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Financial business intelligence: The key to unlocking profitability

Fact: Companies that employ financial business intelligence are 19 times more likely to be profitable than those that don’t.

Financial business intelligence combines software tools and business processes that collect, analyze, and visualize raw financial performance data into automated reports and actionable insights. Decision-makers can use this data and take actions to improve cash flow, optimize budgets, or identify new, previously overlooked cost-saving opportunities.

In contrast, traditional reporting and analysis, which mostly relies on manual processes and static data, may be significantly less effective without business intelligence (BI) tools.

Let’s compare:

	Traditional reporting	Financial Business Intelligence
Data processing	Manual, time-consuming	Automated, fast, and efficient
Accuracy	Prone to errors	High accuracy with real-time data analysis
Insights	Limited and retrospective	Actionable and predictive
Decision-making support	Slower, reactive	Faster, proactive
Scalability	Difficult to adapt to large datasets	Easily handles and scales with complex datasets
Competitive advantage	Minimal	Significant, with improved profitability
Artificial Intelligence Integration	None	Can incorporate Generative AI with data security

This article will go into depth and will help you understand why you should use financial business intelligence for your organization and how Geniusee can help you with it.

Why do businesses need financial business intelligence?

Modern businesses produce gigantic amounts of data. This includes:

customer interactions and behavior
sales transactions and financial metrics
marketing campaigns and their performance
data related to supply chains and inventories
employee productivity
operational efficiency data, and much more.

With such a great load of information, it’s no wonder that it is often poorly structured and hard to analyze. So, even if a company tries to follow a data-driven approach in its decisions, it’s often hard or impossible to make it really effective. And this is where the role of business intelligence becomes visible.

Think of BI as your organization's backbone.

BI tools centralize, organize, and interpret raw data into valuable insights. For example:

Based on behavioral data, they identify your customers’ preferences and provide recommendations to improve your marketing strategies.
They analyze sales over different periods and seasons and forecast future demands.
They monitor employee productivity and performance metrics, highlighting patterns and areas for improvement.

Why is it important to implement?

Companies that don’t implement financial business intelligence or don’t do it properly face several challenges:

They may have sales data in one system, inventory data in another, and customer behavior information in a third. This ineffectiveness between the business systems makes it challenging to even answer a simple question: “Which products generate the highest profit per customer segment?”
If data is handled manually, human errors may occur, directly affecting its quality. For example, duplicated entries or inconsistent formats may make it even harder to analyze and make actionable conclusions.
Creating reports and analytics becomes a complex process with inconsistent data and human elements. Imagine an accountant manually sourcing data from various sources to create monthly financial reports.
At the same time, without the proper implementation of financial business intelligence, employees might be resistant to adapting to a BI tool. The reason is simple: it can be intimidating for them to use what’s objectively not properly set up.
Improper financial business intelligence implementation can also lead to data silos. Think of it like departments building walls around their information. For instance, a marketing team might have customer data that can help the finance team optimize prices. But if this data isn’t easily shareable, the opportunity is lost!

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Advantages of leveraging financial business intelligence

The usage of business intelligence tools goes back to the time when mainframe-based support systems were used to aid business decisions. Businesses have always used such systems, but technology and terminology have changed as per the changing needs.

Today, business intelligence works on cloud or enterprise servers and can seamlessly sync with mobile devices. Additionally, with the emergence of AI technology, BI will get better over time.

Here are some of the benefits of BI for a typical organization:

Enhanced decision-making. Real-time tracking of financial data and accurate presentation give a robust picture to executives and decision-makers. This timely delivery also helps in noticing any early trends that would’ve gone unnoticed with traditional reporting.
Improved operational efficiency. Business intelligence in finance saves a significant amount of time. Manually sorting or collecting data is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors.
Strategic growth and competitive edge. Leveraging BI, organizations can spot patterns or opportunities valuable to the business. For example, a company can learn that 60% of their target customers purchase more via mobile devices. This insight can help the organization direct its efforts toward mobile readiness.

Practical applications of BI in various industries

Every organization does financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and deals with data. So, it’s a no-brainer that every business needs financial BI. However, business intelligence in financial services or other difficult niches may be more complex because of their nature.

The following table shows some of the key industries where BI is primarily used:

Industries	Use case	Example
Banking and financial services	Helps in fraud detection and overall credit risk analysis	HSBC detects fraud from millions of daily transactions and brings accuracy
Healthcare	Cost control and overall revenue cycle management	Healthcare organizations use BI tools to analyze patient payment behaviors and reduce overdue and delayed payments
Retail and e-commerce	Sales data management and overall inventory optimization	Amazon and other e-commerce platforms use BI to track pricing to stay ahead of the competition and maximize revenue

Implementing financial business intelligence in your business

Realizing the importance of financial BI for your organization is the first step. But before implementing, ensure your existing business systems are AI-friendly and overall ready to improve. Most modern-day BI systems use a built-in generative AI module (known as “generative BI”), so compatibility should be considered.

So, here are several steps you should follow to implement a financial BI into your business systems:

1. State and define the purpose

It is essential to clearly define the objectives of using BI for your organization. Start by analyzing the current financial analytics environment and business needs. For instance, evaluate your existing data sources such as POS systems, CRM, financial systems, and HR and payroll systems.

2. Choosing the right BI tool

Depending upon the business category, choose which BI tools are right for you. For example, retail chain organizations use Tableau to optimize inventory and analyze customer behavior. This is because Tableau has robust visualization capabilities. Similarly, tech businesses go for Looker, a BI system that is mainly used for product analytics and to automate tracking of user behavior.

If it all feels too much, you can always get professional help. Geniusee’s consulting services can help you select and set up the right financial BI tool for your niche.

3. Dashboard designing and implementation

Dashboards are interactive visual representations of key metrics. Imagine it as the command center of business finances. Further, dashboards differ based on who they’re for—executives, operations team, or finance team.

After the dashboard design, the BI is integrated with different processes and systems of business. For instance, an organization can integrate BI into monthly financial reviews, strategic planning sessions, or even daily operation meetings.

4. Train your team

When you implement new technology into business systems, certainly, there’s a need for training your team. You must develop a training program that addresses and teaches about the upgrade. This can be a workshop, online tutorial, or even vendor-led sessions but customized for your team.

Further, the training program should be role-specific and should be on relevant dashboards. For example, the financial team should be trained on the financial dashboard. This way, they’ll understand how that particular dashboard integrates with the existing system and efficiently generates reports.

5. Getting feedback and improving

The financial BI is like a living entity, similar to your business. It needs continuous improvements, and for that, you have to develop a system. Some of the steps an organization should take:

Conducting regular feedback sessions with the users.
Auditing the BI systems and upgrading them.
Monitoring the performance of the financial business intelligence systems.

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Here’s how Geniusee can help

The implementation of financial business intelligence is a complex process where you may need a professional team with relevant experience. If that’s the case, Geniusee can help.

We have developed multiple projects for the finance industry, including artificial intelligence and financial business intelligence development and implementation. So, if you’re looking for a reliable and knowledgeable technical partner for software development, the Geniusee team is here for you!

Key takeaways

There you go! Now, you know how a financial business intelligence service can support your organization’s growth.

To summarize, financial BI is a collection of tools and systems that collect, analyze, and visualize raw financial data. This data is then used by decision-makers, for instance, the finance team, to chart the right course of the business. For example, a BI system that reports about business sales can tell about buying patterns based on data on consumer buying behaviors. It’ll eventually help businesses allocate an accurate amount of funds for marketing!

Business intelligence finance also saves time by automating the tedious task of collecting and refining data. Traditionally, humans did it, but with the help of data-driven and AI-friendly BI tools, not only has operational efficiency increased but organizations have a competitive edge!

So, if you’re looking to unlock profitability, leverage financial BI. We understand that implementing financial business intelligence can seem overwhelming, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. In that case, reach out to us for a tailored implementation.