How to Build a Small Business Intelligence Strategy in 7 Steps

How to Build a Small Business Intelligence Strategy in 7 Steps

Find out how your small business intelligence turns data into real-time insights, helping you make smarter decisions.

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Running your small and medium business (SMB) without business intelligence (BI) is like driving across the country with a paper map from the 1980s. Sure, you might reach your destination, but you'll likely waste time, resources, and get lost along the way. Without BI, you miss out on data-backed insights that can help steer your business in the right direction.

With BI, you gain access to real-time data, enabling decisions based on the most accurate, up-to-date information. Research shows a 32% boost in productivity, a 26% reduction in analysis time, and a 33% increase in insights-driven decisions. These figures show how business intelligence for SMBs can shift your approach - helping you move from guesswork to data-driven decisions. Let's explore how to use this power.

What we'll cover:

• What is business intelligence?
• Why small businesses need BI
• The 4 components of BI
• Build your business intelligence strategy in 7 steps
• Common challenges and solutions
• Success story: How Salesforce uses its own BI
• Best BI tools for small businesses

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence is a process that helps you convert raw data into meaningful insights that fuel smarter decisions. It involves gathering information from various sources - such as your sales data, customer behaviors, website traffic, and social media interactions - and transforming that data into actionable knowledge.

For small businesses, BI isn't just about collecting data, but about using that information to gain a deeper understanding of your business, spot trends, and make informed decisions that contribute to your growth and success.

Why SMBs need business intelligence (BI)

In a world where large corporations often dominate the marketplace, BI offers a level playing field. For SMBs, BI can help uncover niche markets, better understand customer preferences, and streamline operations - giving you an edge over larger competitors who may be bogged down by bureaucracy.

As a small business, you need more than just gut instincts to guide your decisions. BI provides real-time insights that help you make informed choices about everything from marketing spend to product development. This data-driven approach reduces risk and increases the likelihood of success.

For small businesses, understanding your customers is essential. BI tools allow you to analyze customer behavior and preferences, helping you create targeted marketing campaigns, personalize customer experiences, and develop products that meet their needs. The result? Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

You likely already wear many hats, so finding ways to streamline operations is crucial. BI can help you identify inefficiencies in your business processes and highlight areas where resources are being wasted. By automating routine data analysis, BI frees up time so your team can focus on more strategic tasks.

The 4 components of BI

To effectively use BI for your small business, you need to understand its key components, which are essential for turning raw data into insights that guide your business forward:

1. Data collection: This step involves gathering data from multiple sources across your business. For example, your customer relationship management (CRM) system can provide valuable customer insights, while marketing platforms offer information on your campaigns' performance. Social media platforms, website analytics tools, and sales software also contribute data that can help you understand customer behavior, track product performance, and measure engagement. Collecting accurate and relevant data is the first and most crucial step in BI.

1. Data analysis: Once you've gathered your data, the next step is to analyze it to identify patterns, trends, and opportunities. This process involves sorting through large volumes of data to uncover valuable insights. By analyzing your data, you can pinpoint customer preferences, forecast sales trends, and recognize areas for improvement. BI tools help make this analysis more efficient, providing you with insights that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

1. Reporting: Once you've analyzed your data, it's time to summarize the key findings in a way that's clear and actionable. Reporting helps you communicate those insights to your team, stakeholders, or decision-makers in an easy-to-understand format. This might include creating dashboards, summary reports, or detailed analysis documents. The goal is to ensure that your data insights are accessible and can directly inform decisions at all levels of your business.

1. Visualization: Data can be overwhelming when presented in raw numbers and text. This is where data visualization comes in. By turning complex data into visual formats like charts, graphs, and dashboards, you can quickly grasp trends, patterns, and key takeaways. Visualization tools, like Tableau, help to represent your data visually, allowing you to see important insights at a glance. With effective visualization, you can make quick, informed decisions based on the data presented in a digestible and actionable way.

Build your business intelligence strategy in 7 steps

1. Define your business goals

What do you want to achieve with BI? Whether it's boosting sales, improving customer service, or reducing costs, your BI strategy should align with your business goals. Use CRM for SMB and Salesforce AI to track your small business' progress and performance.

2. Assess data sources

Where is your business generating data? Look at your AI CRM, website, customer interactions, and social media. Ensuring data accuracy and consistency is key to making smart decisions.

3. Choose the right BI tools

Not all BI tools are created equal. Look for platforms that integrate easily with your existing systems, offer AI-powered insights, and have user-friendly features. Tools like Tableau are great choices for SMBs.

4. Integrate and organize your data

To fully utilize your data, you need a deeply unified platform that brings everything together. This includes cleaning, integrating, and organizing data from multiple sources into a single system. Agentforce brings agentic AI capabilities to automate data management, analyze trends, and provide real-time insights - helping you make smarter decisions with minimal manual effort.

5. Analyze your data and generate reports

With the right tools, you can start analyzing your data and creating reports that focus on the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most to your business. Use interactive dashboards with tools like Tableau to visualize data and uncover insights in real-time.

6. Train your team and offer ongoing support

Successful BI implementation requires that your team knows how to use the tools effectively. Training teams and providing ongoing support will ensure they can make the most of the data at their fingertips. For small businesses, Starter Suite offers an intuitive platform that's easy to learn and use.

7. Utilize AI for smarter insights

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can automate data analysis, find hidden patterns, and even predict future outcomes. Imagine an AI assistant or AI agent that automatically ranks your leads, suggests actions, and helps you make faster, more accurate decisions.

Common challenges and solutions

These common challenges can be overcome when it comes to understanding your business intelligence. Here are some ways you can solve any challenge you come across when it comes to your BI:

Challenge: Limited budget. Many small businesses worry about the cost of BI tools, thinking they require a big upfront investment.
Solution: Use budget-friendly tools like Tableau. Cloud-based solutions keep costs low while giving you access to powerful BI tools. They scale as your business grows, so you're never paying for more than you need.

Challenge: Lack of expertise. Not a data expert? You're not alone - many small business owners feel overwhelmed by BI tools.
Solution: Choose easy-to-use platforms like Tableau. Drag-and-drop interfaces make BI accessible, and if your team needs extra help, hiring a consultant for setup and training can make the transition smoother.

Challenge: Data quality issues. BI is only as good as the data it's based on, but keeping data accurate can be tricky.
Solution: Use AI-powered tools that automatically clean and organize your data. This keeps your insights accurate and up to date, so you can make informed decisions with confidence.

Challenge: Resistance to change. New tools can feel like extra work, and team members may be hesitant to switch things up.
Solution: Show the value of BI and AI. Demonstrate how these tools simplify decision-making, streamline workflows, and save time. When your team sees how data-backed insights lead to smarter choices, they'll be more open to using them.

Success story: How Salesforce uses its own BI

At Salesforce, we use our own BI tools to enhance customer support with Agentforce, our AI-powered virtual agent. Integrated with Data Cloud, Service Cloud, and Tableau, Agentforce resolves 80% of inquiries instantly, reducing wait times and freeing up service reps for complex cases.

By analyzing real-time data, Agentforce delivers fast, personalized responses, eliminating the frustration of searching through thousands of resources. With Slack integration, teams collaborate efficiently, ensuring seamless handoffs between AI and human support. If a request requires a live agent, Agentforce connects you instantly with full case context. This AI-driven approach makes customer support smarter, faster, and more personalized, helping businesses like yours focus on what matters most.

Best BI tools for small businesses

Choosing the right business intelligence (BI) tool can help you turn data into actionable insights, improving decision-making and efficiency.

Salesforce for small business

Salesforce is an all-in-one CRM platform designed to help small businesses streamline operations, manage customer relationships, and unlock the power of data. It integrates sales, service, and marketing tools to give small business owners a unified view of their operations and customer interactions. With Salesforce, you can track leads, manage opportunities, and automate workflows - ultimately improving efficiency and enabling growth.

Salesforce integrates seamlessly with various third-party tools, such as accounting software and email marketing platforms, allowing small businesses to connect all of their essential tools into one system. This integration provides a complete picture of your business operations, making it easier to stay organized and make data-driven decisions.

Key features for small businesses:

• Lead and opportunity management for more effective sales strategies
• AI-powered insights through Salesforce AI to predict customer behavior and improve personalization
• Customizable dashboards that display real-time data to track key metrics
• Automation tools to streamline repetitive tasks and improve productivity

Tableau

Tableau is a powerful data visualization tool that helps businesses of all sizes turn raw data into clear, actionable insights. Designed for ease of use, Tableau allows you to create dynamic, interactive dashboards that display key performance indicators in a visually engaging way. With Tableau, small businesses like yours can access real-time insights and make faster, more informed decisions.

Tableau is known for its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, allowing small business owners and teams to create custom reports and visualizations without needing any coding experience. Whether you're using charts, graphs, or maps, Tableau makes it simple to understand complex data and use it to make better business decisions.

Benefits for small businesses:

• Easy access to business-critical metrics for sales, marketing, and customer service
• The ability to identify trends and spot opportunities quickly
• A streamlined process for making data-driven decisions that enhance business outcomes
• The flexibility to connect and visualize data from multiple sources

Why business intelligence matters for SMBs

The benefits of business intelligence for small businesses are clear: smarter decisions, cost savings, and more growth opportunities. By using BI tools like Tableau, small business owners can gain valuable insights that help fuel success and keep them competitive in a rapidly changing market.

Start your journey with the Starter Suite today. Looking for more customization? Explore Pro Suite. Already a Salesforce customer? Activate Foundations and try out Agentforce today.

AI supported the writers and editors who created this article.

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Caylin White is an Editorial Lead and Growth Manager for Small Business at Salesforce. She has written content for over 15 years for many SaaS industries, like WordPress and BuzzSumo. She specializes in SEO but is sure to add a human-centric angle to every piece.

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