Simulating the future with business intelligence

So far, the 2020s have been all about adapting. The pandemic brought about changes in social and business habits that we haven’t seen since digitalisation began to take flight in the ‘90s and ‘00s, and all in the span of a couple of years.

Those that have managed to adapt to that change quickly are the ones currently prospering. Those still clinging onto what used to work are the ones fighting a losing battle. This is the major lesson that business leaders should take from the last 2 years.

Take a moment to focus on understanding how your business can adapt to change faster and more accurately, so that after the next seismic shift in the market, your business hits the ground running.

How better to practice your business’s adaptability than by accurately simulating it? This is where business intelligence comes in. With the right amount of data, you can simulate countless potential situations and understand what solutions you can implement.

For example, let’s say you sell consumer electronics. The semiconductor shortage that rocked the industry during the pandemic probably impacted your bottom line significantly, as a huge amount of electronics couldn’t be manufactured, and you therefore couldn’t sell them.

With BI, you can figure out what impact any particular product shortage would have on your business before it even happens. That way, you can understand what your potential Achilles’ heel is, and preemptively engineer a fix. Perhaps diversifying your product portfolio can reduce risk.

Let’s say you want to understand what would happen if a competitor entered one of your markets and undercut your offering. With BI, you could understand what potential strategy would work best in that situation. Perhaps you could match, or further undercut, your competitor’s pricing for six months before introducing a superior product. Or, BI could reveal that you could be offering a more efficient service than your competitor by eliminating a bottleneck.

One final example: if a retail store has well-organised data from multiple outlets in multiple locations, and is considering opening another, the data available to them can classify their overall risk. Can their logistics department handle the new workload, or will they need to recruit? If so, for how long will they be in the red due to higher payroll costs until the new store begins to turn a profit?

These are all scenarios that pose questions which can very often be answered thanks to business intelligence software. And with these answers already in hand, adapting to a crisis will be second nature. And yet, risk simulating is just one of many benefits that BI can bring to the table.