
How to Use AI and Visual Analytics to Get Better Insights (No Matter the Business Size)
AI might feel like an overused buzzword, but it’s genuinely reshaping the way we work—especially in data analysis and visualization. Whether you’re a sprawling enterprise or a tight-knit startup, AI-powered data tools can help you uncover valuable insights and make smarter decisions.
This guide covers the benefits of AI and visual analytics, plus practical tips on how any organization—large or small—can start leveraging them right now.
Why Use AI and Visual Analytics?
There’s no doubt about it: AI can be a very powerful tool when it comes to data analysis and visualization. Here are some of the key benefits you can expect when using AI for these purposes:
- Faster, more efficient analysis: By automating processes such as data cleaning, data integration, and predictive modeling, AI can greatly increase the efficiency of your data analysis process. This means faster insights and a quicker response time.
- Greater Accuracy: With AI’s ability to handle large amounts of data and detect patterns and anomalies that humans may miss, visual analytics powered by AI can provide more accurate insights than traditional methods.
- Data democratization: With its user-friendly interface and natural language processing capabilities, AI-powered visual analytics make it easier for all members of an organization to
- Efficient data processing: With the ever-increasing amount of data available, it can be challenging for businesses to process and analyze it manually. AI-powered tools can quickly sift through large datasets and identify patterns and trends that may have been missed by humans.
- Advanced analyses: AI-powered visual analytics can perform complex analyses such as predictive modeling, forecasting, and sentiment analysis, providing deeper insights into data that may have been overlooked otherwise.
- Customization: By using AI to segment and identify patterns within datasets, businesses can create more personalized experiences for their customers. What’s more, the right kind of AI Business Intelligence tool can help you customize your own dashboards for easier access to information and insight (at all levels of the organization.)

How Businesses of Any Size Can Leverage AI
No matter if you’re a multinational corporation, a mom-and-pop shop, or an independent consultant, there’s an AI-driven business analysis use case for you.
Large Businesses with BI/Analytics Teams
For large businesses with (often overloaded) dedicated BI or analytics teams, our solution helps expedite, enhance, and improve their work while driving the organization toward a fully data-driven approach. Typically, Heads of BI teams, CDOs, or CFOs reach out to us with the challenge of an overloaded team, especially due to ad-hoc requests.
For example, Zebra AI allows everyone in the company to access insights quickly, whether through natural language queries or an easy-to-use interface. Key data types for these businesses often include:
- Sales data (e.g., plan vs. actual, year-over-year comparisons, product performance, district and salesperson performance)
- Financial data (e.g., profit and loss, cash flow, turnover, budget vs. actuals)
- Customer data (e.g., customer demographics, purchase history, churn rates, customer lifetime value)
These insights typically span multiple regions and sub-companies. We augment the capabilities of existing teams, enabling them to do more with less effort. At the same time, we empower managers with a tool to quickly extract actionable insights through simple requests.

Small Businesses Without a BI Team
For small businesses lacking a BI team where CEOs, owners, or senior managers are often hands-on when it comes to both data analysis and other business verticals, an AI solution can help answer business questions using the existing data without needing complicated setups or expensive software.
Typically, smaller businesses can fast-track their way to data analysis for pretty much all their needs:
- Simple sales data (e.g., month-over-month comparisons, year-over-year performance, product performance)
- More basic financial data (e.g., profit, cash flow)
- Inventory data (e.g., stock levels, turnover rates, restocking trends)
For instance, Zebra AI helps these businesses understand what’s happening overall, identify areas to focus on, and gain insight—without the need to set up a data warehouse or manually create pivots. In this case, AI is a simple, effective way to stay on top of their business performance.

Consultants
For consultants working with both small and large businesses, AI solutions simplify ad-hoc analysis, enabling them to complete reports faster and optimize their workflow. Consultants often need a tool to create repeatable templates and scenarios to streamline their processes -- and AI excels at that by providing actionable insights that they can use to create customized reports.
If you are a consultant, you will be happy to know that, on top of fast data analysis and visualization, Zebra AI also allows you to export to Excel and PowerPoint. From there, you can customize and update the reports to align with your clients’ or your own professional standards -- always making sure that your work is polished and efficient.
Does AI Deliver on Its Promises?

In short, yes, AI does deliver on pretty much every promise -- from democratizing access to data to improving efficiency and accuracy in data analysis and visualization.
But the right tool matters.
- ChatGPT is a generalist. It’s perfect for quick brainstorming or high-level summaries but not ideal when you need highly specialized, real-time business analytics.
- Copilot integrates tightly with Power BI and Excel, handling tasks like writing formulas or prepping data. It’s embedded, but limited, and can be fragmented, requiring considerable expertise and enterprise-level budgets.
- Zebra AI was built specifically for business data. It handles everything from automated dashboard creation to nuanced analysis, all in one place. It’s designed for users at any level—from the most senior Analyst to the solopreneur—without costly overhead or complicated interfaces.

Practical Tips for Bringing AI & Visual Analytics in Your Business
Want to implement AI and visual analytics in your business? Here are some of the most important steps to take, then:
- Define your goals: It’s crucial to have a clear understanding of your business needs and goals before implementing any new technology. This will help you make decisions that make sense for your business, at whichever level it may be right now.
- Identify your key data types: Decide what type of data is most important for your business. This could be sales, finance, customer, inventory, etc.
- Choose the right AI tool: Consider factors like ease of use, compatibility with existing systems and workflows, and capabilities like natural language query engine.
- Train your team: Make sure everyone is familiar with the new tool and how to use it effectively. Provide quick overviews or mini workshops. Encourage them to ask questions and explore different scenarios to get comfortable with the AI solution.
- Implement and iterate: Start using the tool, gather feedback, and refine your approach. The more you experiment, the better results you’ll get.
Got any questions? The Zebra AI team is here to answer them -- contact us at ai@zebrabi.com and we’ll get back to you with a reply in no time.
Or better yet, give Zebra AI a test drive for free and discover just how simple yet powerful AI-driven analytics can be for your business.