A prominent political outlet called The Hill attributed the momentum of Donald Trump to tactical intelligence, but there is another intelligence at play in what may be the most memorable election since 1960. That intelligence is called business intelligence. Politicians are using business intelligence in their bid for presidency because a good BI team can make or break a campaign. No one knows that better than the chief data scientist for the Obama 2012 campaign.
Obama ran one of the most tech-savvy political campaigns in the history of US politics. His chief data scientist applied advanced data mining and machine learning techniques to create new tools for voter turnout, fundraising, advertising, social media outreach, and email campaigns. Obama hired 50 BI & analytics experts to determine which voters might be persuaded by a call, flyer, or TV ad. They also used predictive models to determine which voters wouldn’t go to the polls unless someone knocked on their door and persuaded them to vote.
Trump and Obama are not alone in leveraging business intelligence to secure votes. Business Intelligence allows businesses to leverage data and information by gaining insight on what people want, and many companies are taking advantage of such a powerful tool. Traditionally, BI was used to predict trends and understand how a business was performing, and savvy businesses use BI to increase their bottom line. In recent years, technological advances have made BI more attractive and widespread.
BI technology has become increasingly promising with the introduction of real-time analytics. Businesses that leverage BI technology no longer have to wait days, weeks or months to make business decisions based on the data. Now, they can dynamically decide what their customers need, want, and should have immediately; and even governmental organizations are leveraging the power of real-time data.
For example, the Washington Department of Transportation just launched a tolling system on the 405 that leverages business intelligence. The tolling system uses real-time data to decide what customers should pay on the toll. The toll isn’t static. Instead, it’s driven by real-time analytics that determines how many people are driving on the 405. If the toll is highly congested, the fee costs more. This is just one example of business intelligence influencing behavior.
However, business intelligence doesn’t just influence the way people drive or vote; and BI isn’t just for politicians and government agencies – it’s for everyone. Any company that wants the ability to please and influence their customers needs business intelligence.