At present, 53% of businesses are in the process of adopting big data analytics as part of their core Business strategy – and it’s no coincidence.

To win on today’s information-rich digital battlefield, turning insight into action is a must, and online data analysis tools are the very vessel for doing so. The world’s inherent rise in digital transformation coupled with today’s consumers’ appetite for the World Wide Web (and all entities either connected to it or surrounding it), there has never been a better time to utilize this raft of information to your advantage.

But with so many insights and such little time to analyze it, where do you even start? With data Intelligence, you’ll be able to drill down into the insights that really matter to your business and use them to make informed decisions that will ultimately help you improve your business.

In this post, we ask “what is data intelligence?”, explore data intelligence technologies, glance at information intelligence, and consider how these activities offer continued value in a real-life business context.

Let’s start by looking at the data intelligence definition.

What Is Data Intelligence?

Data intelligence refers to every analytical tool and activity based on forming a better understanding of the information and data a company (or business) collects, analyzing and utilizing it with the goal of enhancing and evolving business processes.

This invaluable analytical concept drills down into the analysis of information to extract value and meaning as well as promote enhanced data-driven decision-making across the organization.

When collecting and curating digital insights for intelligence purposes, businesses turn to a variety of valuable sources, such as business performance metrics, consumer-centric data, periodic trends, and a host of other descriptive information sets.

In contrast to business intelligence, which is largely centered on making logical sense of data and presenting it in a digestible, widely accessible format,  intelligence in data focuses more on analyzing the data in its purest form.

As such, data intelligence software covers five critical informational components: predictive, decisive, descriptive, prescriptive, and diagnostic data.

By adopting data intelligence software and methodologies in your organization, you will gain eyes and senses you never knew you had – the same goes for information intelligence, a similar term, but slightly different.
We’ve explored the data intelligence definition. Now it’s time to look at the information intelligence definition.

What Is Information Intelligence?

Information intelligence is a branch of data-centric intelligence offering a wider scope for turning seemingly unmanageable data and transforming it into initiatives that are beneficial to the ongoing success of the business.

An official information intelligence definition from IGI Global suggests:

[Information intelligence is] the technique of turning large volumes of complex data into relevant and actionable intelligence in order to better manage risk and increase profitability.

What this means is that through information intelligence methodologies, it’s possible to extract value from wider sets of insights to improve, enhance, and streamline core business initiatives. You can start by simply choosing from various KPI examples relevant to your business, or continue reading to delve into the benefits and real-life business scenarios of utilizing intelligence and data.

The Benefits Of Data Intelligence

We’ve delved into the meaning of data intelligence as well as information intelligence and considered how the two concepts overlap. Now, let’s look at the primary benefits of data intelligence tools and practices in the world of business.

• Adaptability: The digital world is in a constant state of evolution, which means that these days, businesses must be more adaptable to change than ever. That said, data intelligence tools and practices offer the ability to transform raw data into actionable insights, spot trends, and drill down into invaluable consumer data and data discovery processes. As a result, you will be able to make continued improvements in response to the environment around you, making your business exponentially more adaptable and, in turn, increasing your chances of long-term success.

• Scalability: Expanding on the previous point, this access to smarter data analytics will also offer your organization the adaptability to better respond to commercial growth, making it far easier to evolve and expand your practices, processes, and resources over time.

• Knowledge: By gaining the ability to structure sets of big data and dig deep into specific areas of the business, data-centric intelligence will provide you with a level of knowledge that will not only streamline your internal and external strategies but also allow you to discover groundbreaking new insights that could catalyze your commercial success. A 10% rise in data accessibility can result in a $65 million increase in net income for a Fortune 1000 company – a testament to the power of data-driven knowledge.

• Vision: Intelligence data analysis, if implemented wisely, can also offer an unrivaled predictive vision for today’s discerning business. A recent study suggests that the use of predictive analytics in business can result in an ROI of up to 25%. By providing a means of analyzing trends, patterns, and specific shifts within particular segments of data, data intelligence services boast a viable way of crafting your business processes and marketing strategies to improve lead generation while understanding your target consumers on a deeper, more meaningful level.

“You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.” – Daniel Keys Moran

Data Intelligence In The Real World

By now, it’s clear that intelligence data analysis, or intelligence data, provides a wealth of tangible benefits to those who embrace it. Here, we look at the use of data-driven intelligence in a real-life context, according to industry or sector.

1. Travel

The travel industry has long been dependent on using data to predict when people might travel, their reasons for travel, and what their specific needs might be to provide the best possible service at the best price point.

To help enhance their service levels and optimize their pricing strategies, many travel providers use intelligence information to examine historical data to understand times when there is more or less demand for tickets while tailoring their amenities or packages to suit the requirements of specific customers. By utilizing specific customer service KPIs, travel providers enhance their data knowledge and adjust their strategies to be able to provide the best service possible.

2. Education

Education is one of the world’s biggest and most important sectors. Yet, educators have often failed to utilize big data intelligence to help them provide a more valuable learning experience to their students.

When students migrate from one classroom to another and meet different lecturers throughout their day, keeping track of an individual student’s progress can seem impossible. But through big data intelligence, institutions are now able to equip teachers with a deeper, more panoramic insight into their students’ academic progress, empowering them to spot potential weaknesses, provide support when needed, and tailor the learning experience to the individual. 

3. Healthcare

Offering the right treatment or taking the right action at the right time is critical in the healthcare industry – sometimes, it can mean life or death. The ability to analyze complex, real-time datasets to improve decision-making is a much-needed asset.

Data intelligence technologies and healthcare analytics tools have played a pivotal role in improving the healthcare sector in a number of key areas, most of which you can explore in greater detail with our healthcare reports guide. Moreover, an excellent example of data intelligence technologies in healthcare comes in the form of our hospital dashboard.

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Primary KPIs:

• Treatment Costs
• ER Wait Time
• Patient Wait Time

With overstretched hospitals, in particular, a great deal of data and insights get bounced from one department to another, causing fragmentation, which leads to inefficiencies across the board.

Focusing on treatment costs, ER waiting times, and patient waiting times, the hospital KPI dashboard provides a cohesive panoramic snapshot of critical data from one central location, offering a level of insight that significantly improves service levels while boosting economic efficiency.

4. Retail

The retail sector is the very embodiment of supply and demand. Data has long been used to understand consumer behavior, but with the right retail KPIs and data intelligence software, the level of understanding improves exponentially.

To illustrate this point, let’s take a glimpse at our retail store dashboard – one of our most comprehensive data intelligence tools that expound on retail analytics in its core.

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Primary KPIs:

• Average Transaction Size
• Average Units per Customer

This data intelligence platform helps to identify invaluable customer patterns, gaining a deeper insight into buying behaviors and transaction values. Moreover, this intuitive piece of data intelligence software will help you gauge of which items are most popular among your consumer base – priceless information for any modern eCommerce business.

5. Energy

The energy sector thrives on striking the best balance between cost and service. The vast majority of power plants or suppliers have a firm grasp of when demand is higher or lower. However, by using data intelligence software, companies can make energy provisions more efficient while driving down costs. By drilling down into historical demand, power plants can now predict minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour energy demands, according to factors such as the season and time of day, using this information to provide the exact quantity of energy required for specific purposes.

To demonstrate the value of data intelligence tools in the energy sector, here’s our energy management dashboard for reference.

**click to enlarge**

Primary KPIs:

• Power Cuts & Average Duration
• Consumption by Sector

A state-of-the-art data intelligence tool, this dashboard helps energy providers develop more sustainable initiatives that not only help the environment but also cut down operational costs and enhance the energy analytics process. Also, by being able to gain a greater understanding of consumption in particular sectors as well as power cuts and downtime, it’s possible to make your internal processes and practices significantly more efficient and productive.

There’s no doubt about it: data intelligence is the way forward for today’s businesses, and regardless of your industry or sector, by embracing its power, you will enjoy a brighter, more prosperous tomorrow.

For more on how datapine can take your business analytics and intelligence to the next level, try our software for a 14-day trial completely free, and explore your data in just a few clicks!

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