While MS Excel has its advantages, it is no longer enough for businesses to effectively manage their data and insights. Here, we’ll discuss the benefits of adopting decision intelligence platforms to make informed and smart decisions and gain a competitive edge.
For years, Microsoft Excel has been the go-to choice for creating databases and generating reports, graphs, tables, etc. The introduction of business intelligence platforms like Power BI has upped the game to allow organizations to convert Excel sheets into powerful databases. Then, decision intelligence has furthered the development to unlock the full potential of business data to derive meaningful insights and make data-driven decisions.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the global decision intelligence market was valued at $16.79 billion in 2024 and expected to reach $19.38 billion in 2025, with a projected growth rate (CAGR) of 16.9% to reach $57.75 billion by 2032. The statistics clearly indicate that businesses are shifting from traditional Excel sheets to powerful decision intelligence platforms, providing valuable insights and analytical reports to inform proactive business decisions. In this blog, we’ll read more about decision intelligence and the importance of revamping the infrastructure to support business intelligence system adoption, and advanced analytics.
What is Decision Intelligence?
Decision intelligence uses machine learning and automation to provide faster and more reliable insights and enable data-driven decision-making in enterprises. Typically, it combines data analytics, artificial intelligence, and data science to provide a holistic view of the situation and give contextual information required to make the necessary decisions. Decision intelligence platforms are not limited to historical data, but also support advanced analytics like predictive and prescriptive analytical insights to prepare for the future and make proactive decisions. Additionally, it is a part of modern data engineering and can optimize the outcomes to improve all quality, efficiency, and performance. This brings greater consistency to the process and allows you to benchmark higher standards and adhere to the compliance regulations.
MS Excel vs Decision Intelligence
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet tool for basic data analysis and reporting. It works best for small and medium-sized datasets and reports that don’t require complicated analytics. Though Excel can be integrated with AI tools, on its own, the functionalities can be limited, especially for large enterprises that require powerful insights. Excel’s limitations in analysis make it less effective for day-to-day decision-making, also because it requires manual effort.
On the other hand, decision intelligence platforms are known for their analytical and automation capabilities. Furthermore, they support descriptive, predictive, diagnostic, and prescriptive analytics in real-time. Transparency, data-centric systems, explainability, flexibility, scalability, and continuous improvement are the key principles of decision intelligence. It is a must-have solution to implement modern data analysis in your organization and benefit from data-driven models to gain a competitive edge in global markets.
Decision Intelligence Platforms Benefits
Working with massive amounts of business data needs powerful systems that can seamlessly handle complex requirements and share actionable insights in real-time. Decision intelligence platforms are a perfect solution as they offer the following benefits:
Seamless Data Integration
There’s no need to struggle with collecting and storing data from multiple sources. The DI platforms can be integrated with several data sources to automate data collection and streamline data flow within the systems. This eliminates the need for human intervention and saves time and resources spent on managing the datasets. A centralized data repository is created to store, clean, and convert raw data into actionable insights.
Democratized Data Access
Data collection and storage are only a part of the process. This data and insights have to be accessible to all decision-makers across the enterprise. That requires providing authorized and restricted access to employees based on their job descriptions and roles. It also reduces the load on the technical team since employees can directly access the required data and reports through personalized dashboards. Additionally, your employees will have more control over the situation.
Faster and More Accurate Insights
Traditional analytics are prone to biases and blind spots, which are inherent to legacy systems. Additionally, decision-makers may also make biased interpretations and decisions, which can impact the business in various ways. Such risks can be minimized by implementing modern data analytics solutions and decision intelligence platforms that provide a unified and holistic view of the situation. DI eliminates the risk of inaccurate analysis made from low-quality data. Thus, your decisions will be more aligned with your objectives.
Uncovering Hidden Patterns
When you work with large amounts of data, it is not easy to identify hidden patterns, trends, connections, and correlations between data points. Decision intelligence uses advanced technologies like AI, ML, etc., which can see what humans cannot immediately detect when processing massive datasets. This allows you to get deeper and richer insights about the market, customers, competitors, products/ services, and much more. You can identify the root cause of problems and come up with comprehensive solutions to resolve them permanently.
Maximizing ROI
Return on investment is necessary for every business. How soon you can start to generate ROI indicates the efficiency of the solutions. In today’s fast-paced world, businesses have to get quick results and returns to generate profit and mitigate risk. Decision intelligence can help with this by accelerating ROI and maximizing it. Instead of making decisions based on outdated and incomplete data, you use reliable and meaningful insights to power your decisions and actions, thus enhancing revenue and profits.
Scalability and Adaptability
Decision intelligence platforms empower you to future-proof your infrastructure by offering scalability, flexibility, and adaptability. There’s no need to replace the systems with new ones. Instead, they are periodically upgraded to handle your growing needs and support the increased volume of transactions. Furthermore, this is achieved while increasing the quality and efficiency of the systems through automation. NLP (natural language processing) ensures that the DI platforms provide contextual insights with greater accuracy.
Demand Forecasting
Predictive analytics helps with sales and demand forecasting, which allows you to be prepared for future market changes and opportunities. Decision intelligence empowers different teams to collaborate and come up with strategies to manage fluctuating demands based on seasons, trends, and other external factors. From optimizing inventory levels to adjusting production cycles, and tracking the distribution channels, everything can be automated by deriving predictive insights through the decision intelligence dashboard. This increases conversion rates, sales, and customer loyalty to your business.
Risk Management and Compliance
Converting Excel to BI tools with decision intelligence solutions helps mitigate business risks and adhere to the global data privacy and security compliance standards. It becomes easier to implement a data governance framework to strengthen the infrastructure. Furthermore, DI platforms are used for risk management and fraud detection/ prevention in banking, finance, insurance, retail, and eCommerce industries by analyzing customer transactions and flagging suspicious activity.
Greater Personalization
From marketing campaigns to product designs and customer services, just about everything has to be personalized to attract more audiences and provide a better customer experience. This is possible when you can seamlessly analyze customer data to derive insights about their preferences, behavioral patterns, purchase history, etc. Decision intelligence empowers organizations from different industries, such as EdTech, consumer goods, retail, eCommerce, financial services, etc., to personalize their products, services, and marketing strategies for diverse customer segments and markets.
How Excel2Decisions Converts MS Excel into a Decision Intelligence Platform
There’s only so much manual spreadsheets can do without consuming too much time and energy. That’s why modern businesses need powerful AI platforms for automation, personalization, and smart decision-making. Excel2Decisions ticks all boxes as it adapts to the diverse requirements across the levels, be it CFOs, team leaders, operational managers, or industry leaders. It can be integrated with various third-party solutions such as Power BI, Fabric, and others.
You can overcome various challenges like data mismanagement, broken links, data consolidation, longer reporting cycles, human error, missed opportunities, etc., by integrating Excel2Decisions with your existing systems. It helps automate data pipelines, analytics, data visualization, reporting, and alerts to ensure your decision-makers don’t miss a single update or an opportunity to gain a competitive edge. The built-in templates are designed to align with varied industry and department-wise requirements and can be tailored to suit specific needs. The entire setup can be deployed in less than four weeks to provide live updates with your business data.
Conclusion
Decision intelligence is not a replacement for business intelligence or Excel sheets. It complements them both by creating a comprehensive infrastructure for empowering organizations to unlock the full potential of business data and derive meaningful and accurate insights. Service providers can include decision intelligence as a part of end-to-end data engineering services and customize the solutions to align with your vision, mission, and objectives. The systems can be scaled to support your growth and expansion, as well as help in enhancing customer experience and increasing revenue.
FAQs
What’s the difference between business intelligence and decision intelligence platforms?
The main difference between business intelligence and decision intelligence platforms is that business intelligence focuses on the use of tools and technologies to analyze business data, predict outcomes, and give proper context to historical information. On the other hand, decision intelligence platforms aim at combining data analytics, artificial intelligence, and data science to promote smart decision-making. Talk to our experts at DataToBiz for more information.
Can small and mid-size teams migrate from Excel to decision platforms easily?
Typically, small and mid-size teams can seamlessly migrate from Excel to decision intelligence platforms if you have a proper plan and strategy to implement the changes. Many modern AI-powered solutions allow third-party integrations and simplify the process. However, you will still require technical support from experts. Excel2Decisions by DataToBiz is a perfect solution for your needs. The team will set up the integrations and provide necessary support services.
Do decision intelligence platforms replace Excel entirely, or just complement it?
Decision intelligence platforms do not replace Excel entirely. They complement the Microsoft package by taking care of more complex processes and offering scalable, flexible solutions to handle the tasks. Additionally, DI platforms have AI support and automate recurring tasks to save time and provide quick insights. DataToBiz has developed a similar solution called Excel2Decisions to empower Excel and support your accelerated growth.
How is data modeled or automated differently in a decision intelligence system?
In decision intelligence platforms, data is modeled and automated for more than simple reporting on historical data or predicting future outcomes. It helps understand, support, and automate business decisions based on context and relevance. This allows you to get a more holistic view of the situation. At DataToBiz, we help clients from diverse industries to implement decision intelligence systems aligned with their needs and achieve their objectives.
What are examples of use cases where Excel fails but DI platforms excel?
A few examples where Excel fails but DI platforms deliver are as follows:
- Processing large and complex datasets
- Sharing real-time and continuous updates
- Integrating multiple data sources
- Automating workflows and reporting
- Better data security and governance
- Greater collaboration with teams
With Excel2Decisions, you can streamline and automate the process to effectively handle large volumes of data in a quick time and make intelligent decisions in real-time.
How do you train non-technical users to adopt a decision intelligence tool?
You can train non-technical users to adopt decision intelligence platforms by integrating the solution into the existing workflow, providing hands-on experience along with learning material, offering training support, and clearly communicating the developments. You can also partner with DataToBiz to help your non-technical users effectively use DI platforms for day-to-day decision-making.
More in Business Intelligence Services Providers
Business intelligence services provide the foundation required to build and implement decision intelligence platforms and derive advanced analytics using AI tools. BI and DI are complementary solutions that work together to streamline workflows and digitally transform business processes to enable intelligent decision-making at all levels. This gives you a competitive edge while enhancing efficiency, improving customer experience, and increasing ROI in the long term.
Read the following links to know more about how BI and DI solutions can redefine success for your business.
- Data Governance in Self-Service BI: Managing Risks Without Data Gatekeepers
- Business Intelligence Approaches to Microsoft Fabric Cost Optimization
- Power BI Governance: Secure Data Framework for a Smarter Future
- How Large Language Models Aid Your Business Intelligence Investments?
Fact checked by –
Akansha Rani ~ Content Management Executive
