Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven strategy that helps organisations make better decisions by analysing and interpreting data. Business intelligence processes can help answer important organisational questions, guide business strategies, and drive efficiencies.

The technology that underpins business intelligence enables finance leaders to extract data from internal and external sources. It also helps to track relevant data and develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter.

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence is a set of technologically-enabled processes for collecting, managing, and analysing business data. Companies can use financial and operational information to gain business insights from current, historic, and even future trend data. These insights can help inform business strategies and operations, such as updating performance metrics for different departments.

Integrated systems designed specifically to handle BI processes can analyse large volumes of data from all lines of the company (including external sources), helping organisations make better business decisions. The platforms provide flexible dashboard tools that deliver immediate insights based on company-specific goals and performance indicators. Most also offer role-based access, so team members only see the KPIs and metrics relevant to their work or department. For team members that require company-wide visibility, such as the finance department, BI systems provide extensive insight. With BI, decision-makers can quickly identify exceptions, trends, and opportunities for deeper analysis through this targeted approach.

Key functions of business intelligence in finance

Through business intelligence, companies gain an understanding of the internal processes and external variables that shape profitability. For instance, finance teams can use dashboard analytics and categorised reporting to monitor the current state of the business, observe developing trends, and identify possible challenges. Below are some examples:

  • Financial performance management and forecasting: One of the key areas BI dashboards provide value is in financial planning and analysis. This, along with budgeting and forecasting — informed by historical and current data from across the business and techniques such as scenario-modeling — can help finance teams keep things on track and assist senior leadership make the best decisions for the business.

    Sydney-based Objective Corporation is a good example of this in action. The software company gained global visibility across 7 subsidiaries, with real-time financial reporting and consolidation across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, and the US. Their monthly financial close accelerated by 3 times compared to previous Excel-based manual processes, while reporting cycles reduced from 15 to 5 days. This led to better business visibility and productivity.

  • Risk assessment and management: BI and data management tools help teams track financial performance and provide a comprehensive view of the organisation’s credit and market risk. Because BI tools aggregate data from various sources across the business, they have the potential to identify trends or anomalies that may result in risk early and suggest potential pathways for risk mitigation. Since risk in a business context is frequently financial in nature, the insight BI technology brings to financial data can be a valuable source of risk identification and reduction.
  • Strategic planning and budgeting: BI dashboards can support strategic planning and budgeting by taking raw data from across the business and analysing it to obtain actionable insights for things like more accurate forecasting, trend identification, and scenario planning. This can help businesses budget appropriately, prepare for changing market conditions, and manage anticipated financial challenges. For example, Australian companies often use BI to model the impact of changes in various tax rates or fluctuations in the value of the dollar for financial forecasts.
  • Profitability and cost analysis: BI systems allow businesses to analyse channel profitability, assess discount impact, and calculate lifetime revenue contributions across different customer groups, helping companies understand the crucial link between customer behaviour and profitability. These insights make revenue management efforts more effective while also streamlining expense reporting processes.

Business intelligence tools and techniques in finance

Finance departments typically use several core BI functionalities to analyse data effectively.

  • Dashboard configuration: Allows teams to organise key metrics and visual elements according to departmental roles and responsibilities.
  • Pivot table analysis: Helps summarise large datasets by grouping and aggregating financial information across multiple dimensions.
  • Saved search functionality: This means users can apply filters and criteria to create reusable queries for regular reporting.
  • Data joining techniques: Combine information from different sources or record types to provide comprehensive views of financial performance.

Benefits of business intelligence in financial decision making

Using business intelligence software is the opposite of sifting through different spreadsheets or relying on basic one-dimensional reporting. Let’s take a look at the potential benefits:

  • Reduced Risk

    Companies can lower their risk profile by using BI solutions to observe financial patterns and spot potentially fraudulent transactions in real time. They can also monitor employee behaviour to ensure compliance with Australian industry regulations, like those set by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

  • Operational efficiency

    BI software uses data to evaluate operational performance across multiple areas, from resource allocation to employee performance benchmarking.

    Brisbane’s Harcourts International shows these efficiency gains firsthand. With a finance team supporting more than 170 staff and 30 corporate entities across ANZ, the company previously worked across 12 databases with manual data entry and hand-generated reports. By implementing a centralised solution, it cut down time spent on crucial end-of-month finance reports from 10 days to 6, allowing its teams to reallocate valuable staff hours to priority and higher-value tasks.

  • Increased profitability

    BI tools can keep marketing and sales teams aligned with current information on customers. This can be useful when segmenting customers, marketing new products, upselling, and increasing customer lifetime value. More specifically, some may use BI to monitor customer retention metrics like attrition rate, average order value, purchase frequency, and more. It can also collect product-specific information to determine where to focus attention and where services can be enhanced.

  • Marketing profitability

    Information gathered from a customer relationship management (CRM) system offers visibility into marketing campaigns and their financial performance. BI analytics can track promotional investments, email marketing outcomes, and campaign achievements to pinpoint where brand messaging resonates with audiences versus where it misses the mark.

  • Better communication

    BI tools can improve communication and collaboration by giving everyone simultaneous access to consistent, up-to-date data, where appropriate.

  • Competitive edge

    BI supports competitive analysis by comparing business performance with competitors, uncovering insights that can improve market positioning and overall strategy.

Gain insight through business intelligence with NetSuite

Business intelligence solutions, like NetSuite NetSuite SuiteAnalytics, allow finance teams to consolidate data from different departments and external sources to produce unified, timely dashboards and reports. This real-time visibility, along with AI-powered tools and analysis capabilities, helps businesses identify operational inefficiencies, assess risk exposure, and uncover revenue opportunities across different business functions.

As companies generate increasingly complex financial data across multiple channels, finance leaders need tools to translate this information into actionable intelligence. Finance departments can switch from reactive reporting to proactive and strategic planning to drive better business outcomes.

Business Intelligence FAQs

What is finance business intelligence?

Financial business intelligence refers to BI that is specifically used to analyse and visualise an organisation’s financial data. Through data visualisations, predictive analytics, and performance tracking, it helps businesses understand, monitor, and improve financial performance.

What is the role of financial intelligence in the business?

Financial intelligence transforms raw financial data into actionable insights that drive better business decisions. It serves three primary roles: strategic decision making, risk management, and operational efficiency.

BI vs. AI?

Business intelligence refers to technologies and processes that revolve around collecting, analysing, and visualising current and historical business data to assist in the decision-making process. Artificial intelligence refers to software systems that can learn, reason, and make predictions or decisions.

What is the difference between a financial analyst and business intelligence?

The main difference between a financial analyst and a BI tool is the focus and scope of their analysis. A financial analyst interprets financial data, creates forecasts, and provides recommendations based on financial statements and market conditions. A business intelligence system collects, processes, and presents data, allowing analysts to derive actionable insights.

What is the application of business intelligence in financial analysis?

A BI system that is correctly integrated can be viewed as a cornerstone of modern financial analysis. It can help analysts to automate data collection, manage risk and compliance, analyse trends and detect anomalies, perform budgeting, forecasting, and scenario planning, break down profitability and cost analysis, and generate reports for stakeholders and regulators.