05 May 2025|
Andrea Fernández Figueroa|
5 min read
In today’s competitive business environment, the ability to make informed decisions has become a key driver. According to Tableau, approximately 50% of global companies have already adopted some type of Business Intelligence (BI) solution, and with good reason.
Among the benefits are increased profitability, linked to more efficient and strategic operations, improved decision making through greater access and visibility, as well as process automation, saving time and eliminating errors in information.
However, determining the optimal time for this investment remains a challenge for many business leaders. In this article, we will explore the indicators that signal when an organization is ready to implement BI solutions.
When inconsistent data becomes a common problem, it’s time to consider a structured solution. Errors in information not only affect decision making but can have significant consequences for the company’s reputation and regulatory compliance.
Practical Tip: Start by identifying the areas where errors occur most frequently and evaluate their real impact on your operation.
If key reports arrive when opportunities have already passed, your company is operating at a significant disadvantage. In an environment where speed is crucial, data that arrives late equals lost opportunities.
Practical Tip: Determine which reports are critical for your daily operation and establish deadlines and metrics for them.
When your competitors seem to systematically anticipate market changes, they may be making better use of their data. Companies that effectively use business intelligence can identify trends and adapt faster than competitors who don’t.
Practical Tip: Analyze your competitors’ recent moves and evaluate whether better data utilization could have allowed you to implement similar initiatives.
Although intuition has value, important decisions need concrete data support. If important decisions are made primarily “by instinct,” your company could be taking unnecessary risks.
Practical Tip: For your next important decision, document the factors influencing it and evaluate how many are supported by verifiable data.
If your team operates in reactive mode, solving crises instead of preventing them, they probably lack the analytical tools and protocols to anticipate problems.
Practical Tip: Keep a record of crisis situations for a quarter and analyze how many could have been predicted with the right information.
When the company’s operation depends on one or more key people, your organization is in a vulnerable position. Generating clear protocols and processes is essential to reduce this dependence. BI allows automation of some of these tasks, thus freeing up operations.
Practical Tip: Identify the “essential players” in your organization and evaluate the risk their absence would represent.
During periods of growth, the need for reliable and accessible data multiplies. Expanding without the right analytical tools can lead to suboptimal decisions regarding location, product, or market.
Practical Tip: Before starting an expansion, determine which key indicators you’ll need to monitor to evaluate its success.
If your team invests a disproportionate amount of time in manually compiling reports, manual inventory reviews, month-end calculations, or solving problems that could have been anticipated, you’re wasting valuable resources on tasks that can be automated.
Practical Tip: Calculate the annual cost of hours spent on manual report preparation, manual processes and tasks, and compare it with the investment in a BI solution.
The inability to see how different areas of your company interact can result in local optimizations that don’t benefit the organization as a whole. Similarly, if the company is part of a consortium, it’s important to be able to analyze the portfolio of companies as a whole.
Practical Tip: Try to synthesize the current state of your company or consortium in a single report, clearly showing the strategies each area is using and their associated risks. If this is impossible or requires weeks of work, you probably need BI tools.
When profits stagnate without an apparent cause, the problem often lies in the lack of visibility on the factors that truly drive profitability.
Practical Tip: Analyze your product or service lines and identify which contribute most to your margins. Can you obtain this information easily?
If your managers and analysts spend most of their time collecting data, creating presentations, or manually reviewing information, instead of interpreting, finding opportunities, and making agile decisions, you’re underutilizing their intellectual capacity.
Practical Tip: Ask your team to document how they distribute their time between manual and repetitive tasks, recurring reports, and reviews, to identify what can be saved.
Although there is no universal threshold, companies with operations exceeding a certain volume (approximately 1.5 million dollars in annual sales) tend to benefit significantly from formal BI systems, as the return on investment is quick and the value added considerably exceeds the investment required. However, this doesn’t mean that BI isn’t profitable for smaller companies—in those cases, more specific and less extensive implementations could be considered.
Practical Tip: When implementing BI tools, it’s important that they contain metrics that allow monitoring the effect they are having on operations, to ensure they are being used correctly.
Business Intelligence is not simply another technological tool; it represents a fundamental change in the way organizations operate and make decisions. Companies that recognize the indicators mentioned and implement appropriate BI solutions not only improve their operational efficiency but also position themselves strategically for sustainable growth.
Do you have questions about how to implement improvements in your organization? At Datalyk, we can accompany you in this process, starting with a diagnosis of your current situation, selecting the right tools, designing the information platform according to your needs, helping you find opportunities in your information, and providing training for optimal use of BI.
