Business intelligence and CRM are two tools that can help you organize the data in your business. Here’s what each one does and how it can help you improve how your business works internally.
To keep up with the competition, it can be helpful for some businesses to buy a computer program that organizes important data. Depending on what your business needs, a business intelligence system or CRM system could help your company grow.
How do you define business intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) is a type of software that collects and analyzes data from a business. Businesses can then use this collection of data to analyze the information shown, run queries, and make reports.
After looking at the data and figuring out what it means, companies can make good decisions that will help the business, like cutting costs.
What business intelligence can do for you
- Productivity should go up.
- Companies can easily put together reports and collect data with the help of an online BI system.
- This lets businesses use the time they would have spent managing and collecting data by hand on more useful tasks.
- More taking responsibility.
- Most business intelligence systems have accountability, which makes it possible for companies to find out which employees or teams accessed certain data.
- Business processes should be made easier.
- BI systems help to streamline business processes, which saves time and money for the business.
Business intelligence has its problems.
- Implementation that takes a long time.
- Even though these systems can save time in the long run, they can take up to a year and a half to set up and run properly.
- Multiple BI applications.
- Some businesses may need to buy more than one BI application to make sure their BI system works well together.
- This is another way that business intelligence systems can cost money and take a lot of time for some businesses.
- An expensive investment.
- BI systems have many benefits, but it can be expensive for businesses to set them up and even more expensive to build them from scratch if they can’t find a solution that works for them.
Why you should use a CRM
- Data collection and organization that works well.
- Most CRMs let employees collect and organize data in an efficient way, so sales reps can easily find the most important information no matter where they are.
- More money coming in.
- Even though it costs money to set up a CRM system, companies end up making more money in the long run because of how pipeline engagement works.
- Marketing and sales work together.
- With CRM systems, all customer information is kept in one place.
- This makes it easy for sales and marketing teams to get the information they need and work together to find the best ways to boost sales.
Problems with a CRM
- Some data entry by hand is needed for the first setup.
- Some CRM systems make it easy to import data, but others don’t.
- This means that sales teams have to move some data from their old systems by hand so that everything is in one place. This can take up a lot of time up front.
- An expensive investment.
- CRMs often have high subscription costs, which could be a problem for some businesses.
- Needs strategic planning. CRMs can help you gather and organize customer information, but they won’t be very useful if you don’t have a plan for how to use that information.
How does business intelligence compare to customer relationship management (CRM)?
When deciding if your business should use BI, CRM, or a combination of the two, it’s important to know what each tool can do for you.
Business intelligence helps businesses make business decisions based on knowledge and insight. As media and customer power changed, it became harder for teams to organize and make sense of large amounts of data. BI systems help businesses organize and make sense of this data while also giving them the right information. With the help of BI systems, businesses can plan for and make predictions about the future that could be good for the business as a whole.
CRM systems are more focused on the customer than BI systems are. Businesses can use these systems to improve the customer experience. For businesses to keep up with their competitors, customers must have a great experience. CRMs help businesses keep track of customer information so they can boost sales and focus on keeping customers.
