Data-driven decisions help a company to stay competent in this radically-competitive world. Business Intelligence (BI) plays a crucial role in this kind of smart decision-making. More and more organizations are integrating BI strategy to make informed business decisions, and mobile business intelligence is a growing phenomenon in this respect.
This blog will throw light on some of the pertinent aspects of business intelligence in mobile app development. You will get to know what BI and MBI (mobile business intelligence) are, the significance and benefits of BI in mobile app development, implementation challenges, etc.
Get, set, go…

What Is Business Intelligence?

Before diving into the detailed meaning of Business Intelligence, let’s have a look at a formal definition from Investopedia: “Business intelligence (BI) refers to the procedural and technical infrastructure that collects, stores, and analyzes data produced by a company.”
In other words, Business Intelligence denotes the software that transforms raw data into significant business insights that facilitate cost-effective business actions. BI is a blend of different analytic tools covering BI dashboards, data mining, data discovery & visualization tools, predictive analytics, data warehousing, etc.

How Does Business Intelligence Help?

And how do these businesses generate consumer data? It’s so simple. Besides asking customers directly for data, most probably in the initial stages of engagement, they capture their customers’ personal data through websites, social media, transaction history, contests, online surveys, and so on.

All these massive amounts of data hide great potential for businesses to learn and grow. With the right tools, organizations can transform data into useful insights. Organizations use BI to identify company trends and implement processes to simplify various activities and services. It is a very sensible foundation on which they can make informed judgments, choose measured actions, and implement proficient business progressions.

This is where BI comes into play. BI tools help organizations to get in touch with actionable data and derive prized insights into consumer habits and industry trends. It is the core component that facilitates strategic decision-making tactics.

What Is BI in Mobile App Development?

Mobile Business Intelligence (MBI) or BI in mobile app development is the ability to access and implement BI-related data analysis on mobile devices rather than on desktop computers. It extends desktop business intelligence applications to mobile devices such as BlackBerry, iPad, and iPhone to supply significant and dependable information to the right person at the right time.
MBI applications equip users with vital information and content, irrespective of their location and time. It does it by optimizing traditional BI reports for small screens. It displays key performance indicators (KPIs), business metrics, and alerts on mobile screens with simple charts, graphs, and sparklines. MBI confers an additional benefit on users by allowing them to make knowledgeable decisions in real-time.

Why BI in Mobile App Development

Mobile app development companies are leveraging the power of mobile devices to learn, acclimate, analyze and comprehend user behavior through various aspects. BI-integrated mobile app helps you have quick access to Power BI reports and dashboards. You can connect to your data, make insights, collaborate on the move, and get alerted in case of data changes.

For example, The ability of a production manager to view real-time reports on worker productivity and machine conditions helps him to efficiently organize the workflow and operation by giving time off to exhausted workers or instructing machine maintenance before it fails.

In the case of managed IT services, mobile business intelligence helps a salesperson review BI data on the go. When he understands from the insights that a potential client’s needs match with a satisfied customer, he can suggest similar services.

Benefits of BI in Mobile App Development

Seamless access to data

Data or information gathering helps businesses to store and analyze crucial facts about different workflows leading to improved decision-making processes. Business intelligence integrated mobile app development helps companies to have insights at their fingertips at any time and from any location regardless of the device and the method used to access the information. This aids in enhancing the overall output of your daily operations. All of these help you in achieving your operation in less time with more efficiency.

Improved decision–making

This is a no-brainer result of having seamless access to data and insights. The delivery of current insights that are analyzed using multiple tools helps decision-makers in taking the right decisions on the spot. This helps users to get their desired services when it is the most needed.

Competitive edge

BI-powered mobile apps help you to stay ahead of your competitors by helping you see business opportunities earlier. Understanding the market conditions of their peers helps business owners to stay responsive and flexible to customer needs. Mobile BI solution helps them to reach out to clients more often and swell their sales.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

When you have commendable access to data and insights and when you use it wisely, your productivity and efficiency increase leading to boosted customer happiness. Your customer becomes loyal as they meet their needs without delay and with the desired quality.

Increase in revenue

BI in mobile app development results in improved revenue as all other aspects that need customer generation are met. Satisfied clients become your greatest asset and everything else, including improved profitability and revenue, will follow.

Challenges in Mobile Business Intelligence (MBI)

Need for the right expertise: It is prudent to approach a seasoned provider of mobile app development services like Bridge Global that can build intuitive BI apps for any domain and of any complexity. Building and packaging analytical content into an app requires extensive knowledge of ETL (Extract-Tranform-Load), data integration, data management, and data warehousing & filtering.

Need for a defined mobile strategy: BI in mobile apps is not as simple as it sounds. It’s not just the simple presentation of BI content on a mobile device for information recovery. There is a need for a proper mobile strategy to tackle dissimilar suppliers, systems, and private phones.

Difficulty in company-wide adoption: Bringing all stakeholders and teams (IT, finance, management, marketing, sales and operations teams) on the same page is a difficult task. They should be enlightened and excited about the benefits brought about by BI should be.

Highly Expensive: The cost factor of BI in mobile app development generally turns off the excitement of small and medium companies. They usually shy away from investing in expensive software as they lack the costly infrastructure to support it. This actually holds them away from building beneficial software that can boost their ROI in the long run.

Complexity and Size: As more and more people are interacting digitally data becomes a difficult mammoth to handle. It leads to complex machine learning models affecting the performance and service delivered.

Hardware Capability: Hardware capability can pause a real challenge in the usage of business intelligence in mobile apps. Your customers need to have high-performance hardware to run BI-powered programs. If the handheld device in which the mobile app is installed is incapable of responding to the business intelligence tool, then the data collection, process, analysis, etc. gest tampered and management will fail to get the correct insights.

To Summarize

So, folks, that’s what Business Intelligence in mobile app development is all about.

Gone are the days when mobile devices were used only for communication. These devices have now become a potent tool to collect data and use it for analysis purposes to support management in making better choices. BI helps the most crucial data to arrive on the manager’s analysis devices.

BI in today’s world helps large and small enterprises to sustain their brand value by being data-driven. If you have plans to adopt MBI, outsourcing an experienced mobile app development company can be a better and more prudent option. Call us now to know more about how you can achieve precise business intelligence insights through BI-integrated mobile apps.