Business intelligence (BI) uses technology to analyze large data sets to derive insights that inform business decisions and help professionals be more productive on a daily basis. Business intelligence is a fairly broad umbrella that encompasses a wide variety of technologies and solutions.
Business intelligence isn’t only used by data scientists and analysts, though. In fact, one of the reasons business intelligence solutions are so powerful is because of the fact that every department throughout an organization can benefit from implementing business intelligence tools.
In finance, business intelligence tools can help users understand the impact certain decisions will have on the bottom line while marketing professionals can use business intelligence to visualize market data, plan for future campaigns, and more easily target specific demographics.
The case studies below will take you through some of the popular and innovative business intelligence solutions being used by major brands today.
If you know your organization has more potential, but you just don’t know where to start improving, check out Impact’s webinar, How to Identify High-Value Opportunities for Innovation.
1. Whole Foods and Data Visualization
Whole Foods has grown rapidly over the past few years, and they now have 460 stores throughout the US, Canada, and the UK.
The expansion itself is fairly impressive for the niche natural food supermarket that got its start in 1980 and is now a subsidiary of Amazon. What’s even more impressive, though, is how the natural foods supermarket is adjusting to their large-scale operations.
As Whole Foods grew, data analysts within the company were beginning to use ad-hoc and piece meal solutions for data aggregation and analysis. This resulted in data that wasn’t always accurate and, in turn, lost stakeholder trust.
By committing to a Tableau overhaul, however, Whole Foods was able to create a single source of truth for their data. Tableau allows them to create data visualizations and dashboards that empower their employees in day-to-day decisions all across the globe, while also contributing to long term strategy.
The natural foods market now has over 18,000 Tableau users across their company, effectively transforming their operations and becoming much more efficient.
2. Spotify's Suggested Listening
The Spotify suggested listening algorithm is considered to be one of the best on the market when compared to other music streaming applications. This is no accident.
Spotify has long been known for their dominance in the music streaming space, and have greatly risen the expectations of consumers in this industry. One of the reasons that Spotify is such a popular choice among avid music lovers is because of their unmatched suggested listening algorithm powered by business intelligence and data analytics.
By aggregating user listening data and pairing it with powerful business intelligence and data analytics tools, Spotify creates unique playlists for individual listeners on a daily, weekly, and even annual basis.
This incredibly personalized listening experience is one of the many reasons users flock to Spotify and contribute to their dominant market share of over 30%, which is the highest in the music streaming platform industry.
3. Chipotle Cooks Up Uniform KPIs
Chipotle, the Mexican restaurant chain, implemented business intelligence solutions in order to increase operational efficiency, monitor store productivity, and standardize data reporting across their entire 2,400 locations.
Using intricately designed dashboards, Chipotle can now monitor the operational efficiency of any individual location alongside a number of other metrics their dashboards are built to reflect.
One of the key takeaways in this specific business intelligence case study is the way in which Chipotle centralized their data ecosystem which in turn, allowed them to create uniform KPIs for tracking, reporting, and decision making.
This also allowed the Mexican fast-food chain to more easily call-out high performers and share success stories across the brand.
4. Coca-Cola and Social Media
We all know how powerful social media is and how much data exists on social media platforms. For data-centric organizations, a social media presence is more than just a convenient way to engage directly with consumers and define the brand voice.
Companies can use data from social media platforms to inform business decisions and operations across their entire organization. Coca-Cola happens to be excellent at this very strategy. With over 100 million fans on Facebook and 35 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), Cocoa-Cola has a huge following from which they can pull data.
Feeding the user data available via social media into business intelligence systems allows the beverage company to better understand who is drinking their product, gain insight into important demographic information, and can even highlight regional trends all-in-all informing stronger, and more effective marketing campaigns.
Not only this, but with the help of AI, Coca-Cola can recognize when users post their products on social media platforms which can lead to additional insights into consumer behavior and further inform business operations.
5. Starbucks Keeps You Sippin'
Starbucks is one of the most interesting businesses to study in the modern era. Of course, Starbucks’ stranglehold over the coffee-on-the-go market is impressive in and of itself, but what’s even more interesting in the case of Starbucks is how they’ve embraced the digital frontier.
Between their loyalty member program and their mobile application, Starbucks has effectively turned itself into a bank. This is because their mobile app allows users to deposit money into the app, which can be used to buy various Starbucks products. In the meantime, though, Starbucks has access to about $1.6 billion in outstanding gift card balances and mobile app deposits.
This is enhanced by the fact that the company has access to individual purchase data from users across their platforms. By implementing business intelligence solutions, Starbucks is able to utilize this massive amount of data and leverage it into unique sales, individual promotion offers, and other personalized offers delivered directly to users' phones or emails.
Wrapping up on Business Intelligence Case Studies
Business intelligence solutions empower organizations to do more with the data they’ve already collected. From data visualization, to deeper insights that inform business decisions and marketing campaigns, to more accurate reporting, business intelligence tools are already a core component for modern organizations.
By embracing business intelligence solutions in your company, you can effectively elevate your operations from top to bottom.
If you need some help figuring out where to start with business intelligence, or other digital solutions, check out Impact’s webinar, How to Identify High-Value Opportunities for Innovation.
