Every good business knows that the most important tool for making money is information. While data is abundant and cheap, information – the meaningful interpretation of that data – requires expertise and insight to acquire. Who is buying your product and when? What else do they consume? Also, what demographics are an untapped audience? For big industries, information like this is crucial for growth and survival. Read on to find out how you can develop and invest in your alcohol database.
The alcohol industry is massive. In 2018, U.S. alcohol sales were $253.8 billion and more than 16% of all beverages purchased are alcoholic. There is money to be made with the right information and business intelligence provides it.
Business Intelligence Explained
So what is business intelligence, anyway? It is a broad term that refers to the process and methods of acquiring information that supports better decision-making in business. Beyond just the accumulation of data, business intelligence (BI) is turning that data into insights, strategies, and actions that help a business thrive. As Howard Dresner described it, BI covers “concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems.”
The Importance of Business Intelligence
The important word in BI is “intelligence”. Just as warring nations base their decisions on intelligence reports on their adversaries, a business needs data on its audience, market, and competitors to plan their next moves.
BI can also provide key insights into different internal components of your business. The performance or output of a particular component can be highlighted, allowing you to fine tune it. This can also make productivity analyses more accurate and useful.
By being able to track customer behavior over time, your business will be in a better place to react to future behavior, anticipating your customer’s needs.
Business Intelligence Tools
Generally speaking, business intelligence tools need to collect, store, retrieve, and display data in ways that make it easier for a human analysis of the information they contain.
This includes:
- Data querying applications for pulling data from a data warehouse or other sources
- Data processing and cleansing tools for analysis and reports
- Data visualization applications for creating graphic representations
- Statistical modeling and analysis
For the beverage alcohol industry, these tools may present themselves in the form of distillery software.
Business Intelligence and Alcohol Sales
Perhaps you own a winery. You have a mix of local storefront and off-site sales through many liquor distributors. All sales, inventory, and customer data are collected through a variety of means, anything from cloud-based point-of-sale tracking to hand-typed spreadsheets. The possibility of predicting customer needs appears to be impossible. You are unable to make intelligent decisions about growth without accurate information, but that is where BI steps in.
A good business intelligence solution pulls the data from disparate sources into a uniform format, then presents it via a usable dashboard. BI tools aid in the analysis of that data to make predictions about supply, consumer demand, and market trends. Geographic distance makes less of a difference as all business activity is reduced to manageable data.
Now your winery knows the patterns of high consumer demand on the other side of the country tied to concerts, festivals, or any other event that brings with it potential sales. You can zero in on a bottleneck in distribution 300 miles away and make changes to keep things moving. You learn which marketing campaigns make sense for your local traffic and which to drop.
For more information about winery software, visit:
Get Smarter with Business Intelligence
Business intelligence provides incredibly valuable information for your business. More than just giving you a deluge of data, BI helps you make sense of the numbers and make smarter business decisions. Business intelligence allows you to understand every facet of your business better and predict your customers’ wants. You know there is gold in the alcohol business. BI helps you mine it.
FAQS
What is business intelligence?
Business intelligence refers to the process and methods of acquiring information that supports better decision-making in business. Beyond just the accumulation of data, business intelligence (BI) is turning that data into insights, strategies, and actions that help a business thrive.
What is the importance of business intelligence? How does business intelligence support decision-making?
BI provides key insights into different internal components of your business and can make your productivity analyses more accurate and useful. By being able to track customer behavior over time, your business will be in a better place to react to future behavior and allow you to make decisions by anticipating your customer’s needs.
What are business intelligence tools?
Business intelligence tools collect, store, retrieve, and display data in ways that make it easier for a human analysis of the information they contain.
How can I increase my alcohol sales using business intelligence?
Using business intelligence, you can increase alcohol sales by collecting sales, inventory, and customer data and then making intelligent decisions about growth with accurate information that anticipates customer needs. You will be able to increase your sales with a BI tool that knows the patterns of high consumer demand and will allow you to zone in on them.
How does business intelligence add value?
More than just giving you a deluge of data, BI helps you make sense of the numbers and make smarter business decisions.
