If you are working in the banking, telecommunications or retail sectors, you will surely know about the importance of business intelligence. Your company has a large volume of business transactions and therefore succeeding in business becomes a numbers game.

However, over the past couple of years, we have seen significant improvements in the performance of BI software, including the availability of high-end analytics at entry-level prices. These days, companies can implement BI systems from leading brands for less than Bt5 million and, depending on the specific requirements, perhaps for much less.

Therefore, I believe the BI market has come of age to a point where even medium-sized companies in more or less any industry segment can consider such solutions.

Here are some examples of how modern, progressive companies may realise substantial value from business intelligence systems:

Example 1: Your company has many sales branches across the country. BI systems can help to capture key performance data such as sales, costs and performance ratios from all branches and display this information centrally for further analysis. You will not only be able to see how each branch, or a group of branches, is progressing, but also compare peer branches to see which branch is falling behind in which business aspect. This will make your business-improvement efforts very focused and effective.

Example 2: Your company is strongly dependent on your brand positioning in the market. To ensure a strong brand position, you run many campaigns and, in support of these, you must ensure that all customer touch points - wherever a customer comes into contact with the organisation - are behaving in a professional manner that consistently reinforces the brand image. Therefore, for each type of touch point, you define an appropriate score card of measurement criteria that can be collected, stored, collated and analysed in near real time, using BI tools. This will allow easy identification of touch points where customers are having problems interacting with your brand. In a similar way, you can also get valuable information on how to maximise returns on your advertising budget.

Example 3: Your company serves customers at many sites throughout the country. You have a quality assurance team to monitor delivery quality. BI systems can help to consolidate feedback information from all customers whilst simultaneously cross-indexing the relative importance of each customer to your business. This information helps your quality assurance team to focus their time where it really matters - with customers who are highly important to your business, but also have a need for improved service quality.

These are only three examples of how business intelligence systems can help modern, progressive companies in any industry.

From our experience, there are wide ranging opportunities for companies to use the information they are now able to gather and analyse. Applying the principle "what you measure you can manage", BI systems can help you to focus your resources where they really matter and ensure that you don't miss opportunities to improve your bottom line.

Since the investment needed for such systems has fallen continuously over recent years, many more Thai companies should now consider embracing the benefits that technology in this area has to offer.

Peter Theisen is director for business consulting services at Freewill Solutions.

Published in The Nation on September 3, 2010