Modern enterprises heavily rely on vast amounts of data. Smart businesses are the ones who use this data to get insight and make data-driven insights. Business Intelligence or BI is a technology-driven process through which users analyze business data to find actionable insights. There are numerous benefits of BI. It ensures accurate reporting, business insights, competitive analysis, higher margins and better data quality. However, implementing BI is not easy. Therefore, meeting the prerequisites for leveraging BI to improve business is important. Listed below are the requirements for it. 

1. Strategic Alignment

The organization needs to implement consistent business strategies and management processes. One can reinforce it through either traditional strategic planning mechanisms or strategy mapping. It is crucial to have IT strategies, organization, and infrastructure to support BI initiatives. 

Once the strategic alignment is in place, the organization should use the BI initiatives to improve the business processes and increase efficiency. Any organization aiming to make a profit through BI implementation should focus on directing it at either business processes and/or management processes. 

2. Culture Around Analytical Applications

Organizations with a culture promoting the use of information and analytical applications are always in a better stage to leverage BI. It is an essential factor of readiness that one needs to consider to ensure the readiness to leverage BI for profitability. 

Organizations that proactively use analytical and information applications are better positioned to use new BI applications, which can subsequently enrich business data analysis. For example, an organization in the lottery niche selling Lottery Sambad tickets can benefit from using analytical applications to conduct the event better. Subsequently, the usage of BI can further help such firms. Any organization whose strength does not lie in it should work towards building this capacity. 

3. Continuous Improvement 

Leading companies have revealed that change management is the most common challenge when deploying a new BI application. If the organization encourages continuous process improvement culture, the investment in BI will be well-spent. 

In order to leverage BI applications just like high returns on Dhankesari, organizations should assess whether it is ready for the process management change required to capture the actual business value of a BI initiative. 

4. Structured Decision Processes 

Structured decision processes are critical for a business as it helps increase the effectiveness of a firm's decision on either a recurring or semi-recurring basis. Information and analytical applications help make an organization take structured decisions. Using BI in a firm that encourages this ensures better and rich data that further support the organization's decision-making. 

Similarly, businesses that do not promote structured decision processes often need help leveraging BI. Furthermore, it increases the time duration to implement the same. 

5. Business Intelligence Portfolio Management 

BI applications can improve the performance of different organizational units, including the ones that can help in revenue growth. For example, companies that have actively built a BI portfolio management for various departments, such as sales and marketing, are better positioned to use BI as a portfolio of investments. 

Organizations that have IT portfolio management in their organization can use BI opportunity maps for the identification and evaluation of potential BI projects. 

6. BI And Data Warehousing Technical Readiness

A crucial prerequisite to capturing the value of BI is the technical ability of the organization to deliver analytical and information applications that support BI. Organizations that want to increase the readiness for BI should first work towards reducing technical risk. It is because reducing technical risks increases technological readiness. Furthermore, technical risk identification helps in devising appropriate plans to mitigate them. 

For a thorough analysis of BI readiness assessment, one should assess the technical readiness of both business intelligence and data warehousing. Any organization lacking behind BI and data warehousing technical capabilities can uplevel itself by hiring new employees with the appropriate skills. 

7. Business And Information Technology Partnership 

Business and information technology partnership helps create business value. Organizations already using IT to improve their business results can better leverage BI to create value. 

The above factors act like stepping stones to deploying BI applications to increase business profitability. An organization must take a holistic view of readiness before implementing BI. No organization can get a perfect score in all these factors; however, at the same time, improving readiness is critical. A BI readiness assessment is essential to ensure that its investment yields high returns.