
Business Intelligence is a term that is widely used in the business world, but what does it mean? BI can be described as a broad category of applications and tools that gather, analyze and transform data into actionable insights. In other words, BI helps you make better business decisions by giving you an overview of your business performance and trends. This article will provide an overview of the most important business intelligence functions so you can understand how this vital technology can help your business.
We’ll also touch on some of the key terminologies of business intelligence functions you need to know to get started with BI. So whether you’re just getting started or you’re looking for a refresher, read on for everything you need to know about business intelligence functions!
An Introduction to Business Intelligence Functions
Before we hop on to the business intelligence functions and features, it is important to know what business intelligence is and how it optimizes your business.
What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence is a process for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help organizations make better business decisions. The goals of business intelligence are to give users the information they need to make informed decisions, improve operational efficiency, and gain a competitive advantage. Business intelligence systems can be used to track and analyze customer behavior, monitor market trends, optimize marketing campaigns, and track sales performance.
To be effective, business intelligence needs to be based on accurate and up-to-date data. Data must be collected from all relevant sources, including internal data sources such as transactional data and financial data, and external data sources such as market research and customer surveys.
After data collection, it must be cleansed and standardized to ensure that it can be accurately analyzed. Finally, the data must be presented in a way that is easy for users to understand and use. Business intelligence systems can take many different forms, but all share the same goal of helping organizations make better decisions.
How Business Intelligence Functions Benefits an Organization
The benefits of business intelligence functions include the ability to identify new business opportunities, optimize marketing campaigns, improve customer service and support, and make better operational decisions. However, perhaps the most important benefit of BI is the ability to gain a competitive advantage.
At its core, business intelligence is about making better decisions. By providing employees with easy access to data and analytics, BI platforms like Ascend Analytics help organizations make informed decisions that drive growth and profitability. Ascend Analytics goes beyond traditional BI platforms by offering a suite of tools specifically designed to meet the needs of energy companies.
With capabilities like real-time monitoring, comprehensive reporting, and predictive analytics, Ascend Analytics’ business intelligence services give organizations the insights they need to stay ahead of the competition. In addition, the platform’s intuitive interface makes it easy for employees of all technical levels to use, ensuring that everyone in the organization can take advantage of its benefits. With its powerful data and analytics tools, Ascend Analytics provides the insights organizations need to make informed decisions and drive growth.
With the ever-increasing availability of data, businesses that can effectively utilize BI tools and techniques will have a significant advantage over their competitors. As the world becomes increasingly data-driven, those organizations that can harness the power of Business Intelligence will be well-positioned for success.
The Top Business Intelligence Functions
With more and more businesses moving towards business intelligence, here’s a list of top business intelligence functions that stimulate the quick adoption of such tools.
1. Reporting

Reporting is one of the key business intelligence functionalities. It helps users to analyze data and generate insights that can be used to improve business performance. Reporting can be used to track KPIs, monitor trends, and identify areas for improvement.
Ascend Analytics’ business intelligence reports are generated using the latest data mining and analytical techniques. This allows us to provide our clients with accurate and actionable insights that can help them to improve their business operations. Thanks to our reporting functionality, our clients can make better decisions, improve their bottom line, and stay ahead of the competition.
2. Advanced Analytics
Business intelligence tools are essential for any business that wants to make data-driven decisions. They provide a way to collect, store, and analyze business data so that you can identify patterns and trends. One of the best business intelligence functions includes advanced analytics. Advanced analytics is a term that refers to any type of BI functionality that goes beyond basic data analysis. Some of the benefits of using advanced analytics in business intelligence include increased accuracy, improved decision-making, and faster insights.
Ascend Analytics’ advanced analytics feature includes a range of powerful tools that can help you gain insights into your business data. With the help of advanced analytics, you can uncover hidden patterns in your data and make more informed decisions about your business. The advanced analytics solution provides you with predictive modeling tools, big data enablement, and business intelligence capabilities to fuel your business growth. If you’re looking to take your business intelligence to the next level, Ascend Analytics’ advanced analytics feature is a great place to start.
3. Geospatial Analytics
One of the most trending business intelligence functionalities includes geospatial analytics. It helps business intelligence users make more informed decisions. With geospatial analytics, business users can visualize data in a geographic context and better understand relationships between data points.
For example, a business user might use geospatial analytics to see how sales vary by region or to identify trends in customer behavior. Geospatial analytics can also be used to assess risk, optimize resources, and understand the impact of external factors on business operations.
Ascend Analytics’ geospatial analytics feature provides BI users with powerful tools for visualizing and analyzing data. With Ascend Analytics, business users can quickly and easily create maps and reports that show how data varies by location. Additionally, Ascend Analytics’ geospatial analytics feature includes tools for exploring correlations and relations between data sets. As a result, business users can gain insights that would be difficult or impossible to obtain without geospatial analytics.
4. Data Visualization

Data visualization is one of the business intelligence features that help users see and understand data. It can be used to explore trends, identify patterns, and make comparisons. Data visualization is especially helpful for complex data sets. By visualizing data, business intelligence users can more easily grasp relationships and make better decisions.
Ascend Analytics’ data visualization feature helps business intelligence users see and understand data. It can be used to explore trends, identify patterns, and make comparisons. Data visualization is especially helpful for complex data sets. By visualizing data, business intelligence users can more easily grasp relationships and make better decisions. Ascend Analytics’ data visualization feature is an important business intelligence tool that can help users see and understand data.
5. Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics is one of the competitive intelligence functions that can be extremely helpful in improving a business’s bottom line. Predictive analytics uses historical data to identify patterns and trends and then uses this information to make predictions about future events. This information can be used to make decisions about pricing, marketing, product development, and other business-critical areas.
Ascend Analytics’ predictive analytics feature is one of the most robust on the market, and it has helped countless businesses improve their bottom lines through the following features
- Churn prediction
- Segmentation
- Lifetime value improvement
- Dynamic pricing
If you’re looking for a way to give your business a competitive edge, predictive analytics is worth considering.
6. Prescriptive Analytics
Competitive intelligence functions are a mainstay of business intelligence and prescriptive analytics is a competitive intelligence feature that can offer numerous benefits to businesses. Prescriptive analytics takes the data gathered from descriptive and predictive analytics. It then uses the data to generate specific recommendations about the next course of action to achieve desired results.
By using Ascend Analytics’ prescriptive analytics feature, businesses can make informed decisions by data rather than guesswork. At Ascend Analytics, we generate recommendations based on our in-depth analysis. We focus on the ‘why’ of analytics at this stage.
Our prescriptive analytics feature quickly analyzes data sets and produces actionable insights using advanced algorithms. This not only saves time but also allows users to identify opportunities and threats that they might otherwise have missed. In today’s competitive business landscape, prescriptive analytics is an essential feature for gaining a competitive advantage. Thanks to Ascend Analytics, competitive intelligence professionals can work smarter, not harder.
As a result, businesses that use business intelligence features can improve their decision-making processes and increase their chances of achieving their goals.
Sign up for Ascend Analytics BI Functions

As you can see, there are a variety of business intelligence functions that can help your company grow. If you’re interested in harnessing the power of data to drive decisions, sign up for Ascend Analytics. Our team will work with you to get started on using business intelligence to fuel your growth. Email us at info@ascendanalytics.co for more information. Thanks for reading!