and operations departments use business intelligence. Tasks include quantitative analysis, measuring performance against business goals, gleaning customer insights and sharing data to identify new opportunities.

Here are examples of how various teams and departments use business intelligence.

• Data scientists and analysts:

  Analysts are BI power users, and they use centralised company data paired with powerful analytics tools to understand where opportunities for improvement exist and what strategic recommendations to propose to company leadership.

• Finance:

  By blending financial data with operations, marketing and sales data, users can pull insights from which decisions can be acted upon and understand factors that impact profit and loss.

• Marketing:

  Business intelligence tools help marketers track campaign metrics from a central digital space. BI systems can provide real-time campaign tracking, measure each effort’s performance and plan for future campaigns. This data gives marketing teams more visibility into overall performance and provides contextual visuals for sharing with the company.

• Sales:

  Sales data analysts and operation managers often use BI dashboards and key performance indicators (KPIs) for quick access to complex information like discount analysis, customer profitability and customer lifetime value. Sales managers monitor revenue targets, sales rep performance along with the status of the sales pipeline using dashboards with reports and data visualisations.

• Operations:

  To save time and resources, managers can access and analyse data like supply chain metrics to find ways to optimise processes. Business intelligence can also ensure that service level agreements are met and help improve distribution routes.

In a genuinely data-driven company, every department and employee can take advantage of BI-generated insights.

What Is the Value of Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence's highest value is its ability to support data-driven decisions. BI transforms pools of raw data into useful information that informs decisions and leads to actions that yield positive bottom-line impact.

BI systems drive decisions based on historical, current and potential future data.

• Descriptive analytics:

  These analytics reveal what has happened or is happening and are part of dashboards, business reporting, data warehousing and scorecards. When managed well, you’ll have a better understanding of problem areas in your business and can find opportunities to improve.

• Predictive analytics:

  These advanced analytics use data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning to help make projections of future events and assess the likelihood that something will happen.

• Prescriptive analytics:

  These analytics reveal why you should take a particular action. Prescriptive analytics enable optimisation, simulation, decision modeling and provide the best possible analysis for business decisions and actions.

BI software gathers sales, production, financial and many other business data sources. Many companies use industry data to benchmark performance against competitors.

Business intelligence has many benefits and can be a useful tool to achieve positive outcomes for your business.

Case Studies: Real-World Examples of Business Intelligence at Work

Fast, data-informed decision-making can drive success. High customer expectations, global competition and narrow profit margins mean many organisations, regardless of size or sector, look to BI for a competitive advantage.

What is an example of business intelligence? Using data to serve up personalised ads based on browsing history, providing contextual KPI data access for all employees and centralising data from across the business into one digital ecosystem so processes can be more thoroughly reviewed are all examples of business intelligence. Here are some case studies that show some ways BI is making a difference for companies around the world:

1. Lotte.com: BI Increases Company Revenue

   Lotte.com is the leading internet shopping mall in Korea with 13 million customers.

   • Challenge: With more than 1 million site visitors daily, company executives wanted to understand why customers abandon shopping carts.
   • Solution: The assistant general manager of the marketing planning team implemented customer experience analytics, the first online behavioural analysis system applied in Korea. The manager used the information to understand customer behaviour and implement targeted marketing and transform the website.
   • Results: With the insights from the new BI analytics program, there was an increase in customer loyalty after one year and an increase of US$10 million in sales. The changes came from identifying the causes of shopping cart abandonment, such as a long checkout process and unexpected delivery times and remedying the situation.

2. Baylis & Harding: BI Provides Decision Making Process Support

   Baylis & Harding is a wholesale distributor specialising in world-class toiletries and gift sets found in major and independent retailers such as Chemist Warehouse in Australia and Lazada in Southeast Asia.

   • Challenge: The company needed to give managers and executives greater visibility into financial, customer and sales data to make better decisions and expand the business.
   • Solution: Managers and executives used business intelligence tools to create standard and ad hoc reports.
   • Results: Company executives and managers now have instant access to the business data they need to act proactively. They can create custom dashboards with KPIs relevant to their areas of focus and share the goals and performance details with their teams without having to request a custom report from IT.

3. Sabre Airline Solutions: BI Accelerates Business Insights

   Sabre Airline Solutions provides booking tools, revenue management, web and mobile itinerary tools, as well as other technology, for airlines, including Virgin Australia, hotels and other companies in the travel industry around the world.

   • Challenge: The travel industry is remarkably fast paced. And Sabre's clients needed advanced tools that could provide real-time data on customer behaviour and actions.
   • Solution: Sabre developed an enterprise travel data warehouse (ETDW) to hold its enormous amounts of data. Sabre executive dashboards provide near real-time insights in user-friendly environments with a 360-degree overview of business health, reservations, operational performance and ticketing.
   • Results: The scalable infrastructure, graphic user interface, data aggregation and ability to work collaboratively have led to more revenue and increased client satisfaction.

4. SKF: BI Streamlines Manufacturing Processes

   SKF is a Sweden-based global manufacturer and supplier of bearings, seals, mechatronics and lubrication systems with 17,000 distributor locations and multiple offices across APAC.

   • Challenge: SKF's broad geographic coverage and product diversity required consistent market size and product demand forecasting to adjust its manufacturing. The company needed to simplify the complex Excel files used to produce a demand forecast.
   • Solution: Management realised it needed to implement business intelligence to serve as a single source of reliable information. Maintaining the system is easier than trying to manage everything with Excel, and now employees don’t have to rely on outdated spreadsheets and can access simple-to-understand reports and dashboards.
   • Results: By centralising data assets into a single system, SFK was quickly able to share data and analyses between several departments — including sales, manufacturing planning, application engineering, business development and management. SKF now combines demand forecasts between departments and has improved the planning process.

5. Expedia: BI Builds Customer Satisfaction

   Expedia is the parent company of some top-tier travel companies, including Expedia, Trivago, Hotwire and TripAdvisor.

   • Challenge: Customer satisfaction is essential to the company's mission, strategy and success. The online experience should mirror a good trip experience, but the company had no visibility into the voice of the customer.
   • Solution: The company had mountains of data they were manually aggregating, leaving little time for analysis. Using business intelligence, the customer satisfaction group was able to analyse customer data from across the company and link results with 10 objectives related directly to corporate initiatives. Owners of those KPIs build, manage and analyse data to discover trends or patterns.
   • Results: The customer service team can see how well it is doing against KPIs in real-time and take corrective steps if necessary. Plus, other departments can use the data. For example, a travel manager can use BI to discover high volumes of unused tickets or offline booking and create strategies to adjust behaviour and increase overall savings.

6. Emma & Tom’s: BI Optimises Supply Chain

   Emma & Tom’s is an Australian healthy drinks and snacks producer.

   • Challenge: The business needed a supply chain management platform that could bring its entire distribution process in-house and scale to accommodate global plans, all while maintaining its trademark customer service.
   • Solution: The company was using software that was difficult to integrate and would require another instance for international expansion. Integrating its supply chain, financial, CRM, sales and marketing, order management, and warehouse and inventory management processes gave Emma & Tom’s the BI it needed to optimise its in-house distribution processes to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction.
   • Results: Today Emma & Tom’s products are now distributed to over 5,000 outlets in Australia and are exported to China, Jordan, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

7. Koko Black: BI Provides Visibility for Decision Making

   Koko Black is a gourmet chocolatier who uses only the finest ingredients to create premium, world-class, distinctively Australian chocolate.

   • Challenge: Koko Black struggled to unify data from disparate business units and only had visibility of sales volumes on a monthly basis, as part of its month end close.
   • Solution: The company overhauled its systems for integration between procurement, inventory management, POS systems and other functions. Managers can now leverage BI to see margins at a product category level and at a SKU level.
   • Results: Koko Black’s leaders are now able to track the profitability on every unit sold in real time and refine decision-making at a granular level.

8. BioPak: BI Optimises Supply Chain to Improve Sustainability

   BioPak uses plant-based products to produce compostable, hygienic and affordable food packaging for Australia, New Zealand and UK markets.

   • Challenge: BioPak experienced complicated order tracking and wanted better visibility of its supply chain in order to improve its environmental footprint.
   • Solution: BioPak used BI identify supply chain issues and improve operations.
   • Results: Increased efficiencies helped BioPak improve its sustainability practices whilst giving it more time to focus on driving innovation.

9. Haribon Foundation: BI Improves Financial Decision-Making

   Haribon is an environmental nongovernmental organisation (NGO) focusing on conserving natural sites and habitats, saving species and encouraging sustainability across the Philippines.

   • Challenge: To support its operations, the organisation relies heavily on fees from its 186 members and individual donations.
   • Solution: Haribon Foundation collects BI data from its membership and donor database.
   • Results: Using business intelligence to segment its donors and members helps the organisation to identify which projects resonate with each segment. Tailoring its marketing campaigns to suit the preferences of each segment helps drive more support for its causes.

10. Spell & The Gypsy Collective: BI Provides Visibility for Decision-Making

    Spell & The Gypsy Collective is a modern-bohemian fashion brand founded in Byron Bay Australia with a wholesale channel of more than 150 retail partners around the world.

    • Challenge: Siloed applications were preventing the business from making confident decisions about its continued expansion.
    • Solution: The business moved to a unified platform for financial and inventory management so it could better track sales volumes, inventory levels, shipping costs and more. Decision-makers can now leverage BI to inform its growth strategy.
    • Results: Using business intelligence to strategically chart growth allows the business to make data-driven decisions about when to open a new boutique or expand into additional countries.

11. Aspire Systems: BI Identifies Growth Opportunities

    Aspire Systems offers IT infrastructure support from its offices in India, Singapore and 13 other countries.

    • Challenge: The company relied on manual business processes and struggled to see sales reports and revenue in real time. This prevented leadership from making timely, informed decisions to help the business continue to grow.
    • Solution: Automating its financial processes gives the business a more timely and accurate view of the sales performance of its 20 entities in 11 countries.
    • Results: The company now uses BI to navigate day-to-day market changes and identify growth opportunities quickly.

Use Cases: Examples of Business Intelligence Strategies Prominent Companies Use

The most successful companies use BI to drive revenue, customer loyalty, operational effectiveness, ad delivery, drive shareholder value, predict customer behaviour and develop new business opportunities.

Examples of How Leading Companies Use BI to Propel Their Success

What companies use business intelligence? From financial institutions like American Express to social media giant Facebook, the most advanced and successful companies in the world leverage BI. Here’s how some are using BI to power their prosperity.

12. American Express:

    Business intelligence is instrumental in the finance industry. American Express has been using the technology to develop new payment service products and market offers to customers. The company's experiments in the Australian market have rendered it capable of identifying up to 24% of all Australian users who will close their accounts within four months. Using that information, American Express takes steps to retain customers. BI also helps the company accurately detect fraud and protect customers whose card data may be compromised.

13. Coca-Cola:

    With 35 million Twitter followers and a whopping 105 million Facebook fans, Coca-Cola benefits from its social media data. Using AI-powered image-recognition technology, the company can tell when photographs of its drinks post online. This data, paired with the power of BI, gives the company important insights into who is drinking their beverages, where they are and why they mention the brand online. The information helps serve consumers more targeted advertising, which is four times more likely than a general ad to result in a click.

14. Netflix

    The online entertainment company's 148 million subscribers give it a massive BI advantage. How does Netflix use business intelligence? Netflix uses data in multiple ways. One example is how the company formulates and validates original programming ideas based on previously viewed programs. Netflix also uses business intelligence to get people to engage with its content. The service is so good at targeted content promotion that its recommendation system drives over 80% of streamed content.

15. Starbucks:

    Through its popular loyalty card program and mobile application, Starbucks owns individual purchase data from millions of customers. Using this information and BI tools, the company predicts purchases and sends individual offers of what customers will likely prefer via their app and email. This system draws existing customers into its stores more frequently and increases sales volumes.

16. Tesla:

    The innovative automotive company uses BI to connect their cars wirelessly to their corporate offices to collect data for analysis. This approach links the carmaker to the customer and anticipates and corrects problems such as component damage, traffic or road hazard data. The result is a high customer satisfaction score and better-informed decisions on future upgrades and products.

17. Uber:

    The company uses business intelligence to determine multiple core aspects of its business. An example is surge pricing. Algorithms monitor traffic conditions, journey times, driver availability and customer demand in real-time, meaning prices adjust as demand rises and traffic conditions change. Dynamic pricing in real-time action is akin to what airlines and hotel chains use to adjust cost based on need.

18. Walmart:

    The retail behemoth uses BI to understand how online behaviour influences online and in-store activity. By analysing simulations, Walmart can understand customer purchasing patterns, for example, how many eyeglass exams and glasses are sold in any one of its hundreds of stores across China during a single day, and pinpoint the busiest times during each day or month.

How to Improve Your Business Intelligence to Make Your Company a Leader

BI and tools like AI may seem complicated. However, current user interfaces are straightforward and easy to use. So even smaller companies can take advantage of data to make profitable and positive decisions.

Examples of Business Intelligence Tools and Techniques

What are examples of business intelligence tools? Predictive modeling, data mining and contextual dashboards or KPIs are just some of the most common BI tools. Here are more tools and how they’re used.

• Analytics:

  A BI technique that probes data to extract trends and insights from historical and current findings to drive valuable data-driven decisions.

• Dashboards:

  Interactive collections of role-relevant data are typically stocked with intuitive data visualisations, KPIs, analytics metrics and other data points that play a role in decision-making.

• Data mining:

  This practice uses statistics, database systems and machine learning to uncover patterns in large datasets. Data mining also requires pre-processing of data. End-users use data mining to create models that reveal patterns.

• Extract Transfer Load (ETL):

  This tool extracts data from data-sources, transforms it, cleans it in preparation for reports and analysis and loads it into a data warehouse.

• Model visualisation:

  The model visualisation technique transforms facts into charts, histograms and other visuals to support correct insight interpretation.

• Online Analytical Processing (OLAP):

  OLAP is a technique for solving analytical problems with multiple dimensions from various perspectives. OLAP is useful for completing tasks such as performing CRM data analysis, financial forecasting and budgets.

• Predictive modeling:

  A BI technique that utilises statistical methods to generate probabilities and trend models. With this technique, predicting a value for specific data sets and attributes using many statistical models is possible.

• Reporting:

  Reporting involves gathering data using various tools and software to mine insights. This tool provides observations and suggestions about trends to simplify decision-making.

• Scorecards:

  Visual tools, such as BI dashboards and scorecards, provide a quick and concise way to measure KPIs and indicate how a company is progressing to meet its goals.

Examples of Business Intelligence Trends

BI is continually evolving and improving, but four trends – artificial intelligence, cloud analytics, collaborative BI and embedded BI – are changing how companies are using expansive data sets and making decisions far easier.

• Artificial intelligence:

  AI and machine learning emulate complex tasks executed by human brains. This capability drives real-time data analysis and dashboard reporting.

• Cloud analytics:

  BI applications in the cloud are replacing on-site installations. More businesses are shifting to this technology to analyse data on demand and enrich decision-making.

• Embedded BI:

  When BI software is integrated into another business application, it’s called embedded BI or embedded analytics. Some of the benefits of embedded BI include enhanced reporting functionalities, and it’s been shown to improve sales and increase customer retention.

Many companies look to cloud-based or software-as-a-service (SaaS) instead of on-premise software to keep up with growing warehousing requirements and faster implementations. A growing trend is the use of mobile BI to take advantage of the proliferation of mobile devices.

Examples of Business Intelligence Software and Systems

BI software and systems provide options suited to specific business needs. They include comprehensive platforms, data visualisation, embedded software applications, location intelligence software and self-service software built for non-tech users.

Here are some examples of the latest BI software and systems:

• Business intelligence platforms:

  These are comprehensive analytics tools that data analysts use to connect to data warehouses or databases. The platforms require a certain level of coding or data preparation knowledge. These solutions offer analysts the ability to manipulate data to discover insights. Some options provide predictive analytics, big data analytics and the ability to ingest unstructured data.

• Data visualisation software:

  Suited to track KPIs and other vital metrics, data visualisation software allows users to build dashboards to track company goals and metrics in real-time to see where to make changes to achieve goals. Data visualisation software accommodates multiple KPI dashboards so that each team can set up their own.

• Embedded business intelligence software:

  This software allows BI solutions to integrate within business process portals or applications or portals. Embedded BI provides capabilities such as reporting, interactive dashboards, data analysis, predictive analytics and more.

• Location intelligence software:

  This BI software allows for insights based on spatial data and maps. Similarly, a user can find patterns in sales or financial data with a BI platform; analysts can use this software to determine the ideal location to open their next retail store, warehouse or restaurant.

• Self-service business intelligence software:

  Self-service business intelligence tools require no coding knowledge to take advantage of business end-users. These solutions often provide prebuilt templates for data queries and drag-and-drop functionality to build dashboards. Users like HR managers, sales representatives and marketers use this product to make data-driven decisions.

How NetSuite Improves and Increases the Value of BI for Your Organisation

BI tools can have an enormous impact on your business. They can help you improve your inventory control, better manage your supply chain, identify and remove bottlenecks in your operations and automate routine tasks. But for BI tools to be most effective, you first have to centralise data that’s stored in multiple disparate systems.

NetSuite business intelligence tools take the data stored in your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and provide built-in, real-time dashboards with powerful reporting and analysis features. By centralising data from your supply chain, warehouse, CRM and other areas with an ERP, NetSuite business intelligence tools can help you identify issues, trends and opportunities, along with the ability to then drill down to the underlying data for even further insight.

It’s likely your business has large amounts of data that could be used to boost your profitability. The challenge is organising and structuring your data in such a way that you can then glean insights. From there, you need to create clear, concise and actionable reports and data visualisations and distribute them to key stakeholders on your team. None of this can be done without advanced software, such as ERP products that collect and manage all your data.