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Talk about the role data plays in helping grow businesses has all but exploded in recent years. Now, companies are more focused than ever on identifying, collecting, and analyzing data. The results of this analysis help stakeholders recognize that business intelligence and data analytics serve as key differentiators in a competitive marketplace. 

Yet, today's businesses must excel at more than merely creating a high-quality product. In this so-called "Age of the Consumer", they must also pay close attention to their client-base, keeping customers happy and perpetually improving service. Using analytics and business intelligence to achieve these goals is key to their success.

Understanding Business Intelligence

According to Forrester, Business Intelligence (frequently referred to as BI), is "A set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that leverage the output of information management processes for analysis, reporting, performance management, and information delivery. Research coverage includes executive dashboards as well as query and reporting tools."

BI involves data mining, online analytical processing (OLAP), querying, and reporting, and is used by companies to "improve decision making, cut costs and identify new business opportunities," according to CIO.

The article also notes another important benefit of BI, "This democratization of information access helps users back up—with hard numbers—business decisions that would otherwise be based only on gut feelings and anecdotes."

How Business Intelligence and Analytics Work Together

"The key difference between analytics and BI is that the former has predictive capabilities, whereas the latter has traditionally been based on providing analysis of historical data," according to Dataversity.

Businesses can use the tools and techniques of BI and analytics to better understand their customers, predict their behaviors, needs, and wants, and ultimately improve customer experience. 

This can be accomplished by addressing business goals or problems, and identifying data that can help you answer questions about those issues. Once the data is wrangled, cleaned, preprocessed and run through algorithms, data scientists derive insights that address business goals and ultimately improve customer experience.

"Customer preferences are constantly changing, and data analytics provides a reliable tool to collect and process this information on consumer behavior and buying habits," according to Data Science Central. "This is done through the use of predictive models like audience segmentation which can monitor your customers’ buying habits to separate old customers from new, repeat customers from single-purchase ones, among others."

How Solution as a Service Helps Businesses Improve Customer Experience

Juggling the responsibilities inherent in dealing with business intelligence and managing data analytics projects can prove to be a massive undertaking for a company, especially small businesses that wish to improve customer experience. 

Thankfully, there is no need to handle an overwhelming data analytics project on your own. Businesses can hire a vendor with a Solution as a Service (SolaaS) approach to analytics. Through a single vendor, SolaaS joins the power of the industry's top analytics engine with a team of experienced data analysts. These analysts work closely with business stakeholders to address goals and user needs. They then work to identify relevant data and use their business acumen to identify relationships and patterns within the data. The insights they gather will allow business leaders to make better, smarter decisions and ultimately improve customer experience.
 
Summary

As more business leaders pay attention to data, they realize that analytics serves as a key differentiator in their marketplace. Savvy stakeholders also recognize that in today's customer-driven environment, keeping clients happy and consistently improving their customer experience is key to a company's success. By joining forces with a Solution as a Service analytics (SolaaS) vendor, businesses will have experienced data scientists using business intelligence and analytics engine to derive insights that help strengthen customer experience.