Author: Denise Larice
Date: 31-07-2025

 

Every minute, something happens. Everyone creates something, and that something is data! For instance, every minute, internet users send 231,400,000 emails. Tinder’s servers are constantly busy, as users make 1,100,000 swipes per minute—love generates an enormous amount of data. Data truly never sleeps!

This vast volume of information is defined in the current literature as Big Data. These massive datasets are produced by internet users and can only be stored, understood, and utilized with specialized tools and methods. Given this, a crucial question arises: how can people, and especially companies, extract value from data? How can data influence decision-making in companies, and what impact does it have on business strategies?

The answer lies in Business Intelligence (BI) and, more specifically, BI tools. BI systems integrate data gathering, storage, and knowledge management with analytical tools, enabling organizations to transform raw data into actionable insights. BI tools, on the other hand, combine data mining, process analytics, performance monitoring, and data visualization to facilitate decision-making. In today’s competitive landscape, companies must harness these tools to gain insights into both existing and potential customers. This is where Marketing Intelligence comes into play—defined as a set of procedures and sources that managers use to obtain real-time information about developments in their business environment.

To explore how companies leverage BI tools and how data-driven insights shape their strategies, a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted. Five professionals from five different Italian multinationals, each operating in a different sector, participated in the research. The objective was to broadly analyze BI tools without focusing on a single industry or market, utilizing the flexibility of semi-structured interviews to gain in-depth insights into decision-making processes. The study also aimed to understand how companies integrate BI tools to transform raw data into actionable business decisions. The interviews, conducted via video calls, lasted between 25 and 45 minutes.

The findings reveal that Excel remains the most widely used BI tool among the companies surveyed. Many businesses are still heavily reliant on Excel, even though it is insufficient for handling large datasets. Consequently, most companies are exploring alternative tools. Power BI, Microsoft’s BI solution, emerged as the most popular choice due to its seamless integration with the Microsoft suite and its user-friendliness. Notably, most interviewees did not receive formal training on Power BI but learned how to use it through hands-on experience.

BI tools have transformed organizations in multiple ways. They enable faster decision-making by providing employees and executives with instant access to a wealth of data. Many processes have been automated, reducing manual labor and freeing up employees for more strategic tasks. Additionally, companies have established dedicated BI teams responsible for managing these systems and ensuring they can rapidly adapt to market changes. But how do BI tools influence the daily operations of companies? They have become a central hub for information, increasing efficiency, enhancing data accessibility, and enabling companies to make quicker, more informed decisions.

Overall, BI tools have significantly improved the quality of decision-making processes. They enhance knowledge diffusion, as employees across an organization typically have access to BI tools, enabling them to retrieve valuable insights and dashboards. BI has become a central hub of information, increasing both the efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making. More decisions are now data-driven, and they are made faster than ever before.

Interestingly, the study also found that most companies in the sample do not use standardized metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of their BI tools. Finding a key metric to assess the impact of BI tools is particularly challenging because BI is deeply embedded in company systems, influencing multiple processes and decision-making layers. Looking ahead, the integration of Business Intelligence (BI) with Artificial Intelligence (AI) could change this dynamic. In the future, AI-powered BI tools may autonomously make small-scale decisions based on predefined strategies set by human decision-makers. Maybe combined with AI, BI tools will take on greater responsibilities, automating processes and making predictive insights more accurate. However, the impact on today’s companies is huge, and BI intelligence and its tools have set a point of no return. As AI continues to evolve, it will further enhance the ability of BI tools to transform vast amounts of data into actionable insights, driving even more data-driven decisions.